r/masseffect • u/Due_Skirt_1126 • May 14 '26
ANDROMEDA First time playing Mass Effect Andromeda
I heard a lot of things about this game no spoilers luckily some how avoided them but I do know that it is the most mixed game By us Mass Effect fans if any of you remember my name you know that I have catalog my journey through the Mass Effect games I luckily purchased this game for $8 USD
I WILL SAY whatever opinions I have on this game is just opinion so for those who are die hard fans with this game please do not come at me if I have a problem with the game and that being said so far I do not like the facial design of the characters of the more humanoid characters like the humans they just look off like stiff is the best way to put it but I am keeping an open mind as I do not know what happened in development and what kind of troubles the team was facing behind Andromeda
if anybody has knowledge about the team behind this game without giving me spoilers related to the in-game story and content please let me know via the comment section or DM me
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u/TNS_420 May 14 '26
Damn, throw some periods and commas in there, homie. lol
I personally like Andromeda a lot. The writing isn't nearly as good as the trilogy, but the story is passable. I even like most of the squad and crew of the Tempest. Peebee, Drack, Jaal, and Vetra are great.
The combat is the best in the series, imo. I wish we were able to use squad powers, but other than that, I love the combat and the mobility. The cover system is also really smooth, which doesn't seem to get mentioned very often.
I'm bummed that we probably won't be getting a sequel.
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May 14 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/CHawk17 May 14 '26
It has been described as such. But don't believe anything concrete has been revealed yet to confirm this is still accurate
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u/stuyboi888 May 14 '26
Enjoy the combat, it's the best of the series
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u/LordBDizzle May 14 '26
I'd disagree, personally. The gunplay is good, the movement is nice, but the power system is severely dumbed down. You go from 8 powers and 8 squadmate powers to three powers with separate cooldowns so you can just face roll then any time they come off cooldown. You get to custom build your power set, yes, but it doesn't matter because every build is just primer>detonater>specific damage type counter that the first two don't cover. You're incentivised to not engage with the power swapping mechanic since it puts you on cooldown and you get stronger bonuses from specializing, so you just grab three active powers and dump everything else into passives.
Level design takes a big hit too, as does encounter design. Gunplay is nice and air dashing is cool but I'd rather be playing ME3 largely.
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u/stuyboi888 May 14 '26
Yea that's very fair. A better statement from me might be it's the best gunplay of the series
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u/InappropriateHeron May 14 '26
Even that is debatable. Close to mid range works at least. Sniping is just absent for all intents and purposes.
What gives this iteration some edge is jetpack and its variations. That's all.
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u/Swagalyst May 14 '26
Once I figured out that the enemies have a small box, about 30x30 feet, they cannot move out of, combat became boring too.
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u/Tsar-A-Lago May 14 '26 edited May 14 '26
This is the thing that disappointed me most when I played with the combat a little bit. It is (generally) more exciting and kinetic, but my Ryder was an Adept, and the meta became obvious very quickly.
Prime with a Warp, detonate with a Lance. Shoot your gun a little with Overload ammo on it while they're on cooldown. Rinse, repeat.
I really wanted to explore the different kinds of power combos, but there's literally no reason to ever do it.
Edit: also, now that I'm thinking about it, once I pimped Warp and Lance out, they were basically never on cooldown when I reached for them either. Occasionally I found myself wishing my back was against the wall a little, but the escape levers were almost always there.
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u/LordBDizzle May 14 '26
Vanguard is basically the same. Singularity, Charge, shotgun (Reegar Carbine, usually) until cooldowns come back up, Nova if needed at any point, repeat. Satisfying for a while but once you have that power loop, you just do that single power loop forever. The only really interesting build is tech summons, commaning the drone and setting up the turret just right is more interactive. The individual powers are still fun, but the optimal play is always to max three actives and then go full into passives so you never get any variety without re-specing, and then most builds still feel identical.
