so u broke your 75% rule and bought this disappointment of the year instead of brodating.. why?
I test-drove the PC Demo last month and thought it was in good shape. The animation issues & performance issues are gone; it's been around 6 months, you know. They've been patching a lot of that out.
The game runs great, looks great, and the action in the open-world especially & in main quests are awesome. This is easily the best action in a ME game period. Despite losing the BW Strategic Pause & ability to combo attacks w/ your team (which sucks, BTW) - everything else about the combat here is superb for an ME game. It's fast; frantic; kinetic, you can't always sit in cover; you're constantly moving (there's the jet-pack movement where you can zip in different directions & the dodge move); and lots of fun. I also like the open-class style system here, as well.
The open-world stuff is very similar to DA:I in its approach, where the side stuff here in ME:A seems more in line with what you're doing as Pathfinder - i.e. exploring worlds, colonizing worlds, grabbing resources in the world, etc etc.
My only complaint: ME:A's story & character stuff just ain't spectacular and of the BioWare Edmonton quality; that stuff lacks depth & personality here, for the most part. Not many game companies can do the story & character depth thing in the same league as BioWare Edmonton, CD Projekt, and Obsidian - so, it ain't the end of the world. I've played plenty of action games where the story & character stuff really ain't anything special - i.e. think say the underrated & under-appreciated Dambuster's Homefront: The Revolution or say plenty of RPG's where the story & character stuff ain't spectacular either, such as Elder Scrolls game since Morrowind & any Fallout game since FO3 from Bethesda. I think ME:A falls more in line w/ Bethesda's stuff here (w/ the open-world exploration & not so great story + character stuff), TBH.
ME:A might not have the best story & character stuff in a ME game by far - but I'll be damned, gameplay-wise and all, I'm having a blast so far w/ this one.
EDIT:
I can see people who dropped $60 MSRP upon release might be pissed that ME:A don't have the BioWare Edmonton qualities (of storytelling, writing, narrative, personality, etc) & w/ all the technical issues it had out-the-box (i.e. performance issues & the animation issues). But, that's why I don't normally buy stuff upon release, bc issues out-the-box for a brand new game in an Alpha state is ridiculous. So, why buy then? Wait a bit, let some issues get fixed, test a demo (if there is one), and drop some $ on it in a sale. At $20, I've already got 19 hours w/ this and am quite enjoying this one.
Dragon Age 2 went through similar issues as ME:A - at $60 MSRP, I could see people pissed b.c of how it was originally release. But when I dropped $30 on it a few months after release, a lot of performance issues & whatnot were already stomped out. I got at least 60 hours out of that one easy. I think DA2's story & character stuff (as one would expect from BioWare Edmonton) were actually way more interesting than what ME:A (from BioWare Montreal) has going on here though. Though, DA2's action-y combat lost a lot of the important strategy elements from DA:O (especially the overhead tac-cam) & is just nowhere as great as DAO's strategic combat. DA2's world was WAY more closed-off (i.e. it's in Kirkwall, one city for most of it) and way too many recycled environments really hurt that game - so that stuff was nowhere as interesting as what ME:A is doing both game-play wise & world-wise.
I think both DA2 and ME:A are flawed gems in some ways, despite their litany of issues - but they just can't compare to the other masterpieces in the franchise (i.e. ME1-3 and both DAO & DA:I), so people are just going to knock it at every turn they can get.
. Input lag x10. They even say you will have lag if you use any 3rd party programs...even discord overlay. 
