Mass Effect 1: Pretty Intolerable for a Newcomer

I hear a great many calling for a HD 'remaster' of the early Mass Effect(s), but, after around a combined 20 hours of play (including a restart) of the first game in the trilogy, I feel that Bioware would have to put in substantial work to bring it up to scratch if a rerelease was to become reality.

Quite frankly, fundamentals of the combat, cover, and autosave (not to mention the occasional greyed-out save option) systems are abysmal by today's standards. The atmosphere, narrative, characters, and world of Mass Effect have kept me playing to this point, but the primitive gameplay itself has aged terribly (I'm not convinced it would've been considered great back in 2007), and the baffling decision to prohibit manual saving in certain sections outside of combat has ultimately resulted in me putting the controller down and backing away.

I asked the Giant Bomb community if they would recommend I pick ME1 up on a live stream chat, and I'm glad I did--after all, it was only £3.29 on sale on PSN--as my curiosity has been satiated. But, after dying for the umpteenth time in both the Mako and on foot, and losing hours upon hours of progress (sapping all momentum and tension the narrative would otherwise have), I would have to say 'no' if pushed to answer the same question.

No doubt a classic in its day, ME1 has presented me with the stark realisation that playability, innovation, and 'player prerogative' has come a long way in a single console generation.

I add my voice to the choir: in principle, I would love a Mass Effect remaster--providing certain major gameplay aspects were addressed (and Bioware promised to keep the film grain).

Mass Effect is in some ways the best entry in the franchise with respect to role-playing and world building, but yeah, there's no denying that it's very rough around the edges. In terms of both the gameplay and technical details, there were noticeable issues even when it was a new game, but I suppose it was easier to forgive at that point.

I quite dislike the first Mass Effect. The story was good, but the game was a complete chore to play through and I made a decision to just mainline the story pretty early on. I probably beat the main story with only 10-12 hours of play time. I played Mass Effect pretty close to release and was pretty turned off from trying future entries in the series. A few months before Mass Effect 3 came out I decided to pick up Mass Effect 2 on a whim. I was pleasantly surprised by the improvements made to the moment-to-moment gameplay and the smart streamlining of some of the more cumbersome systems of the first game. Mass Effect 2 is one of my favorite games of all time and probably my number two game from last generation. I also enjoyed Mass Effect 3 quite a bit, but ultimately I enjoyed 2 more than 3. The ending of 3 was definitely kind of a bummer, but I came away thinking the ending was merely mediocre, not the human rights violation that some people seem to think it is. The gameplay only gets better throughout the series, but the story peaked at 2 for me.

The gameplay of ME1 was rough even in its day. It's really the story that pulled me through and in that respect, it hasn't been equalled by any game in the franchise. Later entries have smoothed out the rough edges, but never matched the storytelling of the original.

While I agree 100% that, at least the gameplay part, of Mass Effect is pretty damn bad today, it was very easy to forgive it when it came out. At that time, people were still talking about what genre's they liked and a game crossing two genre's together was very cool and unheard of to do both parts equally well. Mass Effect was an RPG and took an RPG approach, not a shooter approach. It was the evolution of KOTOR, not Gears of War. I can still go back to ME because of nostalgia and because I know how that game works inside out. I never or very rarely die and I never lose more than a minute or two of progress if I do. Truth be told though, I haven't done the 'entire trilogy playthrough' as much as I thought I would precisely because that first game is so rough. I am actually playing through it now again for the first time in years.

I'm not entirely sure if you are new to the series, you're talking about newcomers but I can't quite tell if you are one. If so, it becomes much, much better in ME2. It reaches the pinnacle in ME3 where it actually successfully became the best of both worlds (except if you didn't like the ending, then everything about it is somehow automatically bad).

Still my favorite of the series by a fair margin, but I don't think anyone would argue it doesn't have design problems. Oof... that inventory system.

