Mass Effect. The first game in a trilogy that is arguably BioWare's magnum opus-though, I can't say this from experience. I actually played the second and third games before the first, and the whole time I was well aware that I was missing parts of the experience, but I was still able to jump in and enjoy them. This time, I'm doing it right, starting with the first game.
Mass Effect is a game that is most well known for its narrative, which is one of my own personal favourites. I love the game's story, with all of its epic space opera flair. It's a heroic tale of saving the galaxy, and it's oh-so-satisfying. I enjoyed making decisions in conversations. I loved deciding who my Commander Shepard was going to be. Arguably, Mass Effect's central mechanic is its dialogue wheel. With this wheel, you choose between certain courses of action in conversation. You can make Shepard into a racist jerk, a law-enforcer, or anything in between or beyond.
This dialogue system is accompanied by excellent writing, just as expected from good old BioWare. All of the dialogue is excellent, being well-written and full of personality. By extension, the characters are also great. I really did like talking to my squad-mates and learning more about them. Another great thing about the game is how well developed the world is. There are lines upon lines upon paragraphs of information about the world, and a lot of it is optional. If you don't care about the world, you don't have to learn about it. However, it's there in the Codex or in optional dialogue if you want to learn more, and the rich cultures and histories that make up this world are captivating.
Mass Effect took me a good while to grow accustomed to, to the extent where I suspect I was halfway through before I finally wrapped my head around it. This game is an RPG, so it's heavily defined by a leveling system. Compared to many other RPGs, its straightforward and streamlined, but if you're not an experienced RPG player you may just forget it's there. This becomes a problem, as it limits the abilities you can use, making combat a little more difficult. It also means that you won't be able to follow through with much of the hacking in the game that requires certain skills to go forward with, and at points can make progress much more difficult and block off preferred paths. Even the dialogue wheel is affected, as you need to level up the "Charm" or "Intimidate" skills to unlock the best dialogue options.
At the same time, once you've got the hang of it, the levelling system can be almost overwhelming. There's a lot to it, though again a lot of it's combat oriented in a way that fits the shooter combat. What is harder to wrap your head around is the mess of an inventory. As you travel, you may loot or buy items, which appear in the inventory. Now, the problem with this is that even though you get better versions of certain weapons, you may keep other versions of said weapon. Why is this? Because the inventory is shared by all party members. This makes managing the inventory a convoluted puzzle of scrolling down rows of identical items, trying to figure out which is best for which character. On top of that, there are upgrades that are in a shared pile for all of the weapons. This means that upgrades are all very general, and also makes sorting through the endless list of looted upgrades a nuisance. It's a hassle to remember what the highest level weapons and armour in your inventory are when looting, so it's best to just take it all and choose which to keep in the inventory, which just gets more crowded if it's not constantly kept under control.
Mass Effect's combat has a high learning curve, and shooting fans may find themselves frustrated by a few mechanics. First is the loss of accuracy as you fire. This will start off as an annoyance for people used to non-RPG shooters. Second is the use of a heat gauge instead of clips. It takes some time to wait for weapons to cool down at first, which gets kind of annoying. Now, these two quirks are things that you get used to over time and which become less of problems as you level up and upgrade. As the game goes on, it gets much less frustrating and combat actually becomes fun. For me, this unfortunately happened at least half way through the game, meaning that my enjoyment of Mass Effect this first time wasn't as it could have been. At the same time, shooting in Mass Effect can be very sluggish and rough at times, and although it's much more fun and tolerable by the end of the game, it takes a while to get to that point, and it's mostly because I got used to the rough edges of the shooting. I don't think I need to say anything about the clumsy Mako controls. I will say, however, that aiming can be a nightmare with the thing, and to get a good aim you need to stay still. It gets to the point that it's best to just drive past enemies.
What soured my Mass Effect experience after I started enjoying the combat was that checkpoints are incredibly sparse. The game has an autosave system, but it rarely uses it, and this caused me to lose a lot of progress at times. There's also a rudimentary cover system, but for most purposes it's not very effective. Very good for sniping, though. Mass Effect also has some technical problems. The most notable are that textures frequently pop in too late and that the game often pauses for loading, even after the infamously long elevator rides, but at times my squad-mates' AI has stopped working and people have gotten stuck in walls. The latter two are very rare, but they happen.
It's a deep RPG awash in content, but the main story doesn't last very long. Much of the content comes in the form of running around and doing errands, which I must admit is very fun because the tasks are so well-designed. Other content involves visiting other planets, which I decided not to do because I'd heard that these planets were often dull and barren and made driving the Mako even more annoying than usual. The story is the game's strongest point, and making your own decisions on going through it provides a compelling interactive experience on its own. Add in the deep RPG elements and the (eventually) fun shooting, and Mass Effect is a brilliant start to my favourite game series. Now, if you excuse me, I'll get started on Mass Effect 2.
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