A game that has not withstood the test of time.
Well, first off I guess would be the storyline. I've never really been a fan of Space Opera/Pure Science Fiction. Science Fantasy (Along the lines of Star Wars or Warhammer 40,000) tends to draw me to it more often. So, I was skeptical about this game from the start, and it didn't prove me wrong. This is about as generic as you can get with science fiction. If you don't have a problem with that, then I would definitely suggest playing it, but I do. Not that it's not well executed. The Universe of Mass Effect has tons of care put into it's creation of all of it's races and political agendas. But you have to care about that to really end up noticing it, as the backstories of the different races don't play a big part in the main storyline. Also, the story itself (beyond all of the usual Sci-Fi trappings) is about as plain and generic as it can be, wonderful dialogue and voice acting aside.
Next, we come to the character creation. Mass Effect has a fairly nice character generation system, if you choose not to use the default Shepard that Bioware has provided for you. Nothing that hasn't been done before, and nothing that hasn't been surpassed. It gives you an option to customize your character's backstory and demeanor, but this really does not have a profound effect on anything. Mostly, it exists to give you the illusion that you have complete control over the shaping of the game's dialogue, when in fact you do not. You may notice a few sentences changed depending on what background you choose for your character, but hardly anything major.
Next up is the oft-praised Dialogue System. This is something that Mass Effect has been accoladed for time and time again. Upon further inspection, though, the Dialogue System is basically a lie crafted to make you think that there are actual consequences for what you choose to say. More often than not, what intent you choose in the dialogue wheel has absolutely no effect on what Shepard actually says, and even less often does it actually effect what the other person you're engaged in dialogue with says. Not only that, but there are quite a few sections where you're forced to sit through the entire dialogue, though some you can skip, which ends up being all the more confusing (this gets extremely annoying when you end up dying and having to go through a huge section of dialogue just to get back into the action). The only praise I can give this system is how much voice acting has actually gone into the game, since literally everything is dubbed. Beyond that, it makes me angry more than it impresses me, because it just feels like Bioware is feeding me lies so hopefully I will enjoy the game more, or regret my actions so I feel the need to go back through the game. Piss-poor implementation of replay value.
The Graphics of this game still hold up fairly well, which is impressive in it's own right, but there is one huge problem I have with them. The texture pop-up in this game is worse here than in any other game I've ever played. I mean, it's absolutely inexcusable how often pop-up occurs. I guarantee that you will see it every single time you play. When it occurs, it takes a ludicrously long time for the texture to actually load in. Probably about ten seconds. This might be acceptable if Mass Effect had quite a few fast-moving sequences, or a consistently huge draw distance that it had to deal with, but it does not. So I just don't understand how they let this slide. Also, the load times for Mass Effect are some of the longest I've ever seen. Not that I mind this, as I'm generally a patient guy. But the game's attempts to cover up the load times are more annoying to me than the load times themselves, because they are very inconsistent. Sometimes, you'll be stuck in an elevator, listening to some random news broadcast. Other times, you'll sit and watch your ship fly in to a star system. But then there are quite a few random moments where you'll either get a black screen, or your game will freeze and simply say Loading... But if you're going to try to cover up load times, you need to be consistent with it. I honestly would've preferred a loading screen to the elevator sequences.
The Combat is also generally praised very highly. While it is unique, and it does a decent job of blending third-person real-time shooting with RPG elements, there is plenty left to be desired. While it tries really hard to be both, it fails pretty miserably at times. It is painfully obvious to see all of the calculations that occur when you shoot something, so much so that it might as well have been turn-based. Hit detection is worthless, as you either hit an enemy or you don't (it doesn't matter where). The special abilities are great to have, but they end up requiring a completely different mindset and they put a real break in the action. The cover system feels really weak when compared to more recent work, such as Grand Theft Auto IV or Gears of War 2, and is pretty inconsistent. The team AI is fairly inconsistent as well, so much so that I never really bothered to use it, because I never quite got the desired result from it. All in all, Mass Effect requires you to strike a perfect balance between real-time shooting and using timed abilities, which is not only somewhat difficult to do, but disappointing as well. You should be able to rely completely on guns if you want to, and you should be able to rely completely on abilities if you want to. This game is about choice, isn't it?
Mass Effect is also very counter-intuitive. It doesn't even begin to tell you everything you need to know, and even hours into the game, there will still be things you're figuring out how to do. The in-game radar is all but useless, and though the game is generally very linear throughout missions (in the expected Bioware fashion), it can be very hard to find where you need to go at times. Though it might've felt like a cop-out to some, an indicator on the radar would've helped tremendously. Beyond the story missions, the unexplored planets are pretty much copy-pasted with a few palette swaps, not offering hardly any difference from one to the next. I actually didn't mind the driving sequences at all, as most people did, because I was too busy worrying about the other problems with the game. Mass Effect also presents plenty of glitches, or at least more than I'm used to seeing in recent years, with clipping and getting 'stuck' in certain parts of the environment.
While Mass Effect has it's problems, it's still a fairly enjoyable game, even today. I know it sounds like I was being hard on it, but it has so much content that it's faults are easily forgiven, as it offers a unique experience that you can't really find anywhere else. While it's definitely not perfect, as quite a few people have said, I would still recommend it, especially if you're a fan of Science Fiction.