Finally got a chance to play this game! It’s very interesting, I played a remaster of it that was fairly recent but it was originally released in 2007. Thinking of other games released then, it was surprisingly like games that would be released recently in its general format.

The visuals are sort of ok and I can see where it has aged. The lore is neat and the overall story is decent, although a little war hero-ey which doesn’t fully jive with my energy but I respect the way to was told for the most part. The branching dialogue is neat conceptually. The Paragon and Renegade system begins to feel a little thin and it would be nice if there was more incentive to try more varied options. Sometimes the dialogue tree makes the conversation take very abrupt turns and it can feel a little rushed.

The actual gameplay is fine, the fighting is pretty good and there are different ways to attack enemies and engage with environments. I enjoyed that I could decrypt things, but the ABXY unlock sequences got repetitive over time and I would have appreciated more variety in puzzles. The game also has some whack bugs that got frustrating at times, particularly with progression or traversal.

Side quests were similar, where there was a lot of driving in the Mako to trailers and compounds that all looked identical on different planets. I think with a bit more variety I would have been more encouraged to try different things.

Generally, a solid first entry I looked forward to playing with a few faults but interesting enough to play the second game.

This game does some things very well. The character designs are fantastic and creative. There is some interesting lore that both sets the foundation for the game and is also directly interlinked with the quests you complete and the characters you interact with. The voice acting is mostly really good, but Shepard’s is awful which really throws off every scene since he’s the main protagonist. The good parts kept me fairly interested throughout, but the game also gets most of the core aspects wrong. First, the worlds are completely uninteresting and barren except for the few markers on the map, which themselves are the same across every planet. The gameplay is just fine, but I dislike the UI and the slowness of switching weapons/using abilities. The loot system is honestly just a burden. It got annoying clearing out my inventory and comparing every new gun I picked up to the guns I had equipped. The story is pretty good, I didn’t have any major gripes. However, this game does that typical annoying thing where the dialogue choices you choose are often nothing like what Shepard actually says. 90% of the time I thought I accidentally picked the wrong one. The experience was still fairly enjoyable in the end, mostly because I enjoy games where you get to pick from an ensemble of characters to team up with. However, I think this game is objectively pretty bad and I’m surprised the reviews are so high.

Esse foi meu primeiro contato com a trilogia e devo admitir que me arrependo de não ter jogado antes.

Mass Effect 1 tem um dos melhores worldbuildings que já vi dentro de um jogo. É tudo tão natural e fluído que me fez ter vontade de conhecer mais e mais sobre as raças, os planetas, as tecnologias, etc.

Há um codex no jogo que é organizado como uma enciclopédia pra consultar os variados tópicos abordados no mundo, atualizado continuamente ao longo da jornada. Uma boa sacada pra quem esquece das coisas como eu.

A gameplay travada não é das melhores e já mostra sua idade, parecendo um shooter de qualidade duvidável. E tudo fica pior quando você dirige o Mako, veículo de exploração e combate de Shepard.

O fator RPG é excelente e cada escolha nos diálogos realmente importam. Algumas ações têm consequências durante a trilogia toda e isso é muito imersivo.

Gostei muito dos personagens do esquadrão, são bem escritos e te dá motivação de conhecer cada um, podendo até ter um romance com alguns deles (infelizmente em Mass Effect 1 não há romances gays).

Outro elemento narrativo que me despertou interesse foi a política do jogo. O protagonista é constantemente exposto à questões sociais complexas como racismo intergalático, genocídio, ganância corporativa, corrupção, etc. Todas as suas escolhas e intervenções (ou omissões) podem ter resultados bons ou ruins mas que não é necessariamente um karma, pois o jogo te deixa impune seja você do bem (Paragon) ou do mal (Renegade).

Sem dúvidas um jogo incrível mas que precisa de um remake urgente.

I originally beat the first Mass Effect game about a decade ago, and to be honest I don't think I really appreciated it then. My poor laptop wasn't well suited to running the game, and my inexperience with shooters made for a cumbersome experience. Returning to it now, via the Legendary Edition remasters, my greatest impression is how good the world building is. You play as Cmd. Shepard, the first human soldier to join an elite arm of the galactic special services. You find yourself embroiled in a plot to continue a cyclical pattern of galactic genocide taking place over the course of millennia, and you have to make allies of various unique and interesting species to stop the threat. It's a game where your choices really do matter, both in how other characters treat you, but even towards who lives and dies and how the ending plays out. These choices can directly carry over to the sequel titles, giving a level of storytelling that even now hasn't really been surpassed. I really enjoyed the look of the future presented in this game, not just with the technology and alien races, but even things like how human fashion will evolve. It's a well thought out and cohesive vision. There are a variety of different combat methods, but those are somewhat locked depending on what class you choose at the beginning of the game, which is a bit of a shame. I ended up going pure third person shooter, which is rather enjoyable, if not terribly original. Any complaint I have towards this game is pretty minor. It's surprisingly shorter than I recall for one. I did nearly all the side quests available to me, but I think there's only five or six stages in the main campaign. The side quests have interest premises, but all take place in one of two copy pasted enemy bases, which can feel a bit silly. Overall, a thoroughly enjoyable replay, and I'm looking forward to continuing on to the rest of the series, which I never got around to finishing back in the day.

