Rundown, then.
Dialogue: A fair chunk of the dialogue isn't out of place in a Bioware game. Not perfect by any means, but not really more or less cringy than any of their other titles. Most of the cringe comes from the contrast between what are supposedly special operators talking and behaving like angsty teenagers. The "my face is tired" comes from a character than ran a doomed habitation ship amidst rebellion, civil unrest, and dwindling supplies for over a year. I would have expected less tripe and more hardened commander from them.
Team mate banter isn't awful. Liam and Cora have actually decent VA's who do a fair job of their role as ex cop and career soldier. I'm 90% sure Male Ryder is voiced by Nolan North, so his actual quality is all over the map. It's best in combat and when Ryder is angry, absolute worst during relaxed dialogue.
Quests: The main quest you're given isn't as awful as was reported. It's still not great, but it's not shit either. The tl;dr is that the garden worlds intended to settle on went to shit during the trip from the Milky Way, so you have to unshit them via main and side quests which improve a stat called viability. Evidently the Milky Way is still fairly habitable, since they left people behind, but seriously fucked up at time of leaving, hence the Andromeda Initiative. I ran a couple of side quests. A murder investigation, which wasn't as bad as was expected and gave me a different result than I anticipated (spoiler: dude was innocent). Another was to find memory nodes scattered around the environment that unlock your pet AI's memories, which were locked away by the PC's father. This was a huge let down since you get the nodes then have to return to the cryo ship to view them which then breaks the pace of the game.
Gameplay: I'm surprised to say that the mocap actors were actually possessed of normal human motion, for the most part. I didn't get the infamous crab walk down the stairs. Running is no longer the stiff armed atrocity of the previous two games, and there's a sort of stumble when you hit back or stop running. Going down stairs and ramps isn't that exceptional half trip of ME3. Moving forward then to either side has that slight juke of a football player, which is nice attention to detail. Using the jump pack thing to move upwards will have the character grab and pull the ledge if using a one handed weapon, and jump up with their feet if their hands are occupied. Again, nice attention to detail. Cutscene animations are where it falls flat, since I get the impression that someone half assed the animations to save time. I did see the no eye contact thing a lot, but whatever day one patch is included in the demo clearly did something to how lighting affects characters since it wasn't the monstrosity of the aforementioned gifs.
Combat: I'm not sure if I like or dislike the change to rapid cover based shooting. Cover is not a push button affair anymore. Moving up to a cover object with a drawn weapon is enough to go into cover, which has a satisfying thunk when you go up against a wall. The flip side is that enemies will try to flush you out of cover more often with grenades, advancing heavy gunners, and mobility tactics involving the jump pack mentioned earlier. Combat controls could have undergone some QA runs, since the settings shortcut is H key, with F and G used in combat so a missed key will drop a menu on the screen. For some reason, holster weapon is V with melee on F. Since most other games have V as melee, I did end up putting my gun away twice in one firefight. Most enemies fall into the classic close/medium/long range archetypes, but they move fast and re position a lot to keep you moving. For people who played Mass Effect 3, the weapon class set up got tweaked so SMGs and handguns are the same "class" of pistols. I found myself quite liking the change since I could keep a rifle and a SMG to keep up rapid firepower. Guns are held properly, with foregrips being more than just decoration. Unfortunately, the crazy cutscene animations strike here too, since it was normal for Ryder to hold a rifle about five inches off the grip during the few cutscenes between fights. The ability to carry more than two guns at a time is found in the skill tree, which I'm alright with.
Conclusions: For a rookie team, I'm impressed. For what should be a Bioware title, I'm not. If this was a new studio with a new IP, I'd be more willing to overlook the let downs. But, this is Bioware and a reputation does hang off that name. Whether it hangs by noose or harness is up to you, but ME:A definitely falls short of the original trilogy. I'd pay no more than thirty for this, and I'd compare it negatively to Dragon Age Inquisition. 7/10 under charitable conditions, 4.5/10 compared to the original trilogy.
