Despite a few imperfections, a gem to be enjoyed for years.
From beginning to end you feel like you are playing a movie (and that's saying something because developers have been trying to do that for years). The story itself is somewhat short, probably about 12 hours of content but you'll be playing it for much longer than that your first go.
A few technical glitches bring the overall effect of the game but despite its sometimes frustrating glitches and a few dropped frame-rates, an excellent game. This is the first time I've actually enjoyed the beginning and end of the story, usually it gets diluted towards the end but it just gets better and better. The only downside to this is that about half-way if you decide to get some side quests under your belt, they're very repetitive. Some have a pretty good background and you'll want to explore that particular mission because you actually WANT to know what happened to a lost crew, a missing civilization, etc.
This game is to be played in spurts... 10 hours or so for the first part you must put aside because it's soooo immersive. And the last 3-4 hours you'll want to play pretty must straight as well.
The Pros:
- Story driven. Somewhat linear but the choices along the way will want you to try different paths over and over.
- Combat (after you get the hang of it) is actually quite enjoyable even if it was a bit of an afterthought.
- Voice acting. Wow. Makes the story come to life.
- (Citadel) Side quests are actually fun, you won't want to leave the station until you've completed the majority of them.
- You can really ROLE PLAY your character! (You want to be a bad ass, do it. Or if you just want to be a cool-headed soldier it feels like they're two completely different people just how you go through conversations).
- Conversations are fun, intuitive and you won't want to skip through them.
The Cons:
- Graphical and technical glitches needed a bit more polishing before release. Sometimes (only happened once for me) your character will be completely stuck even though the game is not frozen.
- The Normandy wasn't as fun to walk around as we were led to believe it would be.
- The Mako (the land-vehicle) is awful. Makes exploring planets a bit of a chore sometimes rather than an adventure.
- No combat tutorial. (Depending on which path you take after the Citadel, you could be frustrated for hours trying to beat one part).
- Bad autosave feature. You'll get used to it later in the game but save often.