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@richyroo I'm playing as a Vanguard, as I always do (I spend ages uhming-and-ahing whenever I start a play through, but always end up picking Vanguard). I'm not just talking about the moment-to-moment gameplay, I'm also talking about the script, the fact the dialogue choices have virtually no effect on the conversation, and the relative lack of exploration and meaningful customisation. The fact that you can't usually access a map during missions and instead have a big fat pointer (often an unhelpful one) when you click in R3 says a lot imo. If it was an RPG, you'd need a map. I'm getting a bit more into it now I'm past the opening couple of hours. But it still is undeniably a shooter (with some RPG elements) rather than an RPG, which is a bit of a shame for me (but I understand that a lot of people prefer it that way). Although tbf, a shooter with RPG elements was a much more novel concept when ME3 came out than it is now. I feel like this trilogy really tracks the EA-ification of BioWare. Started off as a fantastic RPG with the then-usual BioWare problems, ended up as a decent shooter with the usual EA problems. And in the middle, for the second game, there was just enough from both development cultures for something really special to happen. When I first played ME3, I did so without any of the DLC. It felt a lot more lightweight that way - the Leviathan DLC in particular adds so much to the story that it's an utter scandal (but typical EA) that it was carved out to be sold as DLC. Despite my ragging on ME3 generally, I've gotta admit that for me the Leviathan story is one of the best bits of the whole trilogy. [Edit: And the Omega DLC is pretty fantastic too. I'm starting to think that my view of the game might have been a bit poisoned by having originally played it with these parts carved out] Edited by CalamityJames at 08:44:27 12-07-2021 |
Mass Effect: Legendary Edition • Page 30
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CalamityJames 315 posts
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So, after nearly 200 hours over a few weeks when I've barely played anything else (save for a couple of hours of Returnal on the PS5 at one point), I've just finished the trilogy for the third time. First time round was as the games were released, and second time round was in a bit of fog of depression shortly after my parents passed away (so I don't actually remember that playthrough very well). Given how much I've played these games, I figured I may as well get some thoughts down.
One thing I found interesting was that it felt much easier this time around. While I was playing ME1, I put that down to the tightened-up shooting mechanics, but it held true for the second and third game too. This could just been because I've done it twice before, but I suspect it's at least in part due to the improved frame rate.
My overall opinion hasn't changed: ME2 is still my favourite and ME3 my least favourite of the three. But I'd rank them all much closer together now. The combat in ME1 now feels a lot better than it did and ME3 is much improved for reasons I'll go into in the spoiler-tagged bit below. Previously I would have ranked them something like ME2>>ME1>>>>>ME3, now it's more like ME2>ME1>>ME3. It's worth noting that I'm a big RPG fan and only have a passing interest in shooters: IMO ME1 is the best RPG of the bunch, ME3 is the best shooter, and ME2 nails blending the two. I tend to love any sci-fi, especially the space-opera subgenre, which is why I've played this trilogy three times even though I hardly ever replay a game when I've finished it. With that said, onto the spoiler-ish stuff.
For my money, Mass Effect 1 is a great self-contained game. If the series hadn't caught on the way it did and ME1 had been the only game in the series, it still would have been one of my favourite Western RPGs. The story hits all the RPG beats that I'm so addicted to, as you set out to chase down a threat, build a party along the way, discover the real threat is something bigger and badder, etc., yet it's packed with uniquely memorable moments (I'm not sure either of the subsequent games has a "holy shit" moment to compare with the stand-off with Wrex or the death of Kaiden/Ashley). But it's very much a creature of its time: it's easy to forget just how much game design progressed over that long PS360 generation, and this was a pretty early 360 game. In a lot of ways it has more in common with its BioWare predecessors like KOTOR and Jade Empire on the OG Xbox than with its own sequels. On the positive side, Saren and Sovereign are IMO the trilogy's best, most fleshed-out main antagonists. On the negative side, the inventory stuff feels straight out of a game from the OG Xbox generation (though the addition of a "mark as junk" function is a huge improvement in the Legendary Edition).
My most controversial opinion about the first game is that liked the Mako sections when I originally played the game. For me, the fact I could land on pretty much any non-gaseous planet really added to the illusion that I was exploring a whole galaxy. I felt that much less strongly this time around, though, because I'm so much more used to vast open worlds (i.e. the Mako sections felt pretty big and open back in 2007, but in 2021 they feel quite tiny and restrictive).
Mass Effect 2 is my favourite of the trilogy for one main reason: the characters. A lot of them appear in the other two games too, but it's ME2 where I felt I really got to know and love them. The loyalty mission thing may have been a bit formulaic structurally, but it made me really care about the characters. The game's main failing, though, is that it did very little to move the overall story on. The Collector storyline is not related to ME1 in any meaningful way, and it doesn't have any significant consequences for ME3 either. That means it left ME3 a hell of a lot of work to do. I don't have much else to say about ME2, I love the game and I know that the characters are why I love the game. I just wish Kasumi and Zaaed weren't less interactive than the rest as a result of being DLC characters. Which brings me on to...
Mass Effect 3 makes me a bit angry at the state the game was originally sold in. When I first played it, I didn't have any of the DLC; I bought the From Ashes add-on during my first playthrough, but I didn't bother with the rest. I was quite put out at the time that it was impossible to get to more than 50% war readiness without playing online (because I had no interest in the online multiplayer portion) so I settled for just running through it quickly to see how it ended. I did play them in my second go, but like I said, my memories of that run are a bit fuzzy.
If you were around for the original release of ME3, you might remember that this was the time that EA was doing "online passes" to force second-hand buyers to give them some cash. Whatever excuses they gave at the time, this was the reason for making your war readiness in the single-player game dependent on playing the online multiplayer, and it was a real kick in the teeth for people like me who bought the game new at RRP, but don't care for online multiplayer.
So, they already broke the game for people like me for the crummiest, most grasping of business reasons. But it's only on this playthrough that I realised the extent to which they'd carved the heart out of the game to sell it back to us as DLC. One of my original objections, that I didn't really feel I connected with the characters, was resolved to a significant extent by the Citadel DLC. Much more egregiously, the Leviathan story could and (I suspect should) have been a much bigger part of the overall story. It's where we learn the Reapers' true origin ffs, and meeting one of their creators is mind-blowing at this point in the playthrough. There's so much they could have done with the whole Leviathan/Reaper thing. But the fact it was sold as DLC means it can't really have any significant part in the rest of story because they had to assume that many players wouldn't ever play it. I suspect there's a design document somewhere where the Leviathan plays a significant role in the story, and I'd love to know what that looks like.
My other main gripe with the game is that they went too far with the "dumbing down". Having no map or scanner in most of the shooting parts is just absurd; the pointer thing works okay when it's there, but there are points where pressing the right stick just made the words "find {thing/place}" appear on screen and I was really struggling to find the thing or place without a map or scanner. (This was more of a problem on my first playthrough than my third, obviously. I remember getting really angry on Eden Prime because it all looked the same and I was just being told "find bridge controls" instead of being shown a map that would have enable me to find them.)
But despite all those gripes, I enjoyed ME3 a lot this time around. The DLC really rounds the game out, and the fact I wasn't automatically disadvantaged for not liking online multiplayer meant that I explored a lot more star systems and triggered a lot more side missions, because there was a point to doing so now. So I saw a lot more of the game and the whole thing felt bigger and better than I remember it being.
In terms of mechanics, ME1 is the most improved of the three. But the inclusion of the DLC and the removal of the requirement to play online multiplayer makes ME3 the most improved game overall, for me at least.
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