Recent reviews by xElleroche

I absolutely love that this game has been remastered, and some of the improvements that have been made to bring this classic experience up to more modern standards, but I absolutely cannot recommend this game at this time due to the truly terrible performance. I bought a brand new 5000 series graphics card for this game specifically, and upgraded to 32GB of RAM from 16. I've also edited a config file per a recommendation to try to mitigate the constant crashing, but despite all of this, I'm lucky to get 30-40 minutes of uninterrupted gameplay before hitting the same crash that so many people in the community for this game are talking about. Considering all the discussion around it, and how many crash reports have been sent by myself alone, I can't believe it hasn't been hotfixed yet - I also honestly can't believe the game was considered shippable in this state. I was hoping to play it on Steam Deck like I have Skyrim, but even at the lowest settings the framerate is choppy at best. As amazing as it looks, it's performance and stability are so poor I can hardly enjoy it, and I am very close to ceasing trying until I see that an update has been released to address the problems. I really hope Bethesda doesn't just take the money and run, and actually provide some post-launch support to allow people to enjoy the hard work they put into this.

I'm giving this game a Positive review because it has every element I want, but it does have room for some improvement. I absolutely love the concept, the look, the freedom to do things in whatever way and order you want, and the case board is SO cool! (That's largely what sold me on the game from a video I watched). I love that it includes survival elements as well as the ability to purchase apartments and customize them top to bottom visually with a decent amount of choices for the fact that that's not the core focus of the game. I love how alive the world is, the random world gen, the variety of ways to get to people and places you need to get to. However, I very much hope that at some point there is an update that adds some additional depth, including more in the "motive" department. I've gotten into some micro crunchers (computers) and found some very sus emails and set out excitedly in that direction with my investigations, but the actual culprit ends up just being someone from the person's address book with no deeper connection to them, that I've found by going to each address and scanning the prints on the door. I do find myself tapering off on this game earlier than I wanted to, but I can't leave a Negative review because I had a blast at first and want so badly to be able to keep playing for a long time - I think if the cases and motives were more diverse/complex, it would go from 6.5 to 9 potential in my book.

I just played this again for the 5th or or so time, but first time in several years (I had to get one in now that I own it here) -- what a legendary freaking game. If you've never tried it, please do yourself a favor. This game helped to pioneer some of the mechanics we see in many of today's games - a cover system, adaptive cutscenes, and others. Besides that, it's so cinematic - it's like playing a movie. The end-game cutscenes especially are so well done. And the universe created in the story! It's so cohesive, so thorough - especially in ME2 and ME3, after a long gaming session, it's hard to snap back to reality and realize these characters don't actually exist.

I will admit, navigating the planets for the side missions is... quite a slog. I'm usually all for exploring, but this time around I definitely opted to limit my time on those rough terrains by looking up maps online. The combat will likely take some getting used to, possibly the inventory management as well, but it does eventually start to feel more natural, I promise. There are also many strange facial expressions, and some awkward goodbyes from Shepard, but just, you know, look past those :P (Also, do definitely follow the Steam Guides (there are several available) for improving the game's appearance - this port is strangely bad in that regard, but it can easily be significantly improved).

Please don't let this game's age prevent you from appreciating what it was, and still is - a pivotal entry in gaming history, with a story very much worth experiencing.