When I was 11 years old, I had a teacher who's favourite game franchise were CLEARLY Mass Effect, he wore a N7 hoodie at school and even tattooed the N7 shoulder markings to his arm.

I never heard of the series back then (probably because I only played minecraft and roblox all day long) but he constantly talked about it when we chatted about video games and all I remember is he spoke very highly of it.

Now several years later I finally played through them all, and really enjoyed it. Despite not being a 'gamer' during that era of gaming I still enjoyed it a lot.

Some mechanics/elements are definitely very out of date to today standard (such as galaxy navigation in ME1) but I still managed to pull myself through it and really had a blast playing it.

Mass Effect 1 was the most outdated from my perspective, I really enjoyed the story but the gameplay was not there for me, so I just went through all of the main story to play the second game.

Mass Effect 2 was for sure my favourite, everything felt so fluid and awesome and the gameplay was definitely more accessible than ME1, also PEAK story it really kept me engaged throughout the entire game.

Mass Effect 3 was good, but felt a bit as a rushed/downgraded version of Mass Effect 2 gameplay wise. It was good but not great, especially the reaper planet scanning thing was more annoying that an interesting mechanic.

It was definitely cool to play through this series even if it is well after my time, but really had it fun playing this series.

I defeated the reapers, I punched the reaper king, there was no little ghost boy, that was a dream.

beautiful history, characters and universe

I played this game for the first time 15 years after the original release after over a decade of everyone telling me to play it.
Im not even an avid gamer, with most games i'll end up snoring after 2 hours or so.
As you can see, I played 140 hours or so in the lapse of 1 or 2 months, I got completely addicted!
It's a great story, the gameplay is very immersive and it doesnt feel like an old game at all!
Absolutely recommend it!


9.5/10
worst complaints:
-had to verify file integrity once to save a corrupted save file (compared to other games that crash over every minor inconvenience, it's pretty healthy in comparison)
- The ending didn't give me everything I wanted(isn't that life? so go play it! )

Do you want space opera at its finest? Do you want to explore the galaxy across dozens of planets, all of them with actual content? Do you want to meet new and interesting aliens? Do you want to uncover ancient mysteries and galactic conspiracies? Do you want to mow through enemies and face impossible odds? Do you want to feel like your choices matter?

Good news! Despite EA's best efforts, the original Mass Effect trilogy still gets you to like 80-90% of all of those feelings! That's still pretty dang great!

I really want to give a recommendation because the Mass Effect collection is great. The EA Launcher on the other hand, is an abomination that should never exist. It keeps asking me for verification for the millionth time and insists to synchronize saves even though I tell it not to. May whoever that came up with the EA Launcher die a painful death.

I'm Commander Shepard and this is my favorite game on Steam.

Mass Effect 1 was a pleasant surprise. I mean, given the negative reputation of its gameplay, even though its story gets plenty of praise, it’s not surprising that I initially went into this journey with some hesitation. But in the end, the game positively surprised me. So, without further ado, let’s go over each aspect:

Gameplay – I’m neither used to nor fond of playing FPS games. Actually, I’d even go as far to say that my FPS skills are, essentially, a bit below average. That said, ME1 blends the RPG aspect with the FPS aspect so well that, even playing on Veteran (hard) and using only a sniper, I never really felt challenged throughout the entire game. That might sound like a good thing (and to some extent, it is), but the lack of incentive to switch weapons or even use biotics is overwhelming here. I personally had a lot of fun, but I wouldn’t recommend ME1’s gameplay to someone expecting something very deep or unique regarding weapon variety uniqueness.
Moving on to the interplanetary exploration segment, this is where the game’s score drops quite a bit. The number of load screens just to go into each cluster systems or land on planets often made me delay exploring them out of sheer boredom. And not only that, but the mandatory Mako (the car) gameplay is also ridiculously uninteresting. Sure, it’s fun at first and adds immersion, but after 70 sidequests on rocky planets, the last thing I wanted was to drive that damn thing again!

Story – This is where the game truly shines! While the gameplay is fun, if it weren’t for the engaging story, interesting characters, massive codex, side quests as compelling as the main plot(story wise) and a truly unique choice system where most things that you do matters, I doubt I would have found the game nearly as good as I did. The themes ME1 explores, the weight of your decisions in certain dynamics, and the cohesive way everything comes together, all of this turns a game with a setting I don’t even like much (futuristic transhumanism) into one of the few games I can confidently affirm that is among the best I’ve ever played. It doesn’t quite reach the narrative level of big names like Dragon Age Origins, but it’s not that far behind either.

Soundtrack – The game has some amazing tracks, but it keeps reusing the weaker ones. Seriously, there were moments when I couldn’t understand why it insisted on doing that! Other than this, ME1's soundtrack is immersive and engaging. Roaming around the Citadel is truly a unique experience here!

Conclusion – I think this might be one of the first reviews I’ve written where I don’t need to bring up some extra negative aspect of the game (in Dragon Age Origins I had to mention the crashes even with mods, in KOTOR2 I had to mention the restoration mod and odd direction, in Jedi Fallen Order I had to talk about the awful map design, etc). Anyway, ME1 is, in my view, one of the best western RPGs I’ve ever had the pleasure of experiencing. Its story is engaging and cohesive, its themes are well explored, its characters are lively enough to make you genuinely care about each of them(I'm feeling THAT choice even now!), the galaxy truly feels like it “exists,” and many of the choices offer an absurd amount of freedom. Honestly, I don’t have any real complaints here! If you’re looking for a great game, buy the legendary edition and enjoy it yourself!

OBS: I'm going to update this review as I get through ME2 and 3 here on steam.

hell yea son

one of the best experiences you can have as a gamer