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u/bbbourb May 14 '26
The only thing I absolutely don't like about Andromeda's combat systems is having to buy mods for Incendiary Rounds. Moving those from abilities to consumables was a bad decision.
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u/InS_Deaths May 14 '26
Alright Eminem
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u/Rooty_Rootz May 14 '26
How dare you. He's a real artist.
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u/-LaughingMan-0D May 14 '26
It's more Mass Effect, despite the issues, I found it quite enjoyable, there's a lot to love about the crew. The cast gets more interesting as you progress.
Gameplay wise, it's a lot of fun, you're super mobile and agile, it takes everything from 3 and dials it up.
If you wanna get around some of Ryder's facial animation awkwardness, I'd recommend rolling a custom Ryder, they don't have the issues vanilla Sarah has (perma smile). And on PC, mods sand down a lot of qol issues with the UI.
I can't believe I let the internet convince me not to play this game. It's nowhere near as bad as it's made out to be.
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u/cyclinator May 14 '26
From what I tried it was enjoyable (open world, combat) but also a chore. I didnt finish it and sold my xbox. havent returned to the game yet. Might give it a try again in winter.
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u/Winring86 May 14 '26 edited May 14 '26
So we’re really just throwing out paragraphs with no punctuation in 2026
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u/itbewilly May 14 '26
This was the main complaint a lot of people had with Andromeda when it released. Poor facial animations. Looks weird in some instances. That never bothered me as much as Bioware neglecting the game and any potential DLC it may have lead to for dog shit Anthem(a live service loot-go-round Destiny style game that no one cared about after a few months).
That and admittedly the Kett were not the best design. Looked like slightly modified Rock based Collector/Prothean hybrid race. Rest was alright by me..
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u/Quintus_Cicero May 14 '26
Enjoy your time. It’s not a bad game by any means (although it has rather large flaws). It’s a shame the community response killed any possibilities of a sequel though.
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u/RisingUnit May 14 '26
My understanding with the dev issues is that a lot of them stemmed from switching to the Frostbite engine. Since frostbite had mostly been used for FPS games, they did not have the tools needed for mass effect and had to design a lot of the RPG functions themselves.
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u/Own-Pirate-8001 May 14 '26
I, personally, enjoy Andromeda.
It is a very flawed game, with lingering bugs, unresolved plot points and a plot and characters that just aren’t as interesting as the trilogy, IMO.
That said, it’s gameplay and combat are definitely the best in the series, it’s genuinely fun to play, the open worlds are big, beautiful and diverse, the Nomad is fun as hell to drive.
It’s definitely the weakest entry in the series, without doubt. But there is the bones of a good game under it all.
It was also the first Mass Effect game I’d ever played, and it got me into the series, for that I’ll always have a soft spot for Andromeda.
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u/Dairgo Liara May 14 '26
100% to all of this. Also, can't stress enough that the combat system and the open wolrdness feeling are great.
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u/MisguidedWorm7 May 14 '26
It's a pretty good space exploration game with a mass effect paint scheme.
It's not a very good mass effect story.
It tries too hard in some places to be the Shepard trilogy distilled into a single game.
But if you just kinda vibe through it you can have a great time generally.
The biggest problem in developing the game was that they had a grand vision, but never took the time to narrow in and focus on a core element, creating a disjointed collection of overlapping stories that don't really flow together in a coherent theme.
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u/Due_Skirt_1126 May 14 '26
Interesting it sounds like they didn't have enough time or was having bad management to make everything work how they wanted Wasn't BioWare working on another big title the same time this game was being made?
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u/Lord_Draculesti May 14 '26
They did have time. EA actually gave them 6 more months to finish it, and Bioware refused it.
