There are some very impressive aspects of Mass Effect, and some things that could have been done better. I'm playing through the second time now.
First off, dialogue, great voice acting, and a decent choice of dialogue options. Like previously stated, it's all prety obvious, good, evil, neutral, more in depth, or to the point, charm or intimidate, not necessarily a bad thing but it could've had a bit more potential. Aside from what kind of choices you have, characters have a lot to say, and interaction in dialogue is very genuine.
Graphics, it's Unreal Engine 3, so it looks good, especially if you can afford to apply some antialiasing. Character models look good human or alien, and faces are realistic, good lighting effects etc... The levels are very atmospheric. I recommend you turn "film grain" off in the options.
Audio, pretty good audio, from a dialogue point of view it's superb, background music and and sound effects are great but not amazing, it is noticabley better during cutscenes, where it has the quality of watching a movie. Overall the audio package does not leave you wanting.
Gameplay, the game has a good balance between dialogue and story progression and action sequences and having to battle through lots of enemies. Squad commands work decently, but I did find it hard to get my squadmates to fight from cover sometimes, otherwise they are pretty useful. The different weapons all have their benefits and downsides so I found myself choosing depending on the situation. You will collect a lot of items in this game, most of which you will sell or turn into what is called "Omni-Gel", there is a good amount of weapons mods, armor mods as well as different weapons and armor. At first it all seemed a little overwhelming collecting so much of it and knowing what to use, but after messing with it a bit you find what suits you and you throw away the rest basically. Story related missions are usually a bit more interesting, the side missions weren't too exciting, but you do get to check out more planets and do a lot of driving, which is pretty cool. The Mako (the APC you get to drive around) did tend to oversteer pretty badly, but I think they fixed that with the patch, because now it seems easier to steer. On a frustrating note, the Mako's guns can only fire at targets level with it or above it, making fighting targets with it from higher ground impossible, which is very unfortunate, and sometimes it makes it hard to hit targets in front of you. It's a bit of a hassle, but it doesn't impair your ability to progress with the mission.
Universe, there is a lot of detail in the universe, to the aliens and the backround of their species, to the history between them, it's astonishing how much is presented in game and how much more is presented in the "Codex", an encylopedia where you can get more in depth information. This makes it all the more convincing experience. The story and production value of this game are top notch, and playing through was a rewarding experience and I recommend it, even if you just play through the story.
Bugs/Stability/Performance, under XP home with an E6700 2GB RAM and a Radeon X1900XT I maxed the game at 1680x1050 with no AA and 16x AF. There was a bug with the depth of field effect on my card, in the forum it only seemed to be effecting the X1k series of cards and lower. I had to turn it off by editing the config file (You also have to edit them to enable 16x AF by the way). There was a bit of sound clipping on my XP setup using an HT Omega Claro plus+ soundcard, not sure if it was just my card or the game. Other than that on my first play through it only crashed twice on me saying "Mass Effect has stopped respoding", so for me it was very playable experience.
On my new Vista 64-bit comp, Q9300, 4GB DDR3 RAM, and 2 HD 4870s in Crossfire, the game is working flawlessly. Maxed out with 8x AA and 16x AF at 1920x1200, absolutely no audio clipping (On an HT Omega Claro plus+ as well), and depth of field working (and the game looks great with it on). The only graphics setting I turned off was "Film Grain", which is more a preference than something that makes it look better. Also on my new computer I've installed the new Patch and downloadable Expansion Pack, Bring Down the Sky, perhaps that helped the stability some. The only crashes I've experienced were with my ATI drivers, HD 4870 Crossfire is fairly buggy still, not a flaw in the game though.
As for DRM, it requires that your liscense be validated over the internet when you launch the game for the first time. After that you no longer have to validate your liscense. The game can be played on without the disk in the drive. You are allowed installs on 3 unique validated machines. I'm not sure if uninstalling on one machine reimburses you for one more validation. If you need to go over the limit (system crashes etc...) you have to contact EA support to get them to credit your liscence key more validations on an individual basis.
This will eventually be removed though, this is what happened to Bioshock, it was in place while the game was stil fresh and just pretty recently they took it off.
EDIT: Thanks for reading if you read all of it, I know it's a lot, but I don't like to leave anything out, hope it helps you in your decision.
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