The first game is one of the best of the trilogy in everything except gameplay. It's pretty much why I always recommend people play it on the easiest difficulty and just enjoy the story beats. The fun gameplay doesn't come into play until 2 sadly. It was alright back when it released though. Not great, but tolerable. Now it's just kind of hard to believe that was how it was all originally set up. Some of the rpg stuff is cool and would be neat to see in a more polished way though.

Game is hella janky, while I did like the game when I played it, I would appreciate an improved version nicely packaged with 2 and 3.

I don't think there are enough hours in the day to address everything that makes Mass Effect 1 tedious. I had a good time with the main plot of that game by the end, but there's just as much bad as there's good in that game. There's that practically story empty mission on Therum which is one of the 3 major missions after the intro. There's the Mako controls, and there's the empty and ugly planets you can explore with it. There's the 3 or 4 prefab rooms you go to for every side mission. There's the way your party members hardly interact with each other, or for that matter, with you. Bioware has come a long way since the romances in that game. There's the way the pacing in the intro is exceedingly dull, so while the Citadel is good at establishing a universe, it's also a terribly slow start. There's the way the combat isn't fun and the bosses are bad, so every climactic encounter is an anti-climax. The final boss, "best villain in the series, Saren" is one of those frog geths with a weird shotgun-shaped laser for crying out loud. There's the way you can spend hours with mods for negligible returns in combat.

What pulled me through is the way they established a world and then delivered on a plot in that world. They set up enough to have some good twists near the end, and from Virmire onwards the story is just cool. But Virmire onwards is also just three missions. Thankfully the two other missions after the Citadel besides Therum are pretty good episodic stories too.

LIES! That game is the best ME game. And it still holds up today. ME2 ruined the game play. The only people who think that was an improvement are the people who wanted it to not be an RPG and wanted it to be a cover shooter.

I played it last year, I think it has aged considerably better than most its peers from that era. I went in expecting the gameplay to be bad, but I don't think it's that terrible.

The game is ten years old now (wow) so nothing from then is probably going to be aces.

If you want to have a good experience with ME1, Play it on PC with mouse and keyboard. It makes that game (the combat specifically) Soo much more enjoyable.

Even the story missions in Mass Effect 1 aren't as good as some people make out. The concepts are good, the science base overrun by an alien species, the colony mind-controlled by an ancient being living under the earth, but there are relatively few character moments on Feros or Noveria, not to mention Therum, which barely even counts as a mission. I remain pretty convinced that the reputation ME 1 has is based purely on how well it sticks the landing in the Virmire-Ilos-Citadel sequence, which are, to be fair, some of the best missions across any of the games.

I agree completely that any rerelease of the series would do well to port ME3's combat to all the earlier games. I'm not sure what they would do about the Mako sections. Increase the shield regen speed and fix the aiming?

I agree that the autosave/checkpointing is a pain.

But I appreciate that the game forces you to play it more like a KOTOR-style RPG than a shooter. You've really got to manage and juggle your party's skills and talents if you hope to get through it. It seems more deliberate than 2 and 3, and I like that.

I absolutely love Mass Effect 1. The story is great, and I had a lot of fun with it.

But I'm absolutely loathe to play it again now, in a way I'm not with ME2 & 3. Because it has not dated well at all. The Mako stuff is probably the most egregiously bad, but even the way weapon upgrades work is just very old-fashioned RPG rather than the more streamlined (& frankly convenient) methods that Bioware would later introduce. So you're definitely not wrong that it's a game of it's time, but a re-release doesn't really need a whole lot of work. The game works. It's an old game now so you have to go into it with those expectations in mind. It's also not really old enough to warrant the effort that would be involved to make the action moments play better, or Mako feel less bad. That's a lot of investment.

I'd definitely have loved more of the RPG aspects to stay in the series, but that ship has sailed by this point, much as it has with Dragon Age. EA don't make PC-style RPGs anymore and while it's lamentable, it's also totally understandable, that shit is a niche market within a niche market.

@zevvion: You know people dislike ME3 for reasons other than the ending right? And just because you might like the ending doesn't automatically make the rest of the game good? There was plenty about it that was half-baked and screamed "released too early."