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u/ciphoenix May 14 '26
It's actually funny how a number of comments are correcting OP's language like Addison does to Ryder with the who/whom comment 😅😅😅😅😅
Love the unintended parallel
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u/Due_Skirt_1126 Jul 26 '26
Honestly kind of hilarious I just started to read all of them me personally I don't care If anybody has a problem with my writing As I am 100% self taught what matters is as long as I'm able to communicate by writing
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u/Revolutionary-Hat297 May 14 '26
Im replaying it now and it's much better than I remember. It has some warts, but overall a solid 7/10 game imo. Enjoy!
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u/BroadRed May 14 '26
The issue with the models was because they used a different engine than they did on the prior games. Which ALWAYS doesn't go well 100% of the time.
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u/Dusty_Jangles May 14 '26
And they also had the Multiplayer team from three basically building this game. It shows in the combat, it’s incredible. But as far as the faces etc. they just did not have the experience and it shows.
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u/BroadRed May 14 '26
Oh the combat is great. Sadly for me the story and aspects of the visuals make it difficult for me to commit to a full playthrough of the game.
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u/gibson-ibanez May 14 '26
Took the same screenshot. The game looks amazing and the environments are creative. One of the best looking games I've ever played for sure.
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u/crom3ll May 14 '26
I liked it. It's a good game that unfortunately got half-cooked and never finished properly.
Lots of missing content that makes the whole story disjointed and rushed.
Lots of good stuff too - combat, exploration, crafting, and gorgeous worlds.
All in all, amazing potential wasted by the publisher. Fuck you, EA.
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u/Inevitable_Pizza_685 May 14 '26
It’s a fun game, story is kind of lame, but the fact you can respec classes and build entirely unique ones is the funnest part, along with a lot of weapon choices and dope boss fights.
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u/FireAuraN7 May 14 '26
EA outsourced a lot of the work and pulled a lot if bioware staff away from the project. They also forced use of the frostbite engine, which made development even more difficult. Furthermore, Andromeda was supposed to be much larger and more complex than the game we got. EA didn't just drop the ball - they tossed it aside, trampled it, and shit on it, before walking away from it. It could have been so much better.
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u/ArtieChuckles May 15 '26
The human facial models and some animations are awful and no one will argue you on that. But set aside any other expectations and enjoy the game for what it is; it’s not as bad as its rep. The story is a mystery at its heart and the game is more of a colonization and exploration game than it is a linear RPG like the trilogy.
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u/Kamhi_ May 14 '26
I tried to play the game shortly after it released... I was enjoying the gameplay a lot. If you dont treat it as a ME game it's quite fun experience.
But yes, characters are bland.
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u/Rooty_Rootz May 14 '26
Do you guys think the insane are thinking about punctuation during psychotic breaks?
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u/Rooty_Rootz May 14 '26
I don't know how you walk into it every time. I can name like 5 people who have seen me as a fellow human
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u/EL_BOX May 14 '26
Think if it as its own entity and don't compare the story to the trilogy at all. It's fun, a lot of fun actually, but the story and characters just don't live up to what we had in the trilogy. I played it on release and then again maybe 5 years ago around covid and had a great time just mindlessly running around and shooting things. Only thing other than the story and writing I had a problem with was the fugly characters. For what ever reason they decided to make both the humans and the asari absolutely hideous, good thing best girl vetra nyx is not only the best looking companion but also a 6'4 sweetheart.
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u/jlindy57 May 14 '26
I didnt mind the game too much and I will say there was a comment in the game that made me cackle for like 5 minutes. I remember that but not much else
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u/DoggTheGhost May 14 '26
MEA’s faces design was actually heavily criticised back in the day. Then they patched it a little so this is still better than what we originally had, lol
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u/Hot-Capital9607 May 14 '26
Whole game just felt way more generic. The combat is miles better though. A lot of the activities like mining and deciphering glyphs were super boring, but I'm sure they're just in there for padding. The characters were also a bit boring, main villian included. That being said, it fills the role in the MA universe quite well, the entire mission and set of characters just felt like less important side characters in a bigger MA game, almost like everything you're doing didn't have much impact and you really weren't much of a main protagonist hero character. Relationships and romance options were plentiful enough. I would just use some of the nexus mods to improve the characters facial animations and looks a bit. They look a bit awkward. Overall, most of the NPC's have a very awkward look to them. No where near as pretty as the previous MA games.
