Long story short, I got Mass Effect Legendary Edition (the remastered/rebalanced Shepherd trilogy) for $6 (and it goes on sale for this all the time) on Xbox, played through it, loved it. Saw they had Andromeda for $3, but I paid $4 for Deluxe. I'm not mad, I know the OG version of ME3 also had some online/loot box BS that is just straight up gone from the Legendary version of ME3. So, for those who only played the OG, in LE, you can no longer do online missions, and your readiness level is adjusted accordingly. You can max it via single player actions exclusively. It's not an online game anymore.
But Andromeda? Xbox is still selling the lootbox coins, even though the ME: Andromeda servers were shut down. There's no way to play the game online. I'm not mad, I got it for $4, but two of the Deluxe Edition bonuses are for online, so I've tried to connect, and, no luck. It's so weird because starting the Apex missions (the online stuff) is listed as a main quest and it keeps trying to get me to talk to the turian on the Nexus who runs it (or to go to the computer console on the ship that does the same).
It's just so weird that they shut down the online servers, but they didn't remove the online stuff from the game. Even if, for whatever reason — and I doubt this will be the case — I can't complete the game because of the online stuff, I still got my money's worth. For some reason, Xbox says I have zero days, hours, and minutes in the game, but I've been playing it pretty steadily since January. I should have about 20-30 hours in it.
ME2 is still the GOAT (2 > 4 > 3 > 1 IMO, and I loved the LE of 1, it's just everything after was better), but I feel like with ME:A/4, they took the Mako planetary exploration in ME1 that everyone hated (mostly, I think, because it was so broken in the OG) and made a whole game out of it. So when you drop down on the planet and now you gotta establish a colony and do things for them planet-side, people said "this isn't my ME, I play ME from the bridge of my ship, I'm out there exploring planets." And I get it. And the plant/mineral harvesting is still 100% a waste of your time. I completed the minerals and I think I got 200 credits? And I never have enough materials to craft, and I mine, I collect... but I find the weapons I like just laying around everywhere. I think you only needed mining in ME2, to upgrade the Normandy for the big fight/suicide run. The grind feels as useless in Andromeda as it did in ME1/3.
There are a bunch of dumb bugs, like the smallest root or pebble stops Ryder in their tracks, and you can't just jump over or go around, you gotta boost, and if you're gonna boost, you're gonna air dash, so get used to those sound bytes because you won't stop hearing them until the credits roll. The transmission in the new Mako being manual is also a huge pain in the ass, even though it only has two gears and it's one tap to switch between them. The fact that it can jump is completely useless and never once was it ever needed, but the little popup tutorials never end, so it keeps telling me I can jump, or tap reverse to slow down, or whatever else, over and over. I think the game's biggest sin is how you have to depart a world to get on your ship. So my krogan crew mate who is standing right next to me on the planet (albeit, on shore leave) wants to talk to me on the ship. So we get on the ship and watch the unskippable view of us taking off. I talk to the krogan, and he says he wants to meet up on the planet we were just on, so now we have to watch the unskippable video of it loading. Or the anti-AI mission where, for the peaceful solution, you have to craft an item. But to craft, you have to go all the way back to town, hoof it half a mile where the Mako can't go, go up an elevator... it's actually faster to extract to the ship and go through the cutscene. Then you have to land, go through the elevator, walk half a mile to where you can fast travel... and then you have to glitch up to the base because no road goes there, so you gotta billy goat it up the side of a mountain, Skyrim style. The game's a fucking mess and I can see why it's not popular... yet, I still love it, and I haven't even gotten into how bad the voice acting is (krogans and turians just sound human now, at least they got salarians right)... and for $4 I can't complain. (And yet, here we are.) But the online? Why wouldn't they update the game to disable all that when they shut down the servers?
I haven't finished Andromeda yet, but I'll likely be back if they ever give it the Legendary treatment. I think this game deserves more love than it got, and if you stayed away because of the hate... it has as rough a start as all the others, but once you hit your stride, it's a lot of fun. The Mako (not its name, but it's a Mako, dammit) is fun as hell to drive, and virtually everything relating to the Remnant (especially the Sudoku puzzles) is a blast. The vaults are too damn big, but the last part of them is always epic.
I think if ME5 ever materializes, I'll pay full price. I only paid $10 for the first four titles. (And I re-purchased ME1 digitally for $5. Not sure why. Nostalgia?)
Mass Effect. I didn’t get far in the original. Played the Legendary Edition trilogy all the way through. Went back to the original. It’s the tank (Mako). It dies in like 2-3 hits and you get less XP for kills in it. It’s just not fun and they never fixed it in the original. Legendary fixes it. At the very least, it’s balanced to the game’s difficulty setting. Where in the original it’s stuck on the hardest setting, but only for the Mako missions.
Original came out in like 2007, Legendary came out in like 2016. Might be off by a year or two with one or both.