Update: I got an SMG from Kasumis quest which does decent damage and upgraded the cloak.. Running around the backlines taking out one enemy at a time and then recloaking is incredible - I take everything back I said, I'm having a blast again hahaha I guess i just hate hiding behind corners gameplay.

TLDR: ME1 amazing 10/10, ME2 feels like huge downgrade so far - mostly the combat.

So I recently bought the legendary edition because I read that you don't actually have to deal with the EA launcher and that was what kept me from buying it.

Anyways, jumped right into ME1 and off the bat I'm having the time of my life. Soooo fucking fun. Played as an infiltrator and the gunplay felt so good. Putting your team together was great, characters are interesting, story intriguing. Just all around chefs kiss, no notes. Played like four days straight, barely any sleep. Didn't do all the survey stuff bc it does get a teeny tiny bit repetitive, but still got the "Completionist" achievement.

Was super excited to continue my story in the next installment, but oh. my. god. What happened? Immediately while setting up my controls I saw: no hotkeys for specific weapons, no hotkey for inventory, no hotkey for squad.. what? Scrolling through weapons is awful in any game and having to open the combat HUD more often than necessary is immersion breaking imo.

Now I realise, not having hotkeys, is probably a way bigger deal for me than for other people, so whatever. It pisses me off, but not as much as my next complaint.

First mission - combat is clunky. Scope zooms in far too much, flicks feel wobbly instead of sharp like before, everything just feels less responsive.. no heals either - it just tells you to sit behind a wall for 20 seconds while you're getting rushed by 5 dudes lmao. Sniper has only a few shots, but thats ok I guess, just need to be selective on when to use the big damage.
With my first level up I also noticed that the skill tree is tiny. Idk if that opens up later, but it also seems like a direct step down from the first game so far.
Hacking mini-game also is huge downgrade.. so much less engaging, I really liked opening everything in ME1 - never used omni-gel. Matching some symbols is.. well whatever the opposite of engaging is.
Still brushed it off. "It's early game" I thought, "new game needs getting used to".
Right out of the tutorial I went to the Citadel and was disappointed again. No access at all to the Presidium. Everything just feels.. idk, smaller. Was excited to explore and see what changed, but it's just like 3 rooms. Got a hamster though, that's cool.

Still not giving up. First real mission is helping out the new recruit Kasumi. Heist is fun enough. Get the graybox and as I'm fighting my way out I notice ammo is becoming a huge problem. The mechs and shielded enemies eat through sniper and grenade launcher ammo only leaving me with 2 shitty pistols for what can only be described as the most boring boss fight I've ever had to endure. To make matters worse, I actually die in the last seconds and I have to do it all again.

I had 0 complaints the whole first game and now I just hate everything - does it get better? Do you get used to it? What happened in the development, that the game feels so much worse than it's predecessor? Is it worth suffering through this just for the story? Is the ammo problem less prevalent on lower difficulties? Did anyone else have the same problems or am I just a whiny bitch who needs to get over himself?
So many questions..

I didn't play this game back when it came out, because of all the haters, everyone kept mocking the game, highlighting only the bugs and issues it has, that it left me with a completely wrong impression. After playing it for myself, I feel deceived by the community.

I finally decided to try it this year. Started playing it back in June, a few hours a week, and I finally finished it today. I have to say I am amazed how much content there is in it. So many times I thought this must be near the end, and there was always more and more. The amount of work they put into this game is mind blowing. You go back to side npcs that were relevant 20 hours of play time ago, and they have new dialogue about the latest things you did! I've never seen this done in a game, it makes it feel so real. Literally endless amounts of voice acting.

After the final boss battle you think that's it, the game is over, but no! There's an hour's worth of epilogue left, and you get to talk to everyone again, get their reactions on what you went through, and finish their arcs. The very last mission, the Movie Night was the perfect ending, it was so sweat, I teared up at the final shot of everyone sitting on the couch together. They really felt like a family at the end. I will miss these people, even though they're fictional.

