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Game Review - Mass Effect Series
11 years ago
Hello everybody and welcome to my game review. I'm your host, Bolt Templar, and today we will be looking at Mass Effect 1, 2, and 3 as a whole.
~~WARNING~~ Spoilers ahead ~~WARNING~~
Lets jump on in!
Gameplay - Now playing the game is very different depending on which one you play. The first one is very shooter-based but there are powers too. Using them can be a bit of a handful until you master it... most of the game comes down to gear and carefully picked targets. Then came the second one and the powers made a huge leap forward. Its still fairly straight-forward with the guns but now its mostly variety and picking the guns you enjoy while also using powers and abilities whenever your fight calls for it. Then came three and wow was it a change. Upgrade your guns, evolve your powers, and learn when and how to deliver a good strong laser-punch, and you can crush things beneath your heel. The powers are incredible and useful in every battle, the guns give you a good change of pace and different weapon groups can change your experience. Along with all this is exploring the galaxy. Now 1 had the best exploration simply for its planetary exploration areas. It made things more interesting to drop down in your tank, drive around, have some intense fights with giant Thresher Maws, then fly off in your ship. 2 became ship focused instead and you burned up fuel going from system to system, had to find and mine resources like crazy, and at the end, you had to be careful or you'd lose 2/3rds of your crew and possibly die yourself! The main game was fun but endgame became a puzzle that was annoying to crack... then came 3, and while it was still ship based exploration, the planets became more about finding money or crew than anything and missions on planets were the major thing. Yeah you still lost people and the often 'choice-less' party switching became a nightmare to deal with, but as a whole, the game was amazing, and exactly the kind of gameplay I wish the other 2 had involved
Story - A LOT of people hate the final choices but lets look at it from start to end... It begins with you, a trained killing machine of a soldier being sent to recover an artifact. Bad shit goes down and you find yourself pulled into a galaxy wide hunt for a madman hell-bent on killing everybody in order to prove his loyalty and power to his TALKING SHIP OF MURDER! You find out about 'The Reapers' and, with as little a spoiler as I can, it tells you how these giant super-ships of death are a thousand in number and all want the same thing: wipe out civilization. Game 2 brings back old friends and pulls out new faces as the plot thickens. You start by getting blown up, spend a few years deader than dead, then get brought back to fight some more, but against some Reaper minions known as Collectors. After a massive battle with them (and a half-finished reaper) you find out how many of your people live and then you promptly get arrested to start game 3! Yay! Starting from earth this time, you find out the reapers have already arrived... and they are killing off everybody. They attack earth and you run for it to prepare armies for this war. After a galaxy-wide effort of collecting and preparing armies and teams, you bring the fight back to earth in order to destroy the reapers once and for all. If you did good enough, you face 3 (ok, technically 4) endings. The endings I'll leave secret but the colors are Red (bleh ending), Blue (pretty good), and Green (best), then the 4th special secret suicide ending where you shoot the ghost child and let the galaxy be wiped out. All in all, they could have done some sappier endings, but I kinda liked the choices they went with myself
Replay - Oh hell yes. Try new classes, unlock better stuff as you go, get bonus things, discover things you missed, get better endings! I've beaten each of them a half-dozen times and each time I find something new or learn new tricks. If you like the game, replay it and see what else you can find along the way
Sound - Good sound effects, excellent voice acting, and good futuristic sounding music makes for great ambiance. You can really feel the experience when you play and have large speakers ready
Final score - 9/10 = I knock it down to 9 simply because of all the DLC and extra cost just to see the better endings and get the good stuff in game. The DLC's rarely actually add much more than a mission or two and could easily have been put right in the game. While still great to play, if you want to play, you should try and find the version that has all the DLC included
~~WARNING~~ Spoilers ahead ~~WARNING~~
Lets jump on in!
Gameplay - Now playing the game is very different depending on which one you play. The first one is very shooter-based but there are powers too. Using them can be a bit of a handful until you master it... most of the game comes down to gear and carefully picked targets. Then came the second one and the powers made a huge leap forward. Its still fairly straight-forward with the guns but now its mostly variety and picking the guns you enjoy while also using powers and abilities whenever your fight calls for it. Then came three and wow was it a change. Upgrade your guns, evolve your powers, and learn when and how to deliver a good strong laser-punch, and you can crush things beneath your heel. The powers are incredible and useful in every battle, the guns give you a good change of pace and different weapon groups can change your experience. Along with all this is exploring the galaxy. Now 1 had the best exploration simply for its planetary exploration areas. It made things more interesting to drop down in your tank, drive around, have some intense fights with giant Thresher Maws, then fly off in your ship. 2 became ship focused instead and you burned up fuel going from system to system, had to find and mine resources like crazy, and at the end, you had to be careful or you'd lose 2/3rds of your crew and possibly die yourself! The main game was fun but endgame became a puzzle that was annoying to crack... then came 3, and while it was still ship based exploration, the planets became more about finding money or crew than anything and missions on planets were the major thing. Yeah you still lost people and the often 'choice-less' party switching became a nightmare to deal with, but as a whole, the game was amazing, and exactly the kind of gameplay I wish the other 2 had involved
Story - A LOT of people hate the final choices but lets look at it from start to end... It begins with you, a trained killing machine of a soldier being sent to recover an artifact. Bad shit goes down and you find yourself pulled into a galaxy wide hunt for a madman hell-bent on killing everybody in order to prove his loyalty and power to his TALKING SHIP OF MURDER! You find out about 'The Reapers' and, with as little a spoiler as I can, it tells you how these giant super-ships of death are a thousand in number and all want the same thing: wipe out civilization. Game 2 brings back old friends and pulls out new faces as the plot thickens. You start by getting blown up, spend a few years deader than dead, then get brought back to fight some more, but against some Reaper minions known as Collectors. After a massive battle with them (and a half-finished reaper) you find out how many of your people live and then you promptly get arrested to start game 3! Yay! Starting from earth this time, you find out the reapers have already arrived... and they are killing off everybody. They attack earth and you run for it to prepare armies for this war. After a galaxy-wide effort of collecting and preparing armies and teams, you bring the fight back to earth in order to destroy the reapers once and for all. If you did good enough, you face 3 (ok, technically 4) endings. The endings I'll leave secret but the colors are Red (bleh ending), Blue (pretty good), and Green (best), then the 4th special secret suicide ending where you shoot the ghost child and let the galaxy be wiped out. All in all, they could have done some sappier endings, but I kinda liked the choices they went with myself
Replay - Oh hell yes. Try new classes, unlock better stuff as you go, get bonus things, discover things you missed, get better endings! I've beaten each of them a half-dozen times and each time I find something new or learn new tricks. If you like the game, replay it and see what else you can find along the way
Sound - Good sound effects, excellent voice acting, and good futuristic sounding music makes for great ambiance. You can really feel the experience when you play and have large speakers ready
Final score - 9/10 = I knock it down to 9 simply because of all the DLC and extra cost just to see the better endings and get the good stuff in game. The DLC's rarely actually add much more than a mission or two and could easily have been put right in the game. While still great to play, if you want to play, you should try and find the version that has all the DLC included