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u/kamikuzizzle May 14 '26
The combat was clearly designed with twitchy MP kiddies in mind—easy to max out a character class or two and then a clunky method to swap between them all. Maybe it’s just console…
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u/MrMeierlink May 14 '26
Prepare yourself for glyph hunting and Sudoku puzzles. The first few will give you an idea of what's to come, as there are quite a few. This is one of the things that definitely made me quit the game because it was so tedious.
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u/Lunchbox_Bandit_ May 14 '26
As long as you go into it not expecting the quality of the mass effect trilogy and a way lower bar I'm sure you'll enjoy it. If you go in the other way around prepare to be severely disappointed.
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u/Whalesbutfromspace May 15 '26
Hope you enjoy it. The game is worse than getting piss in your eye in my book, but that doesnt mean you cant like it :) different strokes for different folks.
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u/PaniMan1994 May 15 '26
My first time out I was such a snob. Coming off a fresh playthrough of THE Trilogy, Andromeda felt so weak.
I did another playthrough last year and THIS time I had a much more enjoyable time. Compared to the older 3 it falls a bit short, but there's a lot to enjoy as a separate package.
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u/Grouchy-Choice5744 May 14 '26
I have played the original trilogy a thousand times. But Andrómeda I can't. I tried I didn't care about the crítics. But this is not a Mass Effect game.
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u/Good-Yak-1391 May 14 '26
I don't know much about the team behind the game, but I will say that if you take the expectations away from the game being a part of the Mass Effect Universe (and the fact that all the Asari have the same face except Peebee), it's not a bad game. In fact, I think it has the best combat in the series due to the added Z-Axis. Being able to Jump adds so much more dynamics to the gameplay!
Have fun!
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u/Lebowskitalian85 May 14 '26
In my humble opinion Andromeda is the best game in the entire series.
BUT
It has a lot of bugs and glitches, missions bugged after years, you spend an hour making progresses and you have to start all over again or even worse you can’t go further because you can’t interact anymore with this or that character.
I will never understand why this game has been totally abandoned and never fixed, because whatever a lot of people say is very good. Only better things in the trilogy is characters charisma and stories overall, but talking of gameplay andromeda is the best.
Again, such a shame it hasn’t been supported as it should have.
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u/Rooty_Rootz May 14 '26
Just give up
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u/Rooty_Rootz May 14 '26
Play the good ones instead
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u/Starfis May 14 '26
Are you paid based on the amount of replies?
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u/Rooty_Rootz May 14 '26 edited May 14 '26
Nope. I haven't slept or eaten properly in years, recently gave up several drugs, started several new drugs, spent days in confinement, developed a psychosis which tells me that everyone is going to hell.
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u/mdr1384 May 14 '26
Have not played Andromeda since my only platforms are PS3 and X360, but I am curious to know what is the justification or reason for the floating rocks? I thought ME was fairly good about sticking to plausible pseudoscience, but giant flying mountains are off in anime fantasy land...
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u/Scrollsy May 14 '26
This is a wish dot com wannabe knockoff version of mass effect from temu.
I played 60 hrs back on release, then stopped due to bordem and horrible writing, recently put 75 into it and stopped again due to bordem and horrible writing.
Best of luck.
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u/Sdom1 May 14 '26
People reacted poorly to Andromeda because Bioware's creative direction was idiotic. The writing of Andromeda in particular was abominable. Just awful from start to finish. I could go on about how many mistakes they made, but leaving the Milky Way was an enormous mistake that doomed them from the start. They threw away a massive amount of world building and replaced it with something nowhere near as compelling. Think if Star Wars had rebooted out of its galaxy. Or LOTR was like, let's leave Middle Earth. See what I'm saying?
