The broad emotional range and the fantastic story has made Mass Effect destined to become an instant sci-fi classic.
Mass Effect is an amazing game with a galaxy as realised as the likes of Star Wars and Star Trek, even better in my eyes. This is classic sci-fi you've all known and loved raised to another level. The broad emotional range and the fantastic story has made Mass Effect destined to become an instant classic, and it is surely going to be talked about for years to come.
What really sets this game apart from other RPG's is the fact that the actual gameplay is not as restricted. For example, in KOTOR the gameplay was almost automatic, where you chose what attack to do and when. This is still a problem in new RPG's, The Witcher is a perfect example. They could have made a combat system similiar to the likes of Devil May cry or God of War.
But instead you're only allowed to click the mouse button every once in a while. That's not very entertaining. Not to mention the completely emotionless faces and voice-acting, as well as the original Half-Life style of lip-sync. It's not very immersive. Mass Effect on the other hand goes way beyond what all RPG's could only dream about ever achieving.
Its perfect blend of cover-shoot style gameplay, leveling up, gathering items, harvesting, exploring planets, doing side-quests and following the main storyline is unprecedented. It revolutionises what RPG's should be.
I'm assuming you've already heard about Mass Effect since you're on this website, so I'm not going to waste your time going through the story. Because you can just go to the official site and read that.
You start off right away in your ship with your crew ready to set out on an epic adventure, and you're given a conversation-wheel. The conversation wheel is genius. Instead of having to choose answer 1, 2, 3 etc. where you read the entire line, you're given only a reaction of what you're going to say. Because in real life you're not going to sit quietly thinking what you're about to say, you just say what you think naturally. This comes out perfectly executed, the "good" and the "bad" choices stays in one place the entire time. So you don't really have to look for the "bad" answer if you're going to be cruel to someone. The alignment system isn't one where you can either be "good" or "bad", you can either be Paragon or Renegade.
It affects your reputation and the outcome of the ending of the game. But it goes beyond that.
Early in the game you're going to become a Spectre, the right hand of the Council, and your job is to keep the peace in the galaxy. As a Spectre, nothing is more important than the safety of the universe, so you have to get the job done. And how you do it is entirely up to you.
The gameplay is really good and satisfying but there are however some flaws. The AI can be laughably bad at times, don't be surprised if your allies or your enemies shoots right into a wall. Both your teammates and enemies can have trouble deciding where to stand, so they can sometimes wander back and forth. The boss battles can also be an issue, the game doesn't let you save because (without spoiling too much) you're going up this elevator, and you can't save in elevators or battle. However you can save before going onto it. And the boss is brutally hard, that leaves you going through the same conversation over and over again which is very frustrating.
The main storyline doesn't last that long. I clocked at 15 hours my first playthrough leaving almost every sidequest behind. But if you're going to enjoy Mass Effect to the fullest you're probably going to have to double that number. Becuase there is an immense amount of sidequests and things to do and see, and there's alot of replayability. I'm a little disappointed and thrilled at the same time as I got to unfold the plot faster than I expected. But don't expect the playtime KOTOR had where you could easily spend 30-40 hours on the main storyline alone. This however is not that big of a concern, because never since, well, KOTOR have I been so willing to complete a game a second, third, fourth and maybe even a fifth time. The different classes also leaves you wanting to play it through again just because you want to try another class, which there are several of. Now that I think about it, Infiltrator wasn't such a good idea for a first playthrough, because the game doesn't give you any tutorial so you're left off wondering what the hell to do. Soldier would be the best bet to get to know the game. I do however blame myself for rushing through the game for such a small amount of time, for an RPG. I have only myself to blame...
The best thing about this game though is its characters, voice-acting and how the story is told. You're mostly part of everything that's going on, only the rest for cutscenes to show. The characters personality and top-notch
voice-acting actually made me care about them. And you're going to face plenty of difficult moral choices.
The voice-acting of your character as a male Commander Shepard, (voiced by Mark Meer) does sound a little over the top very often. But his voice-acting can also shine often too. It goes a little up and down. I personally like the female voice better, she sounds more natural in a way. Maybe Mark can shape up in the sequel. There are several famous voice actors in the game, which the most notable are Seth Green, the guy that voices The Arbiter in the Halo games and the guy from Alien. Haha, I forgot their names. There is voice-acting everywhere and they're all top-notch, never before has any game had this quantity of quality performances.
I almost forgot to mention one of the most important things in the gameplay, the combat-wheel. Much like the conversation-wheel, you can choose what power to do and at what target you'd like to execute them,
you can also select the weapons of both you and your teammates.
This means you can control your teammates attacks, much like a tactical shooter.
The game looks absolutely stunning, seemingly at the expense of framerate, the game engine can't seem to keep up, as it boggles down frequently. But you'll learn to forgive that almost immediately, because the framerate has only boggled down in heavy firefights, and in some areas of vast and detailed environments. Besides, it's not that bad that it makes it a game-killer. However, there are some annoying visual glitches, there can be clippings, textures constantly loading right before your eyes, shadowing sometimes looks a bit weird. The last two levels are pure art. I can't tell you
enough how good it looks. In my eyes, it's easily better looking than Gears of War.
I'm still thinking about my score. Does it deserve a perfect 9.0? Is Mass Effect perfect? No. But a 9.0 should only show how good the game is compared to other games and not how perfect the game is. No game is completely flawless, so yes, I'm going to give this game a 9.0. If you enjoyed KOTOR, no, any RPG, you owe it to yourself to play Mass Effect. If you've been unsure whether or not to buy the game then ask yourself this: Did you like or were/are you slightly interested in Star Wars or Star Trek or any kind of sci-fi? If the answer is yes, then by all means, play Mass Effect.