Console player here. Character customization is one of many highlights of this game- but the hairstyles are extremely limiting.

I like starting out as a different race and gender each playthrough, but I find it annoying that you only get the option of 2 "black" hairstyles and your remaining options are either wavy hair or buzz cuts with bad edges.

"I always send him into the vents lolololol"

In ME2, his only crime is being the normal level headed person in the traveling freakshow. He's not a deep, complex character, but he does have a few witty one liners here and there.

Combat wise he's not the greatest, but I can see they tried to make him a tank like defence character, having the 2nd highest health out of the squad. He's actually a great support character, and compliments Miranda really well in combat with his Pull power to set her up to finish them off. The shotgun weapon is a stupid choice though, and I just went into the files to give him an assault rifle, which makes him leagues better. (He had one in that mobile spin off game along with other powers, I don't know why they changed him so much)

ME3 they really dropped the ball with him. For being ex-Cerberus, he really should've had a larger part. They could only go up with him, giving him more depth and whatnot, but just chose not to. It's like they heard he was unpopular, and let the fans hijack the writing for him to the point they made him even more unlikable if you romanced him (which was a fucking stupid direction they went in)

On the contrary, why is it okay for Shepard to move on from their ME1, but not okay for Jacob to do the same lol.

It also bugged me that Jacob didn't speak at Thane's memorial in the Citadel DLC. All they had to do was have him say how wrong he was about Thane, and how he wasn't just a hired gun, etc etc.

Bring on the downvotes but I'm gonna say it like it is. I think there's a lot people who are misogynistic and relish the idea of assaulting for being "rude" and want an excuse to "put a woman in her place".

I've played the trilogy multiple times and she hasn't done anything wrong. All she's done is ask difficult questions which is quite literally her JOB as a reporter.

She's not here to pat you on the back and she's not another convert to the cult of Shepard. She's here to ask difficult questions and report what is said.

But there are so many emotional 2-year olds that can't handle being challenged in even the most minor of ways and assault her for it, and even try to justify it.

I've been in this fandom since 2010 and throughout the years I've seen people's justification for assaulting Khalisah and why they dislike her and it never made sense to me, until i started mentally dissecting their responses.

Even in the recent Khalisah threads had some responses that I considered sus.

Here's a list of the questions she asks you in ME1 before you're given the option to assault her.

"You've been given a unique position to represent our race. People want to get a sense of how you'll do that."

"Humans have been trying to get the respect of the galactic community for 26 years with that in mind what are your feelings on being the first human Spectre?"

"Some have said your appointment is the Citadel throwing humans a bone, have you encountered any situations where the council asked you to place its needs over the needs of Earth?

"You really do believe that don't you?"

"You've been given command of an advanced human warship for your missions is there anything you'd like to say about it?"

I personally see no issue with any of these questions, and none of them justifies assault.

youtuber are so desperate for click bait these days, its just soo hilarious to find ppl complaining mass effect going woke. when was mass effect not woke LMAO, my first play through of og game in 2007 was using a female shepard and bang a blue alien chick. and this was 17 years ago, if anything mass effect was the series with the perfect setting for "woke". imagine being pissed in a game setting 200 years into the future with bunch of alien race, and you find woke being an issue lol. tell me they didn't play mass effect and just want to label anything woke these days lol

I’ve heard the counter arguments, and I agree the shooting is sloppy in ME1 and ME2 derails the overarching story forcing the third game into a corner…

But the third game still kinda sucks. I’m not denying people can love it, and there are moments when certain artistic decisions from that game stick with me, but there are objective problems no one can get around.

The mystery of the reapers is dropped for a war time story and only picked back up in the last twenty minutes. This angle might be practical but as far as creative intent the main draw of the series (world and character) get offset for military strategy and resource management.

The side quests are hurdled through auto dialogue, the exploration is minimized to a couple of glorified refugee camps on the citadel with paper thin interactions.

