Thoughts on Mass Effect?

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The first one. What do you guys think of it?

I loved it. Very fun, very well written, feeling of a detailed and explorable universe where interesting things happen and interesting people live.

I recently finished Mass Effect 2 and it's more of the same awesome game.

Overall? I think it makes a good intro to the series, although I do wish it were possible to make Tali see that the quarians share at least some of the responsibility for the geth situation. I also wish we knew why that one geth installation was transmitting quarian opera into space - perhaps that'll be followed up on in the third game...

I kind of wish I'd been told that so many of my actions would have repercussions in Mass Effect 2 - although the only thing I would have done differently is that I would have let Helena Blake go, rather than insisting on taking her into custody. (If you let her go, she shows up as a social worker on Omega Station in 2 - apparently, you were a good influence on her.)

The gameplay is even more fun the second time around, because you already have your weapon skills and the money to buy the good stuff right away. (Protip: A sniper rifle with Frictionless Materials X and explosive rounds = a small rocket launcher. Even a Colossus goes down after two rounds.)

Same here

I loved the paragon resolution to the conflict between her and legion, acknowledging that her father was a war criminal who experimented on prisoners but getting legion to see that it's not worth going to war over, and both of them get it and then actually start cooperating.

I really like Parashep in ME2, now that it's no longer a goody two-shoes approach

I need to buy it, it's been years since I've bought an RPG

I like this little talk by Garus about the first game:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNVGFr06vJw[/youtube]

At the risk of derailing the thread (which is supposed to be comments about the first ME, not the second):

Really, Talis? You didn't feel any need to explore? You missed out on a lot of cool stuff, then...

It does become important to do the loyalty missions as soon as you get recruits, because then the clock starts ticking on the Collector kidnapping of the Normandy's crew - but once you've rescued the crew, you can go back to gadding about the galaxy, and if you download the Hammerhead missions, it gives you a whole other story arc, as well as an upgraded ground vehicle (with a main weapon that fires guided missiles, rather than the Mako's cannon, so you don't always have to sit there and let your target shoot at you in order to draw a bead on it).

As for the massive enemies, the only places I recall running into that were on the Reaper corpse at the brown dwarf, and in the Collector stronghold - and in both cases, you're basically up against a Reaper, and it shouldn't be easy. Perhaps you shouldn't have started a whole new game, with a new interface, on Insanity? (There's also a bit of that on Haven, when you interrupt a Collector operation - but that's because you're invading enemy-held territory, and then fighting a boss battle with that big thing with the mouth full of skulls.)

the first one was amazingly amazing.

the second one was cool i guess, but the main story was basically non existant.

The story in the second one was Shepard finding out a) what happened to the Protheans, and b) why the Reapers return to the galaxy every 50,000 years (with a side dish of how Reapers reproduce). It's mostly to set up the conflict in the third game, though, and what allies Shepard can count on against the Reapers in the final battles. (I've lined up the geth [and reprogrammed the heretics - I think that'll work out; at least, Legion was in favor of my solution by a margin of 2%], the rachni, the quarians [I hope], the krogan, and the Alliance fleet - and I really hope the Illusive Man gets over being upset about my destroying the Collector base and sides with us as well...)

ME1...My 2 cents.

Of hand, I loved it. Found planet exploring to be a bit of a pain after a while (same basic routine). Long elevator rides at the Citadel were annoying, but was more disappointed in ME2 with so little of such a massive station being there to explore.

The game flowed well overall. So long as you didn't do the Virmire mission, nothing started committing you to a course of action. Insanity difficulty was a joke. Usually needed just to make it a challenge to play. Hybrid classes were pointless. Soldier, Engineer, Adept all had abilities that make them potent. Vanguard, Infiltrator and Sentinel were gimped across the board. If you unlocked all the bonus skills, you could make a more effective Vanguard by being an Adept with the shotgun as a bonus weapon.

They at least balanced things by making weapons generally equal once you got to Spectre-grade weapons. A pistol could be just as effective as an assault rifle. Sniper rifle was best long range, but rarely did you get a good snipe position (my 2 cents). Shotguns were best at close range, but too easy to be overpowered if you didn't fight right in close quarters.

Adept was way overpowered. Weak at first, but at Level 50+ your powers were so effective that you could mop the floor with anyone...even at Insanity difficulty.

ME2 was a bit more balanced. At first I hated it and prefer not to play on Insanity, but at least they made Insanity deserving of it's name. They added specials to each class to make every class fun to play for their own virtues. Really gimped Adepts to make them more balanced...perhaps too much for my taste, but if you're playing on less than Insanity, they are really still quite effective in combat.

