Mass Effect Review

Mass Effect is a series, I am rather mixed on back when I originally played it. I found ME1 to have the best story in the series and 3 to have the best gameplay. 

For now, I will be talking about the first game which is the one I recently replayed through the Legendary Collection. 

I'll talk about the story first and overall, it mostly holds up pretty well but I have some major issues that prevent me from calling it great. 

What the story does well is how well it contextualizes the narrative of humanity needing to prove itself and how much it is the underdog in the universe of this particular game. The Council and many of the aliens you will meet are very distrustful of humans, the main villain Saren also hates them which does a further good job at showing how much humanity and the player character, Shepard will have to go through to prove to your and by extension the human race's worth to the galaxy. 

The story also does a good job at handling the themes of first contact and how this is interconnected with humanity needing to prove itself to the other alien races. Since Shepard is a human as well as the first offical human to join the Council, this gives a good and solid reason for them to be distrustful about almsot everything Shepard does throughout the game. The aliens don't trust humanity and now Shepard who happens to be the very race the latter distrusts now holds the key to warning them about an oncoming threat. It's so well contextualized within the narrative that I commend Bioware's writers for making it very belivable. 

More praise to the story is that Saren and by extension the first few hours and the last few hours of the game have very engaging writing. Saren while a good villain that could've been great is at his best in the first and last few hours of the game. How Saren was once a respected member of the Council and Shepard is apart of the race the Council does not like makes the former turning on the latter very dramatic and belivable plus the former kills a respected Council member at the start of the game and then later frames Shepard for it only helps makes him for the player and by extension Shepard dislikes, how Saren plays dumb on everything upon uniting a bunch of different people of different races together and is the reason why Shepard becomes a Spectre only does a further good job at making Saren an enjoyable villain. 

Later on in the Virmire mission it is revealed that he wasn't mind controlled and he chooses to be controlled by the Reapers by his own accord, and wants humanity to work alongside the Reapers even helps gives a layer of grey to the story as well helps in some ways to make Shepard by extension the player respect Saren in some ways. Sovereign also shows up showing Virmire also helping to solidify Virmire as the best mission in the game, the theme that plays during the Mako ride only sells it more since it's one of if not the best track in the game. 

On a side note, the ME1 soundtrack is some amazing stuff, I like how it's a synth score before those got very overused in modern media and the whole 80s sci homages with it's score and even some it's level asthetics like IIos and Eden Prime makes Mass Effect not only visually distinct compared to the sequels but it was an 80s sci fi homage before those started to also become very overdone. 

I am talking about Saren a lot but to me a story that is driven by fighting and action needs a good villain in order to be engaging and Saren tends to deliver but unforunately this leads to my first problem regarding the story. 

The middle half of the game once Shepard gets the Normandy and his crew is some of the weakest writing. This is in large part because the game does the video game habbit of the story being a wild goose chase. 

While the writing isn't "bad" in these parts, it never reaches the heights of the early and last few hours. Therum is fine since it's basically recruiting Liara, Noveria can be kind of dull since it's chasing after Matriach Benezia who no shows for 90% of the mission, the early parts of the Noveria mission is okay but once you get to the research facitily and enter the Rachni sub plot the mission loses steam when it comes to story pretty hard since its about an alien bug race and how they are a threat and Benezia wants to control them and becomes less about stopping Benezia and more about containing the Rachni threat but by the time I get the pass to the docking bay, I just want to stop Benezia and nothing else. 

The Rachni don't even show up at the end of the game to help Shepard and the Citadel against Sovereign if you choose to save them making their inclusion in the story even more pointless. Matriach Benezia only has a few scenes in the whole mission and a boss fight and thats it making it hard to get attached to downfall and the only thing really standing out about her is being Liara's mother. 

What also doesn't help is that there is never a scene cutting away where Saren is shocked by the news of Benezia's death, Liara's failed assassination, or the botched operation on Feros not even a Cobra Commander style temper trantrum, the latter of which while cheesy could've at given Saren more screen time and much needed character in the middle portion of the game. 

Feros is borderline disconnected from the main plot and could be cut away entirely as nothing more as one Saren's botched operations like I mentioned earlier and it would still amount to the same level of importance to the overarching plot. 

This is what I mean by the middle portions of the game being weak. 

The characters and by extension interactions are a highlight of Mass Effect, my favorites include Ashley, Garrus and Wrex. Liara and Tali are solid too. All of the character in ME1 are well acted and directed as well as having good character interactions with each other. 