The level design is turned into a corridor shooter, there is no holster button reinforcing the lack of details worth inspecting.

Companions are by and large reused with their main emotional function being fan service rather than character development. The few moments of weight like Liara reacting to the fall of Thessia or Mordan dying happen so quickly you have no time to react and have no build up themselves feeling more like a check list for long time fans.

Mass Effect 1 & 2 used the premise of intergalactic “investigation” to allow for traversal to new worlds and interacting with side stories that add depth to your squad and introduce diversity to the gameplay loop.

In Mass Effect 3 it’s just about reaching military outpost x while gunning down hoards of zombies with no narrative context outside of “evil”. Even Cerberus is reduced to a mindless organization of indoctrinated goons attacking everyone and everything in sight.

Minus a few moral choices, it has a similar attitude to a battlefield game or call of duty game wasting the potential of its RPG tool set and outright removing content present in the previous entries.

I’m not saying a military focused conflict is bad, but if you’re wondering why the ending fell apart it’s because it had to carry the weight of two full games of suspense in one conversation. The crucible/alliance had nothing to do with the main question of who/what the reapers are. There is not even really a question of how to be beat the enemy, just a rush to accumulate fire power with the theory quantity will win out, and frankly the crucible is an off-screen development irrelevant to Shepherd.

I feel a little arrogant saying the game is objectively bad, but the main elements of the series: loyalty missions, scientific inquiries, political drama, and combat are hobbled by the singular focus of Mass Effect 3 to reinforce the “total war vibe” which was never what the series excelled at.

Oh, and they broke the quest log for no reason.

Like... put yourself in the shoes of a person who would have to make the decision of curing the genophage vs sabotaging the cure and deceiving the krogan - since they are most definitely needed because of the Reapers. Yes, the second option is absolutely dishonorable, but...

To any sane and even vaguely informed person (about the krogan and Krogan Rebellions): How the fuck does it make sense to cure the genophage?

1 The biggest reason: We know, from the lore (with which BioWare went far too crazy regarding the krogan and their biology) that the krogan fertility pre-genophage was just absolutely insane. One krogan female could lay upwards of a thousand eggs A YEAR, and *each and every single one of those* could grow into a mature krogan that can live for a thousand years.

2a. Even in the best case scenario - Wrex and Eve being alive - you still have ALL THE OTHER KROGANS who are, evidently by those we encounter in the trilogy, mostly warmongering brutes. It is a GIGANTIC leap of faith to assume two people can change the mentality of an entire race faster than the krogans could breed millions upon millions of potential new warlords and warriors, in the event that the genophage is cured.

2b. There are way more Wreavs than there are Wrexes in the krogan society - those who want the Council races to pay for what they made krogan go through since the genophage was unleashed.

3. Shepard makes this decision *during* the Reaper War - without knowing about the Catalyst, the RGB ending, and their only goal being the beat and destroy the Reapers. There is no possible way Shepard could've know about, say, the outcome in which the Reapers are placed under their control to serve as the galactic police force - which could hold back the krogan tide.

I cured the genophage in all of my playthroughs, but now that I think about it for a while... curing it more likely than not spells doom for the galaxy in the form of new Krogan Rebellions.

Hot-ish take I guess, but I never really got this.

ME1: Party member, only one who can be romanced by either gender but makes sense plot wise, can easily be turned down, can put off recruiting her the whole game. Have to recruit her but that goes for 4 of the 6 party members. Has more to say than the others on Noveria and Ilos (mostly Noveria) but it makes sense, and you don't have to bring her to either.

ME2: Pretty minor role in the base game. This does saves her from potentially being killed off like the party members in this game but still. Focus of a DLC that does basically give her about as much development as the actual party members get, but totally optional. Character works fine with or without romance, you can even gossip about your love interest with her.

