Ahh, Mass Effect.

A game that launched a franchise that never really lived up to the hype of the first one - but how could it? The fresh new galaxy, the almost hard sci-fi background, the characters, the revelation of the threat that was coming. There were a million ways it could have gone, but hardly any future game could match the sheer grandeur of the first game.

As for the gameplay, it sucked. I'm kidding. Mostly. The Mako and the design of many of the 'not strictly necessary but since it's all gonna come into play later - actually kinda necessary' planets were nightmares. Just artificially turning a game you could complete in a weekend into a week-long affair. The Mako didn't even work as advertised - I should be able to get traction on any surface by reorienting my relative gravity field, but you will spend a total of HOURS in any one playthrough trying to climb an unclimbable mountain because there may be a deposit of weapons-grade dumbassium up there.

The combat, though, was a thing of beauty, and the tech and biotic skills were fantastic. The special pleasure of this game vs. later games in the series is that for the first game, there was no sense of balancing.

I understand the logic from a game designer's perspective, but if you want to make your world seem REAL there needs to be a sense that your abilities are wondrous. The feel that the designers sat down and hashed out every single ability and upgrade for weeks on end, testing them over and over until your tech ability is really the same as your biotic ability, just with a different animation and it works on different enemies, the numbers of which are carefully calculated to be sure that neither has a distinct advantage over the other - that's an immersion-killer. Happily, this game does NOT have that feel.

The game has aged fairly well, too. I get the sense that it misses some flourishes of newer games, but there's very little about it that seems particularly dated. I'm referring to the look of the game here (and excluding elevator rides, but at least the ambient dialogue or announcements were good for a laugh, most of the time). The narrow focus of it is different than more sprawling, newer titles, but I feel that that just gives it a tightness (excluding the aforementioned Mako nonsense) that really fits with the theatrical style of the game.

While I do feel like later titles in the series had richer characterization, that was more well-suited to their more expansive stories, Mass Effect gave just the right amount for what it was - an absolutely amazing sci-fi movie brought to life. There aren't that many games that I say someone interested in gaming culture NEEDS to play, but this is definitely one of them.

Enthusiastically recommended.

Well, almost 100 hours and I finished my first runthrough. Don't take my time as indicative of yours. I wanted to complete ALL the sidequests I could, but then realized before that was even remotely possible that:

A) I was too curious about the ending to delay any longer, and
B) I wanted there to be stuff I HADN'T done yet for my next playthrough.

Yes, I'm recommending it, but lemme offer the negatives up-front.

First, it's a high-end game. I can run it and I had very few issues with it - that said, my tower turned into a damn heater from the temperature it was throwing off while I ran it, so you know, beware. I'm not even exaggerating, my feet are nice and warm because of this game.

Secondly, there are some technical and interface issues. And some that are both. Lemme rattle off a list of weirdness off the top of my head.

Cigarettes hovering in the air after a conversation.
Your position indicator, path, or both disappearing from the minimap when you go to any other window (like opening any menus) so you have to open the map and close it to get them to appear.
Speaking of your minimap, the map zooms out a touch when you're in or on a vehicle - you know, as it should, so you're seeing things further away. What it doesn't do is zoom out to a USEFUL degree. It zooms out enough to show you about half a block ahead. This means when you're driving at speed, you have to watch the MAP and not the FREAKING ROAD, because if you glance away for more than one full second, you'll miss your turn, that's all the warning you get. It's honestly the most annoying part of the game.
Interface elements not disappearing, and similar issues with clothing. The bittersweet ending I got was somewhat ruined by the info box of a book I'd looked at 20 minutes before that didn't want to disappear, and by V removing her sunglasses to stare wistfully out a window, only to reveal an identical pair of sunglasses underneath them. It was like that They Live looping gif, you know the one. Probably. I don't know you. You should know the one.
Writing-wise, you do still occasionally get the quest where it's like, someone's observing "YoU'rE aN iDiOt FoR dOiNg ThIs ThInG!" Hey, don't judge me, jackass, I'm just going from mission to mission. Do I want to complete this mission? Yes. Then I have to do it. Let's not start making inferences about each others' intelligence based on that - you're the one stuck on a microchip, jerk.
I also had two missions I completed that never closed. I'd go to the mission, I wouldn't get a call about it, I'd get the objectives, though, and finish the mission and at the end get the call I should've gotten at the beginning, and then half an hour later get a terse message about how I'd abandoned them. Yet there they sit in my journal, offering to "track" them so I can go do them, but no objectives appear if I click them because THEY'RE ALREADY FREAKING DONE!
The stash interface is supremely weak for two reasons. First, when you move something from one to the other, it's not instantaneous. It takes a second while the inventory YOU have and the stash inventory refreshes. Maybe it's to simulate a 90's idea of what a futuristic interface would look like? That's what it seems like, but it might just be dumb - I'm honestly not sure, and that's a bad thing. It makes it very time consuming. Imagine trying to move 50 pieces of clothing from your inventory to your stash while having to wait 1-2 seconds between each item. Also, your stash is one big pile of stuff, you can't sort it into separate tabs like you can your inventory, so hunting for what you want is even more challenging.
I also had issues with lingering . . . status, I guess? Like, in some situations you can't equip weapons. It'll say 'action blocked'. Problem is that after a mission where I temporarily had that status, once it was over, I couldn't change weapons. I had to reload an earlier save. Which also meant that after reloading, I wouldn't try putting the moves on a character who rejected me the first time around, so that balances out, I guess.

