I just checked and I never played this shit game ever again. I had that EA Play shit for like 3 straight years, never touched the game.
Has a series gone so high up and plummeted down so far so fast as 1 hour before Mass Effect 3 ending to this abomination of a sequel. I would give Mass Effect 1 - before ending of 3 a 95/100 easily. After that, a 70 at best. Excluding ME3 DLC of course. Fuck EA for ruining another franchise.
Never played Andromeda, but definitely saw all the bullshit about it before/right after launch. As a big player of the ME trilogy, I was definitely pissed with the writers changing the ending/motive of the Reapers and giving us a shit ending too.
I'm replaying ME in the legendary edition right now, just finished the first one. Dare I try Andromeda? Probably not, there are just other games I would rather play.
Now, the real question is, does the franchise deserve to die? Is leaving it how it is better than taking another chance?
Andromeda was just a complete mess. Never had any direction mechanically and the narrative was in a complete lurch. The "procedural generated" bullshit didn't work out so all the planets were just empty husks. Think ME1 side missions, except it was supposed to be the bulk of the game. Pair that with them being scared shitless to make any sort of statement about their disaster of an ending that was ME3 and it was just sort of a game that was unfulfilling to everyone.
As far as the series going forward, if they truly are going to try to marry Andromeda and the original trilogy, good luck. It's just in that funky place where they don't have a lot to work with. Plenty of people just probably want to leave the series as is.
On the PC you can mod the ending of the trilogy to be, at best, an inconsistent romp that ends with the citadel DLC. It's far more palatable than it was in ol March of 2012. Then you have Andromeda which, despite adding a fun spin on the combat, the game itself was just a mess technically and felt rushed despite its long dev time. Compile those warts with the fact that its story really wasn't impressive and you have to ask yourself, is there anything worth salvaging from that game? BioWare is gonna try to force something here and I don't think they have the talent to pull it off anymore.
HOWEVER, if they really are gonna try to make the destroy ending canon and give me another chance to explore one of my favorite fictional universes of all time, then I'll definitely be monitoring the development of the game for sure.
To answer your question Patrick, I played Andromeda day 1 and had it beat before it was done getting patches. Maybe it's better now.
Like I said, they maintain the next game will pull from ME:A too, so I guess if you wanted to play the new one you'd need some understanding, but I still don't see it happenin.