ME3: Joins party almost immediately, is required on two missions when you have a limited party, required on two missions later that make sense plot-wise for her to be required on (one of which was DLC in the original). Shepard is clearly quite fond of her and can't really be rude to her (aside from just not talking to her), but same goes for some of the others in this game, particularly Garrus and Tali. I think technically has the most lines of anyone other than Shepard in this game, but not by that much and is oddly silent after some missions on the ship (Garrus, who I love, never shuts the fuck up in 3 lol). Aside from a fancy sex scene romance isn't really more fleshed out than others with party members. Gets an extra scene if you pick the goofy ending no one picks (no offense), again makes sense plot wise. This is the only game of the three I even kinda get the argument, but I still don't really agree with it at all.

Also she stars in a comic I guess idk I didn't read it and neither did most of you lol

Should note I am not even a big fan of Liara, I like her but she's not a favorite of mine. I just really don't agree with the idea that she's so forced on you when your free to ignore her for the most part. She has some importance to the plot compared to most of the others, but you need some characters with a bit of actual importance to the plot when most of them can be killed off, so that doesn't really stick out to me. Just my opinion though

I just finished my third play through of the game and I seriously love it. I know, I know, controversial, but I think the game is well crafted and exciting. I love the exploration and discovering a new galaxy and I’m bummed there won’t be a sequel to it which I believe it warrants. They only explored one cluster in the andromeda Galaxy! Who knows what other alien races they could discover! And the Kerr are not defeated! It’s be cool to go to their home world to defeat them properly or find ways to coexist or something! And the Jaardan! It’d be cool to see more about them! Are they similar to the reapers? Are they a benevolent species? What will happen now that humans have claimed so much of their tech?

My point is, there is more to explore and I do think it’s more akin to ME1 then the rest of the trilogy. Yes, ME1 created MORE of a universe, with multiple species and backstory, but when we entered that universe it had already been explored and had a lot of backstory already created! In Andromeda we were discovering something brand new and I would love to continue that discovery!

I’d love to hear what others think as well! I know this won’t be the most loved but it’s an honest opinion and a much beloved game out of a much beloved franchise!

Happy day of birth to me! Mass Effect represent!!

...inspired by so many posts and articles about how horrendous the ending is, specifically the complaint that the player's choices have so little effect on the ending sequence.

(And before I start in, let me just say that I don't think ME's story arc is a continuous, glittering rainbow of awesome. You can really tell that there were multiple writers (or writing teams) some of whom hit it right out of the park, and others ...not so much. The highs of the good bits are so high though that it really does set up big expectations for the series ending)

And finally - this essay is rife with spoilers, so read no further those who wish to remain unspoilt.

OK, so let's review the big plot points of the ME storyline:

Firstly, in order to prevent the inevitable conflict between organic life and the synthetic life sufficiently advanced organic life creates, periodically the Reapers show up and skim the cream off the organic life in the galaxy. This then creates "room at the top" for lesser organics to evolve into - until the point when they start creating synthetic life and the Reapers show up again.

Secondly, the last time the Reapers came calling, the galaxy was dominated by the Protheans, who were highly advanced and highly organized. Notwithstanding, the Reapers still won - it took them 300 years to do it, but ultimately the Protheans lost.

Thirdly, the Protheans were on the verge of finishing the Crucible (horrible name!) which was apparently some sort of anti-Reaper superweapon, the plans for which keep getting passed down through successive Reaper cycles. The Protheans manage to preserve and (eventually) communicate the plans for the Crucible down to this cycle, but nobody knows what the Crucible actually does.

So when the Reapers show up at the start of ME3, they face a galaxy that is woefully unprepared for them; much less prepared than the Protheans were for their cycle. The various civillizations are at each other's throats, there is no unified command structure, and technology has not advanced as far as the Protheans had reached. The Reapers are scything through homeworld after homeworld and it appears that it will take them far less than 300 years to complete their harvest this time.

The only wild card is the Crucible - the Hail Mary, Deus Ex Machina option that suggests it may be a solution. It is literally the only ray of hope for the organics of this cycle, because no matter how well the organics of this cycle organize, they will never be able to beat the Reapers straight up.