1. If you bought the game first day, you couldn't properly import your character's appearance from ME2. And it gave you a really ugly error message.

2. The beginning was equally, if not more terrible in terms of storytelling than the ending. It just sort of plops you down on Earth do shit can blow up, but never explains how you got from the ending of ME2 to the start of ME3. Clearly important things happened, but the game can't be arsed to tell you.

3. The removal of the film grain filter made you realize just how ugly that engine was in spots.

4. The scanning mechanic was badly explained and somehow worse than the planet scanning in ME2.

5. There are entire mechanics that are introduced in single player that serve no purpose other than to be used in multiplayer. The omnitool blade, for instance, is tutorialized as this stealth kill weapon, but every enemy in single player knows immediately and magically where you are as soon as you enter an area, so it's useless for that.

I could go on, but yeah, not really an outstanding game in my opinion. Not terrible, but it's not even close to being a great (and maybe even a *good*) game. It's the Return of the King of video games - it gets too much credit just because people recognize the trilogy itself as the achievement, but as an individual entry its by far the weakest of the series.

There are a lot of bad design choices in that game, but I'll stick up for the combat. Managing cooldowns on your teammates' special abilities while maintaining a steady stream of covering fire with your non-reloadable guns was a lot more interesting than the Gears of War rip-off Bioware adopted in the second game. Cover shooting is just so damned boring, and having all your skills share a cooldown really limited your ability to be aggressive.

ME is flawed but it has some of the best story beats in the series. The conversation with Sovereign is maybe one of the best video games moment of all time. The combat gets alright after the mid game when you start shooting entire ennemy squads out of the air with singularity and other biotic powers.

I will agree that the combat in the first game was never great. It does improve a great deal in the second and third games (though they have also deifently aged a bit), so if you like the story I would recommend to keep going.

Well as long as you agree about keeping the film grain in I don't care one way or another about the rest of your opinions on ME1.

I recommend knocking the difficulty of ME1 down to easy, mainlining the rest of the story - there's some good stuff in there, just do it - and then move on to the vastly superior Mass Effect 2. ME2 still isn't perfect in the gameplay department but I've never seen a bigger improvement in gameplay between sequels, except maybe between old school Resident Evil and RE4.

I know I stepped on some toes with that one so I'm outta here.

I bought ME1 when ME2 came out because I wanted to make sure I was up-to-speed on the story. Even at that time, I realized the gameplay in ME1 was really lacking. I put the difficulty down to the easiest setting to plow through the gameplay as quickly as possible, enjoy the story, and get to ME2.

That pretty much what I did. I know there's a lot of people that defend it because it's the most rooted in rpg-ness, but boy is it night and day.

Then again I'm someone who thought even the story wasn't all that. The world building is cool (if very heavily inspired by Babylon 5) and some of the characters are alright, but I was expecting more plot-wise. Yes I know Bioware writing isn't usually praised for plot, but I was hoping for a little more.

I came to ME1 after ME2 and while the game is clearly rougher, I thought it had a better story, atmosphere and sense of exploration.

As a game, Mass Effect is a hot, stinking, burning piece of garbage. Story is okay though.

There was a time that I might agree with you, but knowing what we know now, it's hard to feel that way anymore. It's too bad they went the way they did with the reapers. I'm left here wishing they went with the whole super nova thing that was hinted at in ME2, and was the idea for ME3. Ah well, it was not to be. Andromeda still looks good though.

I also went back and played it after playing about 10 hours of ME2, and yeah, it didn't feel great to play after playing ME2.

Its an rpg not a shooter like the others, yes you shoot but its not dictated by aim but rng and stats. I play it with that in mind and still enjoy it a good deal. Also just pick infiltrator and snipe everything once you upgrade the stats, pretty much easy mode.

Man, I guess my taste when it comes to ME doesn't really align with anybody elses. Of course I found the checkpoint system borderline unacceptable as I always do with those kinds of systems, but the RPG based shooting mechanics and the MAKO sections actually kept me playing for a while even though I found the writing pretty underwhelming. I never finished it though, and all I saw about ME2 and 3 was that they took away more and more of the things I had enjoyed about the first one.

