So I finally came to end the 10 hours so thing pre-access and despite being very optimistic of the game in the first place, I'm full of worries now for the game.
I don't give much about characters sexuality/orientation, facial animations and so on, in fact this never bothered me the least in any mass effect.
What bother me much is that the game is really closer (despite appearance) to ME3 than both ME1 and ME2. It's something where they spent much effort into combat, driving vehicles and multiplayer and have left the Single Player most basic elements to the side.
Dialog choices are pretty poor and neutral, there were a thousands things I wanted to say or felt like Sheppard in ME2 would have say but the option never rose so I was left there with a passable answer that I didn't care of.
There's especially this thing at the beginning where Liam one of your squadmate decides on his own to kill a Kett first while right before it I stated "let's handle it with first contact protocole, don't shoot unless we're being shot at first" and what does the guy do at first? Launch a grenade instantly at the ennemies because they are beating a bit another friend. So he killed them both and I really wanted to have this dialog saying "doode WTF! I said do not fire unless fire upon" but nah, every answer was vague like "Oh we are the invaders bad guy" either with a touch of humour or seriously. I'm really disappointed and I fear the rest of the game is going to be very action oriented and the story/dialog will be drawback.
The story itself, let's speak of it. It fails at the rudimentary basis for a beginning. Within the first 3 hours of game, I had no ideas what I was supposed to do, who are the ennemies (beside my squadmate who fired upon a new Alien species first) and what's the plot to be honest. The second mission is a copy/paste of the first mission on a different planet where you have to de-activate some kind of weather tower. And guess what, there's likely to be one on each planet, so the main campaign has likely seven mission which are absolutely identical.
I'm really disappointed the game opening did not happen on the milkyway, because of that I barely make any connection to the milkyway and the 634 years of nap feels very casual because for me the game started arriving at Andromeda. If I was a new player I would really wonder who are these aliens species with me and as a Mass Effect Player I really can't manage to connect with anyone because everyone came in a different ark and this is explained like a surprise "after" you arrived at Andromeda while this would have been smart and logical to have the character be briefed (rapidly but still) on the milkyway galaxy so you know you goals very clearly.
I also for fun started listening to the soundtrack and, I know each one his taste but it's really nothing close to any Mass Effect beside the galaxy map soundtrack perhaps. You'll notice that ingame, all musics are kind of swallow, they don't stand out and manage to be unnoticeable which is also due to the fact there are probably only a handful music for the entire game that will be repeated copy/pasted during the entire adventure rather than having a large soundtrack like the first two ME which alternates from time to time to fit the atmosphere.