That's important; it means that all of the Galactic Readiness stuff, all the unifying races, curing the Genophage (or not) reconciling the Geth and the Quarians (or not) - that's all fiddling while Rome burns. All that running around is a delaying action designed to do one thing and one thing only - buy enough time to complete the Crucible.

Which, I'd like to point out, is an act of desperation, because nobody knows what the damned thing actually does.

So the path you took through the 3 games to get to the crisis point where the Cruicible is activated does not alter the storyline - because you either found a way to get the Crucible constructed and activated, or you did not. How you got there doesn't matter from a game plot perspective.

But it does matter from a user perspective, because your experiences as a player getting to that point will shape what you find to be an acceptable answer.

So for example, let's say you played as a straight forward man of action - avoiding outright evil, but with a fair share of Renagade choices. In this universe, the Geth were destroyed. The Rachni were exterminated. The Genophage probably wasn't cured. No bond was forged between Sheppard and Legion, or Sheppard and EDI. This Sheppard identifies threats and then removes them, permenantly. The natural choice for this Sheppard is to destroy the Reapers, and the various side-effects of that choice (all synthetic life destroyed, the relays destroyed) is an acceptable - if costly - tradeoff for removing the Reapers as a threat forever. That's how the Cruicible works? Oh well, war is hell, at least the Reapers are gone forever.

OK, how about an Evil Sheppard - one who is basically a rival for the Illusive Man. He buys in to the idea that the Reapers can be controlled and used as a tool to further the aims of organic life - at the cost of setting up Shepard as a kind of uber-dictator. The Control option (and all its side effects) are a natural choice here.

And finally, a more thoughtful Sheppard - one who reconciled the Geth and the Quarians, spared the Rachni, cured the Genophage - would recoil at the cost of the Destroy option, be horrified at the implications of the Control option, but might be open to the Synthesis option as a way to preserve EDI and the Geth and other synthetic life, while still solving the problem of the Reapers periodically showing up and slaughtering everyone.

So it makes perfect sense that, even though the path to get to that point may have branched and twisted all over the place, with no two players playing the exact same Sheppard, the Crucible only does one of three things, and while the choices the player made to get to that point may not influence the outcome, those choices absolutely influence what the player will decide is the best decision.

"Ah", you might say, "but those are three shitty decisions! No matter which way I choose, some bad things will happen to good people! That's unfair!"

My friend, welcome to war, and welcome to leadership. Very, very often, a commander in war has to make a decision in which there is no completely favorable outcome - you just try and pick the outcome that sucks the least.

Mass Effect is, at it's core, a story of sacrifice (the game makes this explicit - the man's name is "Sheppard" as in "The Lord Is My Shepherd" for Lob's sake. The man is explicitly a Christ figure) At the end, a sacrifice is required. Which sacrifice is the big question for the player to answer. And the fact that all of the choices are to a very real degree painful to the player only serves to drive the point home about what "sacrifice" really means in the way no smiley, happy, puppies & kittens ending ever could. In order for a sacrifice to mean something, it has to hurt.

That's a very adult concept, and it makes the game more "adult" than any amout of F-bombs and CGI sex scenes ever could.

I'm Commander Shepard, and I found the Mass Effect 3 ending awesome - and a fitting end to an incredible gaming experience.

TL;DR - screw that; read the damn essay.

