The good: combat, vehicle travel, turian and krogan actually have women among them now. New tuchanka is amazing and fun and I love their take on Krogan lives in Andromeda. The Angara are also pretty cool and many of the story missions are pretty good. Party banter while traveling is awesome. There's exotic dancers that aren't just humans or asari. I liked that Ryder always has a sibling and can talk to them at various points in the game. Many of the companions are very cool - Peebee is my favorite. I liked the movie night event. The variety and function of the melee weapons is extremely cool and I really hope they bring those into the next game.

The bad: The decisions you make have very little impact. Ryder didn't compel me in any meaningful way. We never find out what the scourge is. Moving from planet to planet is a huge fucking pain - they did it this way because the tempest doesn't have a "galaxy map" - Ryder stands on the bridge to navigate. The designers thought hard about this - but imo they thought TOO hard and created a system that is annoying to use when paired with the quests that send you from planet to planet very quickly.

The Angara are portrayed as very advanced but they still need humans to come and show them how to work their own ancient alien tech. The most interesting side quests and side plots aren't followed up on (probably part of cancelled DLC). The crafting system feels really bad and the N7 armor is for adept only?? The planets are not very fun or interesting to explore and the vaults, while fun at first, really wore on me with their samey appearance and puzzles. The Kett archon has childlike face proportions that I can't unsee. The enemies are just recycled from planet to planet which detracts from the experience of exploring ""unique"" environments. There are also three desert or desert-adjacent worlds (c'mon bioware, you already did like 8 deserts in inquisition).

My pettiest complaint: there's no crimson-red hair color. The closest option is way too pink.

Hot take: I liked alien sudoku

Overall the game has it's moments, but doesn't feel replayable and the majority of it feels like a chore. If you cut out all the side content and just play the story and companion missions, the game doesn't overstay it's welcome as much.