I'm in the camp who genuinely enjoyed Mass Effect's gameplay because it was an RPG first and foremost.

Can you turn the difficulty down to easy? That made the game much more tolerable for me, and I wound up really enjoying the story. The combat is just not worth engaging with though.

I could see how someone brand new to it wouldn't like it now but it is still my favorite. ACTUAL LOOT!

@fisk0: No, no, I'm right there with you. Frankly, I can't understand the reverence the Giant Bomb community holds for ME2. Easily the weakest in the franchise, in my eyes. Sure, it had some strong character moments, but everything else was better in either the first or the third game (barring the last hour of the latter).

I don't understand how anyone could lose hours of gameplay. You just can't save during combat or in combat areas. Like it would checkpoint at every area. Anyway...

ME1 still has the best moments from the series in my opinion: the reaper reveal & telling the galactic council go f**k themselves.

I always thought the combat was a step down from the turn based combat of KOTOR and never really liked it.

Also Saren/ Sovereign are the best antagonists in the whole series. They should have saved a Sovereign battle for the 3rd game. The best being a star trek style battle - Sovereign vs Normandy where you need to direct your crew around the ship.....not some poxy horde mode outside Big Ben against some nobody reaper grunts

Yep its my favourite in the series and one of my top gaming experiences but still its so rough i can only go back to it in my memory.

Even if ME4 look like a step in the right direction i would still be alot more interested in a remaster/remake of ME1.

My opinion of Mass Effect 1 in 2007: This is a pretty cool game. Sure the shooting is a little off compared to Gears of War, but it's great playing an RPG that isn't Final Fantasy for a change.

My opinion of Mass Effect 1 in 2017: Let's just get this over with so I can play Mass Effect 2.

I didn't like the original the first time I played it through. Mass Effect 2 was eventually the game that turned me around on the series, and almost retroactively made the original more enjoyable--I even returned to Mass Effect 1 and gave it a second chance.

It's pretty fair to call it the worst-playing of the three games, but it isn't without merit or value. Some of the characters are just so, so well written; the codex helps illustrate wonderful and rich details about a vibrant universe; and, of course, it's extremely fun to watch how your decisions shape the fiction in the following installments.

I'm not the biggest fan of the series, but I'll say that the first game had some good ideas and had a sense of exploration to it that I felt the second game lacked (never finished the third). It seems with each iteration they just drop things instead of expanding/fixing them.

I'm tempted to play through the series again (or rather start again and finish the third), but I dunno.

I agree, but the Illusive Man is right there.

Sovereign is certainly the best of the Reapers, though.

@bojackhorseman I'm not defending the ending, but just want to say that first pitch was even worse. Dark Energy will destroy the universe and we had to keep killing all organics until we found the right subset of organics that could use biotics to solve the Dark Energy problem, some came close like the Asari, but now... humans! You've done it! Let's counter this Dark Energy together!

At least the ending that made it in doesn't actually disqualify the conversation with Sovereign. 'Motivations you can't comprehend'. We have to kill you to save your kind. Not perfect, but it sort of works. As opposed to: we have to kill you because... oh wait, you guys appear to be the chosen ones! Let's go!

@fisk0 The gameplay certainly changed after the first game, in my eyes for the better. But something that you probably liked it for are the characters. And I think they have gotten better at various ways of portraying them too. ME2 has a ton of characters and they were all decently fleshed out. ME3 actually had a lot of interesting discussions in it and I ended up enjoying the approach that game took with its characters the most. It felt the most nuanced and real 'lively' for lack of a better word.

1. I did and I could.
2. I'm not going to say I loved the way ME3 opened. It seemed like it opened a bit too fast. But they do tell you how you ended up where you end up in that opening over the course of the rest of the game.
3. Eh, I guess? I don't know, I think it is the best looking ME game and I was never there for fantastic graphics.
4. Can't follow you there. It was explained well and was very straight forward. I don't remember having any issues with it when I first played it and I certainly do not now. It was a lot better than ME2.
5. I honestly don't remember them introducing stealth mechanics. Not saying you are lying, but I don't remember. I do know that the part you're talking about is a tutorial to drag someone over cover and stab them. Isn't it possible they set that up as a tutorial and it wasn't an actual stealth mechanic? Because I remember pulling people over cover is something I did a lot.