This gets to my next big issue on the story, while the characters are good, if you just do main story missions and go for the main plot, it is hard to get attached to all of them and the only ones you will get attached to are the ones you use in your party since they serve a gameplay purpose so for me, Garrus and Wrex were the best characters. What also doesn't help is that since the only villains in the game that are connected to your party members is Liara with Matriach Benezia and Garrus with Saren. Wrex gets some development that gets pushed aside if you convince Wrex to join you after the Genophage twist. 

As a result, most of the characters in the story aren't given much to do in the main story, this could be in some ways be why Mass Effect 2 is considered the best since every character has something to do even if I have many issues with that game and consider the plot of ME2 to be much weaker to this entry. 

So as a result, if you want to get the most of the characters in ME1, you would have to replay the game multiple times but that will only lead to having different in game dialogue and character interactions. 

A possible fix for this is to have the skits system in the Tales series since all the characters would be interacting, they are short and only require a button press to listen to. It can help make it easier to be attached to the cast since they interact with each other more making them easier to grow some bond to between them despite given very little to do. 

Com chatter with the rest of the pparty during gameplay could also potentially help. 

One final thing I want to talk about story is that Shepard while contextualized and at his best in this game with him slowly earning his Spectre status, his actual character of him being a player avatar can be pretty dull, I am not a big fan of choosing my responses in games and I never had any issue with the dialogue options that other people had since I played Shepard like a nice guy but Renegade options seem to be borderline comical and seem to only be chosen for comedic effect, I get the idea of playing Shepard like a ruthless anti hero but when you choose to treat everyone around you like garbage, it makes me wonder why the Council, Captain Anderson, and the rest of the Normandy crew would ever want to follow someone like Shepard. Shepard to every one of allies might as well be an abusive film director from their point of view. 

Enough story, now gameplay and to surprisingly despite the ME series not being known for it's gameplay, it's shockingly decent here. I am not sure how much of this is improvements from the Legendary Edition since it's been years since I played ME1 on PS3 but from my experience with the gameplay of this version is that it's solid, if nothing outstanding. 

First and big positive to the gameplay is that guns sound loud and powerful, and this is a very good thing since shooting is one big aspect of gameplay and you will be killing many enemies throughout the game so the fact that the game nailed this aspect is a very good thing. The sniper rifle in particular sounds powerful and beastly. I am surprised Bioware even went out their way to do this since they could've chosen guns to sound weak and wimpy since the game is going to be played for the story but they didn't which I commend them for. 

I played as the solider class and I primarily used shield boost, and the weapon powerup attacks like assassination for sniper and overkill for assault rifle. To the game's credit moment to moment combat felt stimulating enough that I was never bored while engaging with the shootouts which is great since I don't play RPGs very often primarily because they are not a gameplay driven genre. 

That doesn't completely exempt ME's gameplay from issues, for one the cover system is very awkward and cumbersome to use and you will need to duck behind cover and fire shots from concealed positions to actively survive and kill enemies, plus while this combat is at the very least the bare minimum for okay combat since ME is not a pure shooter like say the first Gears of War game is, it's still not super outstanding when divorced from the fact that this is gameplay in a story driven RPG. 

Enemies can also be pretty one note, the AI while servicable does have a habbit of standing in place a lot of the time, the enemy encounters often consits of humaniod enemies with guns, beefer bigger enemeis and zombies with not much breaking it up. The Krogan later in the game are an interesting edition since they can cast immunity and can't be damaged for a short period of time but they come late to the game and the game's shootouts while serviceable is nothing outstanding which is fine since I was expecting the shooting to be a complete chore to begin with. 

Then there is the Mako and I am not sure how much this is the Legendary version improving it but I enjoyed these sections, I found the Mako's controls to be easy enough to control and these sections never lasted overly long to the point where I wished they would hurry up and end, they do a good job at breaking up the cover shootouts and lots of talking too. It's not great but like much of Mass Effect's gameplay, it gets the job done. 

One issue with the game and it could've been a big one if it weren't for me discovering the Unity ability are your party members and at best they are basically just meat shields. They are there to distract enemies while you line up shots and nothing more. I can see why I would've been initally lukewarm on the combat as a whole since your allies are just a distraction who get defeated pretty quickly when the enemy forces get overwhelming but with the Unity ability I was able to tolerate it even if I did find extremely cumbersome that your party AI can be pretty inept at times. 

Overall, Mass Effect tells a solid story that mainly shines in the first and last few hours of the game, it's good a story that is just a couple steps away from geniunely great especially if the middle portions were better written. The gameplay while not great is servieable and accomplishes the bare minimum to make the moment to moment gameplay inbetween experiencing the story not a complete chore. I have my issues with Mass Effect as a franchise but this first outing especially with the Legendary version is generally a good time.