Playing A Game Mass Effect: Andromeda PC

I reached the end of Origin's ten-hour Mass Effect: Andromeda trial in about five hours -- including probably an hour or so of reading Codex entries. And while it's hard to form a complete opinion of such an ambitious game in that time, what I've glimpsed is ... interesting.

The introductory mission is rough. Lots of jump-jet jumping, which doesn't work that great. Some getting lost in an open-ish map with linear-ish objectives. Emotionally-stilted dialog, wacky animations, flat starting characters... which, if we're being honest, Mass Effect has always had problems with.

Toward the end of the demo, though, the new approach to world design started to grow on me. It's not as enchantingly open as, say, Breath of the Wild, but what I've seen so far makes me wonder how much free-form planetary exploration I can pull off.

At the same time, there are some game systems that really feel like steps backward from Mass Effect 3. The menus and submenus are overly complicated, taking way too many clicks to do anything. The disassociation of class-specialization and abilities is messy and confusing. Opportunities for modifying your loadout are too infrequent and restrictive.

... and the "new" stuff in the Andromeda galaxy is very underwhelming, so far. There's a new hostile race, which I shoot at and it dies. There's a new forerunner promethean ancient race with ruins to explore. All of your friends are the same races you know from the Milky Way.

It's still intriguing enough that I'll get the full game, eventually. And maybe the game world will become more engrossing as the hours add up. Hopefully.

Progress: Finished the demo.