I beat the game yesterday, with a total clock of 48 hours.
Overall, I say I loved the game. I have problems, but it was still a blast. I'm not sure if it's my game of the year though. Actually, I'm kinda stuck on that subject at the moment. Between Portal, Persona 3, and Mass Effect I can't fucking choose which game I enjoyed the most. They're all so good. Portal and P3 are definitely the more polished, better games but I'm of the opinion that there's a distinguishable difference between best and favorite. I would laugh at someone who said Star Wars was the best movie ever, but I could respect if it was their favorite.
That said, here's my run down:
+ Amazing presentation for an rpg. Mass Effect's cutscenes feel like the next step up for rpgs.
+ This is the ONE game that makes you feel like a space badass. It is one of the few games where I actually feel important, and that *my* decisions actually affected something, which is rare.
+ Space lesbian sex awww yeah.
+ All of the story worlds are fucking amazing.
+ Good story overall, with tough decisions you have to make.
+ Good characters.
+ Excellent music.
+ Extremely fun battle system.
+ Good difficulty curve. Even with overly powered Spectre weapons I still died once in a while if I wasn't careful. I can't wait to play it on Hardcore mode.
+ A step forward past Kotor and Jade Empire, two games I only *liked* and didn't end up *loving*.
+ High replay value. I can't wait to start a new game.
- The game is in, some ways, a step back for Bioware.
- The characterization is very anti-Bioware. Most of the game, the characters say the same damn thing. In past Bioware titles you could talk to your party members at any time and usually they would have something new to say. They also regularly made a comment when you made a decision and, sometimes, fought over your decisions. Mass Effect doesn't have this. Hell, you can only really talk to your party members on the Normandy. Bioware dropped the ball here, and imo, is the game's biggest flaw, but despite that, I loved the characters (except Carth...I mean Kaiden). They all had their quirks, their flaws, but remained likable throughout, and unlike say, FFXII, even though they lacked characterization you still felt like you could connect with them.
- Another step back for Bioware is the sidequests. Sidequests are one of my favorite things about Bioware games. They tend to varied and interesting. I did all the sidequests I could find in ME and most of them were lacking. What I like about western rpgs is that their quests tend to be story oriented and things that infuse a little more "oomph" into the game's plot and themes. Mass Effect ditches this for fetch quests and collectathons. I mean, you had some of those before, but not to this degree, and they certainly didn't eclipse the story based sidequests either.
- Non-story worlds are boring and lacking. They are all riddled with mountains, they have no goddamn terrain diversity, there's no wild life to speak of sans 2-3 planets, and all of them tend to have a similar layout: anamoly, debris, some random hideout where mercenaries are, with the same damn boxes with the same damn corridors. When Bioware hyped up the space travel, I thought they'd put more thought into it.
- The main story is extremely short and lacks meat.
- The ally achievements are, for the most part, a burden.
- Texture pop in is ridiculous
- The auto-save feature is useless.
- Some people may consider this a bad thing, and that's the learning curve. The battle system definitely has a learning curve.
- The inventory system SUCKS.
- The sidequests expose one niggle and that is repetition. Reviewers complained about how Assassin's Creed is repetitive, but Mass Effect is much more so. Going from planet to planet gets dull and the reason I did all the sidequests I could find *this* time is because I don't think I could stomach doing it on later playthroughs.
I would say Mass Effect is a flawed masterpiece. It does a lot right, but the few issues most have with it bump it down a few notches from what it could have been, had those issues been worked out. I really wonder what ME would be like if Bioware had oh...6 more months to develop the game. It definitely feels rushed in some spots.
I'd give the game an 8.5, which on my scale, is a great game.
