With the graphics and load time patches, it's a better game to manage. It was painful looking at these dead eyed motherfuckers while they send me off on some side mission.

This is basically the first Mass Effect on steroids. You have the exploration aspect in your vehicle and you can get out to explore a bit. However there are SO many damned things to do on each planet. Well lemme rephrase: it's a lot of 2 or 3 things to do on each planet.

You get your quests, sidequests and fetch quests where you're scanning or picking up or destroying something. I absolutely HATE everything regarding the Remnants. I don't give a shit about them. Every new planet I've found I go straight to the vaults to get it overwith and I don't even bother with the puzzle stuff because it's basically the space version of pulling levers in Tomb Raider and goddamn Sudoku. I hate it.

The fetch quests are okay. I've grown into a bit of a completionist lately so I don't mind it. The main line and loyalty quests is where this game shines though. Every main mission is fun, intense and has some great story beats. Same for the loyalty missions.

And as far as bugs, I don't really mind disappearing cups or floating enemies but there are some times where you can only talk to an NPC when you're standing directly in front of them and that doesn't even seem like a bug; it's more a design decision but it's stupid as fuck.

I'm being overly negative but it's really a decent game. If you don't wanna get frustrated, play the mainline quest, loyalty missions and remnant vault stuff then play the other sidemissions in your New game + playthrough.

But for the good stuff. The environments are fuckin gorgeous. I hate remnant vaults but they're well designed and they're pretty as hell. There are some things they do with size and space that are incredible. There's a gigantic remnant spaceship sticking out of the sand on Elaaden that is one of my favorite things to look at in the game.

The characters are still fun but the writing is a bit off. It seems like they tried to inject too many humorous things and pop culture references rather than letting it happen naturally. They referenced star wars at one point and it took me out of the game like "Star wars exists in this universe?"

The combat is probably the best in the ME series though. I miss squad commands but you'll have to pay attention to the battlefield so you can take advantage of biotic/tech combos and stuff. You get a wider range of freedom in this battle system and I didn't bother to mess with Profiles until 30 hours into the game and I'm addicted. You can switch powers on the fly so if you want, you can have a turret with singularity and incinerate.

Weapon customization is fun but I find myself using the weapons I grab from containers and buying from shops.

If you got it, power through the weak stuff and get to the mainline quests. If you don't, wait until mid summer when the full patches release and it won't ruin your experiences. I'm enjoying it more as I play it.