Andromeda was an attempt at something a bit different. Sometimes it hits, sometimes it doesn't. I enjoyed the game well enough, even if it didn't match the original. But then they just kinda abandoned the franchise. What is there to be excited about? Your setting has been dead since 2017.
I'm far more upset about Dragon Age, which had five years of steady content (hit or miss, but whatever) until it was shelved nearly a decade ago. Again, why am I supposed to be hyped about this? You clearly aren't.
I liked Andromeda, probably helps that I'm an patient gamer and got the games years after release. I liked that the fact that as a story they cut all ties to the original trilogy other than some references. I remember thinking to myself "Holy shit, this alien planet" on the first level.
We spent the original trilogy being told AI is bad. However the Andromeda tried to make the argument that you AI isn't dangerous, we just have to approach a different way. Ryder was a different character of Shepard and that was a good thing. Ryder was never meant to be a reskinned Shepard. Ryder had a lot more skin in the game compared to Shepard's "This is my duty" mindset. I really enjoyed that it felt like it was post-apocalyptic situation with the Andromeda Initiative.
The Kett were extremely interesting until it became clear that they were just a slightly different Reaper/Collector style of species. The true lack of interesting and bizarre aliens was also missed. The original trilogy had the hanar and elcor that looked different from everyone. I always that it was weird that Andromeda didn't have the volus or the drell or any of the minor species.
I wouldn't rate Andromeda terribly however it's not an all time great. It's a solid middle of the pack game.
We spent the original trilogy being told AI is bad. However the Andromeda tried to make the argument that you AI isn’t dangerous, we just have to approach a different way.
When in Andromeda, they were explaining why their approach to AI wouldn’t cause an uprising, I went, “Wait, but you’re doing the exact same thing Javik told us about, with the Zha and the Zha’til. They created AI to augment themselves, and the AI ended up basically completely taking them over physically.”
I totally forget about that from Mass Effect 3. I think that what would be a very interesting theme to explore. Everyone left for Andromeda for a "fresh start", only not to be able to escape the cycle of synthetics vs organics that was very pronounced in the original trilogy, can such a cycle be broken?
It would raise some interesting philosophical questions for the player to confront.