I've been replaying it a lot lately, and I'd say the biggest criticism is how "unfinished" it feels... and that's after they spent months fixing the bugs.

I don't understand why companies don't understand that devoted fan bases will happily wait if we can trust that the quality will be there.

I loved Andromeda, and I wanted more planets to terraform. And more things to do on them.

However, the game was objectively bad.

First of all, you go out terraforming, and you only need to do like a third of the quests to reach 100%. Clearing the enemy base isn’t even required! So what do you get after 100%? Nothing! What does 100% give you? An achievement.

The first planet you terraform asks if you want it to focus on science or military. Does this even matter? The other planets don’t ask.

Once you do all the terraforming, it’s just fetch quests until the end. Talk to your crew mate on the ship — not on the planet. So you get on the ship and watch the takeoff movie for the tenth time. Talk to them on the ship and they want to go back to the same planet you just left!

Or the mission where you track the anti AI terrorists to their base and the pacifist option involves crafting which means you have to get on your ship, take off, land again, and then go all the way back to their base, which is only accessible by Billy goating up a mountain Skyrim style.

The rating also promises nudity and strong sexual content and the game is PG-13 at best in that regard. Mass Effect got a bad rap from the first one. My Ryder was flirting with a few people but eventually the options just disappeared. Actually the most tame Mass Effect.

I could say a lot more, but I still loved this game. I understand the criticism though.

Game is an undercooked buggy mess with the goofiest uncanniest valley facial animation ever seen in video gaming at that point -> you're a chud if you don't like this!

Look, there was plently of stupid chuddery going on, but you don't and didn't need to be a chud to laugh at what was basically at that point in time, the most overhyped and buggy broken mess of a AAA game that had ever been released.

A huge reason why AAA gaming is currently imploding is that it spent a decade misreading quite a good deal of backlash to legimate quality control and design failures... as bigotry.

Yes, bigotry was there, but... if you just use that as a shield and bludgeon against all criticisms, you're just getting high on your own farts.

Just go watch the like hour long, no commetary added videos of just totally absurd bugs and problems.

I loved the original Mass Effect trilogy. Until recently, it was my all-time favorite story in any game. I've completed play throughs as both Shepherds using every character type. I'm probably approaching 30 play throughs of the full trilogy. Liara is the middle name of one of my kids. When I say I love this trilogy, I mean it.

Andromeda on the other hand, is a travesty. I've tried to play it a few times. Bugginess and weird faces aside, from story to mechanics, it had no cohesion. It was a bunch of half-baked ideas they just shoved together. The exploration and settlement founding was arduous at best. The apex missions and loot boxes felt like an unrealized microtransaction attempt. The story was generic and side characters were as flat as can be. I should care about Liam because he somehow snuck a couch on the Tempest? Oh, he's so quirky. Ugg. They used the Mass Effect name and world building to create a pseudo fan-fiction knock off and hoped no one would notice.

Andromeda didn't get a bum rap because people enjoy hating things. It got one because it is an objectively horrible game.

Just replayed it recently, its a very fun game if slightly bland.