I was intrigued by this game due to its sci-fi RPG niche target. It failed to do either really well; it does a decent job at both of them together. Perhaps one of my biggest disappointments is the heavy focus on the story; the cinematics are great, the little twists are decent. However, since the story itself is rather short, it is a bit unsatisfying when your character can so quickly grasp all the complexities of the situation and eliminate the opposition.
Another big disappointment was the enormous price tag for such a quick game. It is labeled as "open-ended", but I am having trouble understanding how that is so. Perhaps multiple endings? Replay value is astronomically low. Why?
Because there are just so many things wrong with the game. The eye candy is awesome, the sound effects are superb, and the acting is quite decent. But the guts of the game suck. The map blow chunks so large they almost did not find through my monitor; I was actually impressed by how bad the mapping features were. There is no way to tell where you have been, the map is completely 2D, markers do not always show up appropriately, and navigation is an absolute pain in the arse. You can receive a side mission to go somewhere and then have no idea how to get there. Even in a small environment like Citadel, even with the "Rapid Transit", I found myself bumbling around trying to make heads/tails of the stupid map.
While the side missions help distract away from the main story (and make an 8-hour game a 24-hour game), they are all so similar to each other. I got to the pointed where I hated traveling to a rocky planet (where is all the fauna?) bouncing around in my MAKO only to find a "hideout" that had one of three configurations.
I like the MAKO. I hated using it because of the scenarios. The sound effects of the gun punching holes were spot-on, and the cannon's explosive discharge was excellent, and the little click as a new round was slammed into the shaft was just a perfect way to top it off. The handling was a bit cartoonish; I found I could do flips, rolls and flat-out awful face-plants, and the MAKO always bounced back unto its wheels. But it was very prone to climb up the side of things, or spin out in a very unrealistic way. The only fun time I had using the MAKO was when taking out Geth or defensive positions.
I also liked the experience/point system, and building skills. That is RPG, after all. But it all seemed rather limited. I expected a lot more from a BioWare game; NeverWinter Nights had its faults, but limited class and skill growth was not generally among them. Not to mention that after playing Oblivion for a while, I most definitely wanted something more out of Mass Effect.
I hated the inventory. While it is nice not to have a weight limit, and it is nice to be able to morph any item into the moronic "omni-gel", trying to figure out how best to upgrade a weapon, for who and when was a nightmare. Perhaps I paid too much attention to that, and instead micromanaged where I should have been more laid back. The special effects on the guns were not as impressive as everything else, IMHO. Even grenades failed to impress me.
The "magic", or biotech as it is called, is rather impressive, but so dang narrow-minded. Yes, there are two branches, Biotics and Technology, which can be used to confound, harm, heal and do other wonderful things. But just a handful of things, getting bigger and better as the character grows in experience. I wanted more. Something like a chain-lightning effect would have been cool. Or what about mind control? The nemesis was able to control others, but we cannot.
I was also extremely disappointed that I could not have my technology specialist disarm/hack components that were too "hard" for my character. Why have them along in the first place. It is like the old D&D days and having a thief in the party for the sole purpose of picking locks. What if you had no way to tell the thief to pick the lock?
The manual is dismal. I never did figure out how to use the quickslots (didn't spend much time trying to figure it out). Perhaps this is the stamp of EA on the game? Hard to tell.
Some other things I have to get off my chest. The background musak when in the Navigation computer is downright annoying. And while the music in other environments was tastefully sci-fi, the same trak being cycled over and over just made it taste bad. The adrenalin pumping sounds/music and "exotic" new look of the last battle-scenes near the end of the game were great, if only because they broke the tired mold cast by the rest of the game. Collecting the little trinkets (medallions, writings, precious metals, etc etc) reminded me of the Ratchet & Clank little extra doodads one could collect, and just as worthless. Again, the mapping features (or lack thereof) utterly failed to bestow any kind of historical information or keep stats on where one has been.
The Reaper "Sovereign" was enticing; a teaser, really. I wanted to see it do more, and it went down too easily in the end. I wanted something that would compete and be able to go toe-to-toe. But then we start talking about space ships, and this game is not about space ships whatsoever.
There were a couple bugs, but not huge deals. I got stuck in an elevator once; after 20 minutes (I left to go run an errand), I killed the game and came back. I also once was pushed into a narrow crevice by some stairs (a biotic push) with one of my comrades, and the stupid character would not move out of the way so we could both get out of the crevice. Even if I gave instructions to move. Minor things.
I liked the game, but there are a number of serious flaws. It is most definitely not worth the "brand new, just released for PC" price! I would be curious what Halo fans thought of it. I usually do not like FPS (first person shooter) games, and now I have more reason to stay away from them. I am sorry if this is not fair to the FPS crowd; I realize this is allegedly a sci-fi/RPG first, a shooter second.
UPDATE: July 9, 2008
I played through once again to test my theory of replay value; it holds true. The single biggest advantage of replaying the game is if one can remember where things generally are, they can ignore the featureless maps. I continue to be disappointed by the fact that my tech squad members did not contribute enough decrypt skill to unlock all the goodies. I also tried a new task (not mission critical) of "Locating the Keepers". The result was enormously disappointing, especially since it utterly missed a grand opportunity to tie into the main story. I also tried to aim for a couple achievements, like having an Alliance soldier by my side for a majority of the game; I have no idea how I did not get that achievement, since Ashley was there 99% of the time. The achievements in general seem kinda nice, but not enough to entice me to play the game over and over and over. If only there were a way to turn off the cinematics, fast travel (getting better at Rapid Transit, but it is not enough) and vastly improved mapping functions. The game is fun, but in the end it was a waste of money.
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