GAMEPLAY | 'Mass Effect: Andromeda' Part 4
With first contact with a friendly species now established, Niamh Ryder has to win their trust and alliance to fight against the hostile kett across a number of worlds.
Voeld, living up to its rhyme, is very cold. The hostile environment covers much of the planet and the initial area is a series of platforms while under a time limit to reach the next heating lamp and warm yourself up before the frostbite kills you. It’s nice to see that the developers have utilised the design of the jump-packs properly and have designed environments around them. Eventually, Niamh finds herself in a massive angaran military base and learns about the situation on Voeld.
There are a few areas of concern: a settlement dealing with kett incursions, a few missing patrols and a massive kett fortress overlooking the entire valley. The questing on Voeld is a series of raids on small kett encampments mixed in with driving the Nomad. There’s also a vault to activate and colony to establish. The best areas are the larger kett bases as they make up much of the focus of the quests and also provide the best firefights. The smaller engagements tend to be more of an annoyance than fun, as they require more focus on the slow decline of your life support than a focus on the enemy forces. The large kett fortress is a series of intense firefights and tight corridors that provide a good test to the player but also cause a lot of annoyance at the fact that they are so much better designed than the rest of the game.
The Voeld vault is a lot simpler than the Eos one. After activating the three monoliths the process of activating the vault is actually straightforward. A few rooms of fighting Remnant robots and some simple platforming then you have a viable world. However, Niamh can’t set the beacon just yet: the angara need to trust the Initiative before they’ll allow a colony mission.
There is the option to start the rescue mission of the angaran spiritual leader at this point but it would be weird to do so before taking care of the other major concern so when Niamh is satisfied with the state of Voeld for the time being, the Tempest sets off for the angaran homeworld of Havarl.
Havarl is a lot smaller area than Voeld. It doesn’t have an environmental hazard based on life support but there are a lot of violent and dangerous wildlife to deal with. It can get frustrating to deal with when just desiring to get from one place to another, it’s also a nice challenge to deal with and a great area to grind in.
One of the quests on Havarl hint towards the first ark mission so it’s a welcome addition to the game in the story-telling aspect, but much of the quests in Andromeda don’t pay off in a linear way so there is a lack of momentum in many of them. The vault doesn’t even become available until about 80% of the way through the story along with about half of the map. Havarl is made up of a mixture of both the weaknesses and strengths of 'Mass Effect: Andromeda': a great experience on initial contact, but a linear grind in the worst way when returned to again and again.
One of the best moments of Havarl is when Niamh has to fight off a large number of the local wildlife to save a number of angaran resistance fighters. It is a good fight and one that opens up a number of quests to follow. It is a bit of a strange pacing issue that so many of the loyalty and ark quests only open up after the main quest is well into its second act as they are by far the best quests of the game. Fortunately, Niamh is committed to her task and sets about bettering the lot of the angara as much as she does the Initiative species.
With both Havarl and Voeld in a stable holding pattern, Niamh is now ready to launch the mission to rescue the angaran spiritual leader known as the “Moshae” from the kett.
It’ll be an intense mission on Voeld, which will make up the bulk of the next part of this series. Stay tuned!