I don't know. All seem like incredibly minor things to dislike the game for. But yes, of course I understand someone can dislike ME3 for something other than the ending. But they generally don't. The hate for the ending is the thing that spouted people to search for more of what it did 'wrong' just so they can bash it more. A clear example of that is the 'Shepard just overhears people talking and then does that mission and comes back, ME3 is bad!' stuff. That was already present in ME2.

Its the best in the series but the combat is easily the worst. It's atmosphere, mood, look and feel, music and exploration on the planets with the mako is what makes it better than the others in my opinion. Had the best story and villain out of the whole series as well.

@newfangled Are you going to finish it or are you close to finishing it? How far through are you?

speaking as someone who s-ranked ME1 and ME2 (will get around to 3 someday)-

ME1 is total butt sometimes. the hardest difficulty is just totally dumb (see: that first krogan fight where you find liara).

that game is pure unfettered potential, and it's the strength of everything else that carries it.

Sounds like the wrong class. Pick Adept and wizard your way through the whole game, then in Mass Effect 2 pick adept again and get an assault rifle. Or switch to Vanguard and get an assault rifle. Then skip Mass Effect 3.

Walking through Mass Effect 1 like a god is pretty fun.

Mass Effect 2 on insanity with an Adept was really fun. You'd just set off all these singularity explosions over and over.

Lots of spoilers in a thread made by somebody who hasnt finished the first game, i know its old but at least tag it lol.

I am 100% an RPG fanboy and will take an RPG over a shooter like 90% of the time. ME1 falls into that 10%. The game may have more RPG elements, but they are badly implemented and only make the game worse by and large. As much as I love RPGs, I'll still take solid 3rd person shooter gameplay over poorly designed shooter RPG gameplay. (Although I think the whole shooter RPG concept is fundamentally flawed anyway.)

You might argue they should have refined the RPG mechanics in ME2 instead of leaning more into the shooter gameplay, but that didn't happen, nor particularly relevant. Of the currently available ME games, ME1 has the worst gameplay.

Sad to hear that it doesn't hold up for people. ME1 is my favorite of the series and one of my favorite games of all time. I played it through three times, and I almost never replay games.

Hmmm I think you are also a big factor in this OP, it's not just the game. My friends sister has barely played 10 games in her life and played this about 6 months ago, maybe a bit more. No qualms about controls, just hated the characters (yes, she's a monster). I'd be willing to acquiesce that maybe because she really does not play modern games, she has not been spoiled by them. That's a thought, for sure.

In general I wouldn't disagree that it is not as user friendly today but again I feel you need to place yourself more firmly in the equation. Do you play games older than ME? as old as ME? I've played games from far before my time and enjoyed them, regardless of mechanical challenges. I feel sometimes this is just a simple attitude or perspective people have. In my mind, game systems don't age in a linear fashion (always getting better), they just get different. If you are willing to meet games halfway in this sense, perhaps you can have more fun with these older systems. I say this because if you find ME "too old" to suggest to newcomers, than imagine all the other games you are also saying "No" to, and contributing to the cycle of gamers only chasing the hot & new.

Every Mass Effect game has its flaws but I still think it is the best trilogy of all time. I\ve played through each games half a dozen times and just love them. I have read the books too.

I'd rather not have any RPG style combat if it's done in too shallow a manner and ME 1 was too close to being button mash-y. Abilities you used because they were off cooldown and were free so why not? No real strategy in that game, much preferred ME 2 combat. Both were shallow but ME 2 felt streamlined and exciting(ish).

If you can't reach at LEAST KotOR level of mechanical depth in your RPG then you need to know where to simplify, something ME 2 did well.

Was about to write the same. That moment still sends shivers down my spine, it was brilliant.