A unique & beautiful game that will keep you thoroughly absorbed until the end.
The story for Mass Effect is fairly straight forward but still very absorbing. I'm not going to go into it here to avoid spoilers but from start to finish the entire experience is a joy. As with other Bioware RPG's you don't always have to be purely a good guy. In Mass Effect, even though you can't be evil so to say, you can earn what are called Renegade points. You earn these by being ruthless, unsympathetic & showing disrespect for your peers. On the other side of the coin you can be caring, understanding & go out your way to help all for Paragon points. You can do both if you wish as the more points you acrue the more dialogue options become available. If you play purely renegade then only red dialogue options will be available for the most part when your given choices. For me playing as renegade is much more fun than paragon.
Graphically ME is quite a pretty looking game though not the best use of the U3 engine. Facial animations however are some of the most impressive ever seen in a game. The planets you can land on with the Mako vehicle also look very impressive but some of the levels i found to be a bit bland with too many empty corridor.
Another thing ME does incredibly well is music. I'm after the soundtrack to this game because it is superb. The pulsing ambient music is perfect for this game & never gets repetitive.
As with most RPG's ME is full of side quests to boost experience levels before the big boss fights at the end. These can be quite entertaining at first but you soon realise that you can't actually explore space as much as you'd hoped. You could travel to one star system & not find a single planet to land on & then another which only lets you carry out one survey. It would have been nice if all the star systems would have been packed with diverse side quests but on the other hand the development time of the game would have been extended so it's fair enough really.
The biggest fault for ME though not a critical one is the handling of the Mako vehicle. Honestly a giant ice cube on wheels could handle better. Ok so you can pretty much drive over mountains with it but the physics just feel all wrong. Using the Mako got boring fast.
I found Mass Effect to be as good as an RPG as i've ever played, & the fact that it's sci-fi makes it even more great. I just don't know if i could ever go back to boring old Orc's & Goblin's after this. The story is wonderful, acting is 1st class, graphics are very decent & the music is perfect for the game. Another criticism of the game is that take all the side missions away & there is only about 12-15 hours of gameplay for the main quest, but you'd be a fool to rush this game. I clocked in at over 30 hours on my 1st play but i sure took my time. As i say this is a unique game & should not be rushed. Enjoy.