Alright, alright, look, I know when I lay those things out it might sound like I'm trashing the game. I'm not. It's not a perfect game at this point - maybe those things (at least some of them) will be fixed later on, I have no information. But even WITH them, it's still worth it. There's SO much fun to be had.

Story first - the characters are great. The world is vibrant and alive. The relationships that you can form feel organic. Best of all, V actually has reasonable responses to situations so you can play the way you want without necessarily being shoehorned into responses that boil down to, "Pardon me, rapscallion, but I shall not engage with your chicanery for I have a bus full of nuns to take to an orphanage, and would like to request that they nominate me for sainthood at the moment of my death" or "SCREW YOU, ASSFACE, YOU'VE INTERRUPTED MY BREAKFAST OF INFANT BLOOD AND PUPPY CHOPS!" And I really really mean it about the characters. I was being snarky to one character I liked until he said bluntly, "You mock me too much," and from then on, I just couldn't bring myself to snark at the guy because I liked him too much to subject him to it.

The story feels generically cyberpunk-ish (I mean the genre, not the game). Someone gets something they can't handle and has to seek help with it before it causes disaster. Actually, I guess that plot's not TOO uncommon in games and stories in either sci-fi OR fantasy. Still, they do something interesting with it, and I applaud it. And of course, Keanu's a gem.

Combat feels urgent, yet strategic, which is a great mix. There are no respawning infinite enemies . . . well, there are across the WHOLE MAP, but in any one fight you won't be dealing with infinite waves. Aiming is simple and natural and you can always add the scope you like (if there's a slot for it). My only beef with combat at all, really, is I'd have liked some physical mods for melee weapons. Could I not add a sharper blade, beyond just upgrading the weapon as a whole? A heavier hammer head? A longer grip? Things like that would have been nice, but the aforementioned upgrading basically takes the place of it all.

The music is good, and the visuals are mostly great. What I like about this game versus a game that takes place in a more rural locale is that scale actually works here. Skyscrapers are huge and they look huge. You play Assassin's Creed: Valhalla and stand at the foot of a "mountain" and it's like, "That's a hill. It's a rocky hill, but you're fooling yourself if you think that's a mountain. That, me bucko, is a rocky hill. I can reach the crest in less than a minute on a horse. I can climb the steepest one by hand in less than 3 minutes. Not a mountain. A hill. It's very pretty, though." And the reason for that is obvious. To fit in all the necessary foothills and whatnot for even ONE real mountain would take up most of your map. Fine for a game that takes place on a short stretch of mountain range, but not so good for everything else. With a game like this, that's not a concern.

I did still note the space compression, though, which seems like it's done through TIME compression. If you make the clock run faster, then TECHNICALLY it took you 30 minutes (in in-game time) going 180 miles per hour to get to the edge of town. So 90 miles. A respectable distance. And it might even take you 90 minutes in real time to have your character walk that distance (and who knows how long in in-game time), but for all intents and purposes, if we're to consider that distance as being 90 miles, that means each city block is about a mile, and then we're getting ridiculous. Still, not as obviously ridiculous as games in non-urban settings.

So all in all, it's very pretty, it's tons of fun, it's immersive as heck, it's fun to fight in (which you'll be doing a lot of). It's also kinda janky. So, you know, set expectations accordingly - but still: recommended.