Mass Effect is one of this generations best Role-Playing Games
Bioware games have always been known for their stories, and Mass Effect has one hell of a story. You play as Commander Shepard, whom you create what they look like and their back story as soon as you start the game. Once that's done, you go on a mission to the planet Eden Prime to recover a Prothean beacon. For about the first five minutes, everything seems to be going smoothly. It isn't long before the first plot twist happens, and things quickly go down hill. The beacon gives you a vision that is unsettling, but you don't know what it all means. This leads to what seems like a sci-fi drama, but with plenty of action. The story is interesting and has plenty of plot twist to keep you interested; and keep you caring about what you're doing. And what would a great RPG be without the choices you can make?
Mass Effect has some of the most memorable scenes I've ever seen in a game. This is due to some of the choices that you have to make. There are a lot of them to be made throughout the game. Some only effect the mission your doing, others can have drastic changes to the story. The choices are mostly made through dialog, which makes it impressive that every character is voice acted, including the main character, which is done both in a male and female voice, depending on which one you choose. Each conversation can have so many different outcomes. These conversations can lead you to choices that can effect how you take on the mission; it could lead to different main characters deaths, or even lead to different romances.
All Bioware games in the past have been done with a turn-based combat system. Mass Effect's combat is similar to that of Bioware's past games, but Mass Effect's combat doesn't use a turn-based system like their other games do, instead the combat is more like a third person shooter. But if you play this game like a third person shooter, things will be a lot harder. Your meant to pause the action, observe what's going on, choose what weapon or power to use, then proceed with the fight. This system's great, and is a lot of fun once you get the hang of it. But those who aren't familiar with Bioware's past games will take a lot longer to get used to this. Don't get me wrong, Mass Effect probably has the best combat system in any of Bioware's RPGs yet, but it's to tempting to try and play this game like a third person shooter without the turn-based system to teach you not to.
The combat is done in a party system, similar to Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, which you can take up to two other characters with you. These characters level up, same as you do. So each character may have their weak points, but leveling them up helps off put that a bit. But this is where the on-foot combat has its problems. The AI isn't the best; your teammates will have no problem getting in your way, blocking your shot. There is a command system to control your teammates. For example, you can tell your team to move forward, or take cover. But at one point, the AI refused to follow any of the commands. But these are very small problems, and didn't occur very often.
Besides the on-foot action, there are also vehicle sequences. You use a moon buggy like vehicle called the Mako. At first driving the Mako is pretty cool. The Mako can drive up impossible places, like steep mountains, or extremely bumpy paths. But, you'll quickly discover driving the Mako can get really annoying. It takes out the RPG elements that make the on foot action so great. You can't pause the action, at all. You have to just drive, and shoot. That's it. The action in the Mako feels really dull at times. You can only shoot straight, even though the game throws a lot of enemies that will attack you from above, or bellow. So some of these battles are more difficult than they should be. There are technical problems while driving the vehicles. At one point I tried to drive over a body of a enemy that I had killed, and the body got stuck inside the Mako itself. Not stuck on the wheels, it was going through the center on the Mako, sticking out at the top. I could not drive straight at all. It got so annoying that I ended up loading the game back to the begging of the level, loosing all of the progress that I had made. But the technical problems don't stop with the vehicle sequences. The frame rate has trouble keeping up with the game. It wasn't constant, but it did occur a lot, mainly during parts where there were a lot of characters on screen. But this can be very distracting during some of the games bigger battles. At a couple points in the game, my character got stuck, and had a lot of trouble getting out. Overall, the game fells like it could have used a lot more polish.
Mass Effect is an amazing game. You get just about everything you want out of an RPG. There is an amazing story with plenty of twist to keep you interested. It has great choices along with some of the best dialog, and moments that's probably ever been in a game. A fun combat system that is very satisfying. It's only held back by weak vehicle sequences, and a lot of small technical problems. But this is such an amazing game that those problems are easy to overlook. With a story that last around 20 hours, and enough side quest that could easily make the game last over 40 hours, there's a lot to do here. So if you consider yourself a RPG fan, I highly recommend checking out Mass Effect. You will enjoy yourself.