My biggest lasting gripe with ME2 is the poor fact checking. There are a couple of places where things are said that just makes you go "WTF" because any fan of ME1 knows that's not right. Don't like the way powers evolve from 1, 2, 3, 4. Makes using every skill point difficult in most situations. ME2's story is less "epic" in feel, but ME1 admittedly is a big act to follow, and as other say, it's setting you up for ME3, which has it's job cut out for it.

I bought ME1 just two weeks before ME2 came out because it was on sale, not because I wanted to prepare for ME2 or anything.

I loved it. I just liked the characters and the whole universe of the game so much. I was worried because I heard the game had some technical problems, but the game was just so good that it was hard to care about that. It was just a few days before I decided that I had to have Mass Effect 2--preferably on release day. I don't like paying $60 for games, but for awhile I just liked the ME universe so much--especially Garrus, who was (and still is) my favorite character (so I was really happy to find out that he was returning in ME2 along with Tali).

ME2 turned out to be a little disappointing in some ways. The combat mechanics were superior, of course, but I thought the game kinda lost the epic feel of ME1. Plus, you spend like 95% of the game doing stuff that has nothing to do with the main plot. It would've made more sense if they tied the Collectors into all the loyalty missions somehow. Also, planet scanning turned out to be a terrible alternative to planet exploration in the Mako. Worst of all, Garrus is always busy doing calibrations, and I feel like they made Miranda and Jacob a little more important than the rest of the characters even though they're the two most boring in my opinion (other than Zaeed).

Still a great game though. I just hope the "everybody can die at the end" gimmick doesn't stop my favorite characters from being squadmates again in ME3.

I have a bit of time so I will give my proper thoughts.

When I heard of Mass Effect and saw it's cover I did not really want to play it, it looked rather boring, I had heard some time later that it was simular to KOTOR and that got me a little excited, but I knew it was not Star Wars and I doubted they could create an as good universe (and not lightsabers). I ended up getting the game as a second hand sale item at a video rental store, I figured I would give it a try, when I played it I was blown away, the universe did ineed feel very expansive, detailed and fun. Largest of all I enjoyed the aliens, it was great that we had these different species that were different to us, yet you could kind of relate to them or at least appreciate the difference, and the fact different characters had racist belifes felt very real, but I could not help but be drawn in by them. Tali and Liara were two of my favourites, their awkwardness was and motivations were interesting, to mention the second one I also liked Garrus and Mordin, actually I liked everyone except the human charactes not counting Joker. I also like looking up on the technology which I find kind of interesting, like the omni-tools which sound like probably a great idea for sci-fi technology, almost wonder why no one has ever thought of something simular.

Choosing your stats was kind of fun, I of course chose be biotic, so most of my gameplay was useing things like warp and useing pistol, the game really offers to use different weapons but the pistol was the most usefull one and with the right upgrades could be quite deadly, though there was probably way to much upgrades for weapons and I had to spend large amounts of time either turning them into omni-gel or selling unusefull equipment. And on the armour upgrades I followed my idea on KOTOR 2 and used the health regeneration parts (upgrades), and finding a better armour in the game was kind of exciting and could be good to look at. Though the second game made a bit too little equipment, although the kind of restricting the use of certain weapons was kind of good, but wanted to change my ally's armour. The game kind of spent too much time doing things other then combat, especially with the Mako with annoying battles with threshher Maws, although talking and learning about the characters could be fun, but running around doing politics could get a little annoying. Saddly a big part of the game was useing the cover system go through almost the same 'dungeons' against degrees of enemies, though the radar was usefull and felt like it encouraged some goodstrategy and the jumping geth was a good obastacle for alowing the radar and change up of takeing them out. Also elvators, it is the future but elevators are slower.

I found the story the best bit, the begining was good at drawing me in, giving me little bits of information to be interested, the middle gave me lots of thoughts on what I am doing and lots of characters of varying degrees. The end was also great, the reveal the truth of the Protheans and of the station was cool, the last couple of levels removed a lot of the talking aspect, but was still very good as you felt the urgency of what was hapening.

I did learn early on in ME1 not to drive the Mako across a flat area, even if that meant detouring around through mountains, because the flat areas are where thresher maws live. Didn't miss them at all in ME2.

I think I prefer the prospecting method in ME2 to having to drive around a planet and play a flash-game of Simon every time I wanted to survey a mineral deposit in ME1. Protip: Make Mordin your first addition to the crew (well, unless you've downloaded Zaeed - you pick him up kind of casually on your way into Omega). When Mordin is aboard, before going back in after Archangel or to shop, go talk to Miranda about ways to fix up the ship. You will be able to modify the mineral scanners to double scanning speed on planets.

Mass Effect = greatest '80s sci-fi epic that wasn't made in the '80s.