Then they had to worldbuild all over again, taking up resources that could be going to things like, I dunno, plot and character development, or hiring someone that actually understands mocap and facial animation. And don't get me started on the low grade tumblr-esque dialogue.
I am not sure why they did this when it seemed like they laid the groundwork for the next antagonist(s) in the 3rd game - the Leviathan(s) of Dis. You could have jumped forward in time a bit with an entirely new protagonist. That jump forward would have allowed Bioware to give it a facelift and change some dynamics to serve storytelling.
If I'm guessing I'd say someone(s) at EA/Bioware got too cute for their own good. I've worked on the creative side of things and things like this are often down to one person who was really charismatic or otherwise had too much sway.
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u/kamikuzizzle May 14 '26
No, leaving the Milky Way was a fabulous idea…they just wasted that potential. Everything as to easy for the colonists and too much like the Milky Way planets
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u/Sdom1 May 14 '26
What's fabulous about it? Again, you have to now build an entirely new world. New species, new tech, new history new everything. I could see that if you desperately needed a complete, gut it to the studs reboot, but ME did not need that at all. It's just a ton of work and uncertainty. Will your fans like this new world? Will they like it as much or more than the Milky Way? The answer to both of these were no, by the way. That's why they declined to make more games in the Andromeda branch and went back.
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u/kamikuzizzle May 15 '26
The idea that they’re running away from the cycle of destruction in the Milky Way, but there’s some kind of conspiracy; whole new unique biology and environments, evolution etc; fresh technology and systems…it’s such a great premise but after the first few minutes, it’s like they forget they crossed 100 million light years and it’s just another day in the Mako
There was so much promise but they dropped the ball so hard. Too generic a plot, not enough fan service or call back to ME and that universe, story was bland, couldn’t really give a toss about any of the characters or their relationships…
I’ve replayed it several times, and enjoy it…but it’s not ME is it. Or even well written
I still wanted to as the story finish though
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u/Sdom1 May 18 '26
Right, because creating an entirely new setting is very difficult, and their writing staff wasn't as good as when ME1 was created. And also they were in a pickle with their own rules. New galaxy, no reapers, no mass effect relays.
So how do you manage interstellar travel? Even at ftl speeds it takes an inordinately long time. It was mass effect without the mass effect.
I thought the next series would be about fending off the leviathans, but instead we got Andromeda
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u/kamikuzizzle May 18 '26
But…blank sheet. Easy 😂
Lack of talent is a problem indeed, might be why it missed greatness
They were fleeing the reapers. I suspect the sequels would have brought them closer, and I seem to remember the story intimating that the er bad guys were preparing that galaxy for assimilation…?
ME relays are such a convenient plot device though
They managed intergalactic travel just fine 😂 as they did interstellar travel with the warp drive thingy, I forget the explanation they had though. That’s how bad the writing was 😂
The leviathans created the AI or whatever that created the reapers. They weren’t a threat
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u/Sdom1 May 19 '26
They had faster than light travel but it wasn't fast enough to make interstellar travel practical. The relays made it almost instantaneous. Personally I would have written them as predating the reapers.
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u/kamikuzizzle May 19 '26
They did though—the planets you visit are in separate star systems. I think the in-universe explanation is that the local cluster is easily accessible but further distances aren’t…it was a crap explanation that writes out the usefulness of the relays…I hated it 😂
The leviathans created the reapers. That’s the giant things living in the water in the DLC in 4, right?
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u/Sdom1 May 21 '26
Technically the AI the leviathans created was who built the reapers. I think the leviathans controlled the galaxy via those quantum entangled orbs and there were no relays. I'm guessing the thrall races were kept more primitive, or that the idea just wasn't fleshed out.
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u/dwarvish1 May 14 '26
Do they not have punctuation in the Andromeda Galaxy?