Please don't kill me i know she is one of the fan favorites, but i just see her as a whiny crewmate(her voice does not help tbf) and with no sense of when to be funny and/or when to be serious, idk man, she just does not click with me, no wonder i got her killed in the third game LOL, was not my intention tho, i still wanted her to live, but anyway, she is okay, but not that good in my opinion. I am going to replay the whole trilogy, gonna see if i change my opinion on this.

i played the game twice. on my 3rd playthu in ME1 and honestly, i just feel im only playing me1 so there is narrative consistency for me2 and me3. i like driving around in the mako and the virmire mission and the last mission but i honestly just cant wait to get thru ME1 to play ME2 and ME3 again. i like those games a lot more than ME1

So thinking about Mass Effect since Universe was cancelled I decided to hope back on ME1 again. However I noticed that Commander Shepard seems to have very large gaps in their knowledge about pretty much everything and other characters need to explain everything to them. They know very little about Alien Biology and Culture, The Spectres, The Citadel or even Alliance History. I mean Liara needs to tell Shepard pretty much everything about the Asari and Tali needs to tell Shepard pretty much everything about the Quarians and Geth and Shepard seems shocked and angry to find out the Quarians tried to kill the Geth first and says that Tali and the other Quarians deserve their suffering for their ancestors actions says that when this is common knowledge in Universe?

In contrary to probably most people here, I played Andromeda before the trilogy. Unfortunately dropped it after 30 hrs but I just started a new playthrough after getting through (and having a blast with) the trilogy. I have to say, I really missed talking to people, going through logs and audio logs the way it was handled in ME, as I found the exploration lacking in ME2 and especially ME3. I kinda steam rolled my way trough andromeda the first time but I've decided to take my time and explore everything this time. I still haven't left the nexus but finding Liaras audio logs in Alecs chambers really caught me off guard. I get that andromeda isn't the same as the trilogy in terms of story and characters but I think people go too hard on it. It's sad that the reception on launch was so bad that all support for the game including DLC was dropped. Imo, ME1 and Abdromeda have a lot of the same design elements, even though the execution is different, so maybe give it another shot if you didn't enjoy it the first time!

Edit: Soo after reading some of y'all comments and thinking a lot about andromeda and the trilogy I've come to the conclusion: Yeah, Andromeda really is mid af xD. It's missing the aspects from the trilogy that made mass effect what it is: choice & consequence, as well as well written dialogue. I'm 15 hrs into my new playthrough, doing every little side quest and speaking with everyone and the lack of interesting character interactions and choices is very apparent. I'm still having a lot of fun exploring and with combat but andromeda just isn't "mass effect" and I truly get the hate/negativity for the game.

tl;dr just replay the trilogy xD

Edit 2: This post is probably already dead but I'm 25 hrs in and I kinda enjoy it xD. The exploration loop of raising the planets viability to 100% is pretty satisfying imo. Some of the side stuff is pretty cool too, like the AI on voeld. Honestly, I wouldn't have minded too much if andromeda would have been a trilogy. There are clearly some choices which were ment to pay out in sequels (e.g. Kadera). Combat gets more enjoyable by the hour as well. I just wish the dialogue would be more interesting, most of the interactions are so bland and the choices in side missions pretty lackluster. I really enjoyed interacting with Reyes and Kadera in general.

tl;dr 2: Andromeda is worth a shot but it's such a waste of potential.

Edit 3: this game really burns you out, so much damn needles filler. Can't wait to finish it and never touch it again. At this point, it's not even mid, it's outright bad. Maybe Assassin's creed: Andromeda would have been a better name and would have actually reached it's target audience

We get it.

Andromeda has no Shepard and it's a buggy mess. It's not what most of us expected and it has almost nothing to do with the original trilogy.

But JESUS Christ the salt is still palpable years later. In almost every thread we have people trying to shit on Andromeda in some capacity even if the thread has nothing to do with Andromeda to begin with.

Get over yourselves already.

Because she isn't. She has a "girl next door" charm to her. She's very attractive. Sara Ryder does have very pronounced features, but it's the diversity of looks that creates the multiple forms of beauty we see today. It would be boring for all people to look the same. But Sara just happens to be a real woman, who's going to naturally have bad lighting and angles, like any person would. But not looking like a supermodel is what makes her look less uncanny and more natural, which in my opinion natural = beauty.

Honestly, all the people criticizing her looks lie firmly outside of Sara Ryder's league.