Mass Effect Andromeda Review: 3 Ups & 8 Downs

2. The New Open-World Loop Can Be Very Engaging

Once you get your head around how to craft weapons and which powers you enjoy deploying - perhaps even completing some loyalty missions or getting romantically involved with a character or two - everything will start to click.

You'll deploy down to a planet just because you want to, knowing that the 10+ side missions you've racked up will all have their respective markers on the map. You'll summon the Nomad and tear off across sandy dunes, ice-covered lakes or low-gravity mountains, bounding from place to place, collecting, killing, conversing and being rewarded in turn.

When it's firing on all cylinders - i.e. when you get out of the tutorial or after you've felled the Archon and can just take in the galaxy and its requisite systems - there is a LOT to love about being the 'Pathfinder'; Andromeda's version of a Spectre from the original trilogy.

Amidst so many systems and distractions, it does work in Mass Effect Andromeda's favour, in that you feel as though you're an immensely important part of the Andromeda Initiative and the galaxy itself - one who's slowly turning the cogs of everything around you with each and every step.