In my quest to tackle my backlog, I’ve finally hit the Mass Effect series. It’s been on my list for a long, long time. I’ve tried to get into it several times, but each time I ended up bouncing off. With the Legendary Edition out, it’s in the best state it has even been. So it seems like a great point to start.

Overall thoughts: The latter half of the game was way, way better than the start. Very enjoyable by the end. Glad I stuck with it past the parts that deterred me previously.

Story#↑

I like what the story was cooking, and what it is setting up for the other games. There were a couple things I’d consider possible plot holes mostly considering evidence and trust. Felt like pretty much anything considered evidence was extremely flimsy, and trust was given before I earned it and then denied after I earned it. Inconsistent but it didn’t detract from the overall plot tooo much. Every time the plot “opened up” with a big reveal was very nicely handled. Love, love, loved all the lore dumps at various points. I loved how eldritch horror the Reapers felt. I loved the pressure of the missions always being a race to catch up to Saren

Gameplay#↑

Combat and Mako sections were… okay. I think I’m right down the middle on this. I didn’t dislike the cover shooter aspects, and I can forgive weak gunplay and poor AI quality due to the age of the game. Was kinda annoyed by the ability system and tactical mode (or whatever it’s called). Not only were abilities very inconsistent to aim, they had pretty long cooldowns even when maxed out. I didn’t pick Adept to hit 1-2 ability buttons per minute and spam only pistols the rest of the time. Grenades also sucked ass. AI would also occasionally decide to make choices that had no counterplay at all, and I’d just die without a chance to defend myself at all. Mako was just kinda boring, but at least not negative. That said, both combat and Mako elements were not too annoying. They were carried hard by their environments, which were very cool and definitely made up for it.

Music#↑

Great. No notes.

Frustrations With the Dialogue System#↑

Jeez. I’m struggling to think of a dialogue system I disliked more than this. The morality system is godawful and legitimately some of the worst narrative design I think I’ve ever seen. Sorry, if you want to express any of these character traits regularly:

• pragmatic
• intimidating
• hotblooded
• cocky
• unwilling to take shit

You’ve first gotta be massively racist 17 times and commit 5 war crimes (hyperbole, of course, but that’s what it felt like).

Even weirder, it’s very inconsistent. Sometimes the pragmatic option was the Paragon choice, even though it generally felt like it should have been the Renegade option. It was like they couldn’t come up with a good Paragon option for a situation, just yoinked Renegade’s shit, and then made Renegade the dumbest-wall-of-bricks, comically-evil-for-no-reason option to compensate and make it the “less good” option.

It’s wild to me that you could literally rip the Paragon/Renegade system out of the game entirely, and not only would nothing of value be lost–the game would massively improve for it. It’s exclusively a hindrance to the game with not a single upside I could find. It’s so close to being one of my favorite RPGs ever from the choices you could make, but that one system locks otherwise near-perfection away. I think that’s why I find it so frustrating. It legitimately may be my single most hated mechanic in any game I’ve played.

Rating#↑

All that complaining aside, I still really enjoyed the game, mostly thanks to the worldbuilding, art style, music, and story. I generally don’t like lasers-and-shields scifi, so it was fighting an uphill battle from the start, but it managed to absolutely win me over regardless. It’s a testament to how cool this story is that it managed to really get me hooked even through all the things I disliked about the game it was wrapped in.

Overall 8/10, very good. Excited to check out the later games in the series. Gonna start right away!