The remaster of this game looks so good. This is always been my least fav of the trilogy, but it’s growing more and more on me every time I replay it. The only big thing that’s brings it down from the rest of the empty barren planets you explore. There’s nothing really to do on them unfortunately and they’re all busy work, even tho I would’ve like them to just, tweak it and make it better to explore, I understand why they got rid of the feature in the later 2 games. This game has the best rpg elements tho with the skills trees and customization of armor and weapons. It’s really a shame that they dumbed it down in later entries cuz it’s really nice to have in this one. This is a perfect start to a great series.

Eu sinto que ME1 é MUITO mais um RPG do que um jogo de tiro. Não no sentido conceitual. No sentido literal mesmo. O jogo me parece muito mais próximo de algo como KOTOR do que de Gears of War (o 2 e o 3 estão muito mais pra GoW). E isso cria uma porção de pequenos problemas. O tiro do jogo é bem ruim, o cover é ruim, as habilidades serem em tempo real é ruim, tudo é meio lerdo. O inventário é uma bagunça terrível. Mas ele ainda faz algumas coisas que foram um pouco perdidas no resto da trilogia original. O sistema de missões que o 2 implementa torna tudo muito mais rápido e meio artificial. Aqui você tem que explorar os lugares de verdade e por mais que na maior parte do tempo seja chato, ainda dá uma sensação de imersão maior do que só um monte de loading screens. Se eu prefiro a chatice do que a eficiência? Não, mete loading screen aí mané. Mas que eu me senti mais imerso no 1 na maior parte do tempo, eu com certeza me senti.

O mais curioso de rejogar esse jogo após todos esses anos é ver que Andromeda tá inteirinho aqui. Você tem a exploração chata e inútil num veículo terrível de pilotar (no 1, o veículo no Andromeda é decente), você tem milhões de sidequests pra coletar coisas inúteis que não tem payoff satisfatório, você tem um monte de missão genérica sem graça com npcs genéricos. Tudo. A maior diferença é que no Andromeda esse monte de lixo tá largado no seu caminho enquanto aqui você tem que ir caçar essas coisas em planetas aleatórios. E o Andromeda tem um combate bom de verdade.

Pode parecer que eu odeio esse jogo por falar tantas coisas negativas, mas eu adoro ele. Tem uma puta história boa e aquela magia de fazer você se sentir no comando de tudo que você faz (apesar de como de costume ser só uma ilusão bobinha). Alguns personagens excelentes, alguns extremamente ruins e uns que você nem lembra que existem, assim como na vida real! Até o combate que eu reclamei eu secretamente gosto. Eu acho que todo mundo que fica dizendo que esse é o pior jogo da trilogia tá só maluco. É o terceiro melhor jogo da trilogia!

Recomendo demais, o remaster torna tudo que não é rosto humano tão liiiiiindo, todo lugar que você olha é uma screenshot esperando pra ser tirada. Eu nem sei dizer se as mudanças de gameplay que eles anunciaram fez alguma diferença porque eu não jogava esse jogo fazia uns 12 anos mas ainda recomendo essa versão simplesmente porque tudo funciona em hardware moderno sem necessitar de 1 bilhão de mods, além de que tem suporte nativo à controle (porque a versão original de PC só suportava mouse/teclado). Só diria para não perder um minuto da sua vida sequer tentando explorar planetas aleatórios com o Mako. Confia.

The start of one of gaming's best sci-fi stories. With the remaster, the game has been modernized to an extent, and the graphics get a respectable bump. The core gameplay, and especially the menus, are definitely showing their age, though. Regardless, I had a blast playing through this classic again and appreciated having a bit more context for the larger story beats this time around.

100% Completion Notes: Not too bad overall, playing on Insanity difficulty had its hair-tearing moments, though. The trophy list also includes a separate one that spans all three games, so you need to be cautious to get all of those as well.

Mass effect explores the vastness of the universe while simultaneously exploring the more inter-personal relationship between player action and reaction
Through mass effect, you're given the role of commander as you designate your Sheppard's background, skills and appearance bad character creator look that lead you down a intergalactic mystery that intertwines that of man and machine.
Being new to an interspecies federation, humankind attempts to assert their place amongst many other species each with their own politics and problems. You play as your own captain kirk, in charge of several crewmates that you order around to varying degrees of competence

You can choose to be a paragon meaning you're a goody two shoes that chooses to be compassionate and acts heroic.
Or you can opt to be a renegade asshole that picks the opposite of a narrative space adventure in favour of playing the game as a gun-ho, that's it just gun ho.
You can also just play how you would in these situations, creating a more nuanced character.

I'm going to be reviewing mass effect 1 and discuss how bioware made a significant impact on narrative driven games back in 2007. For this review I played the game twice and my second playthrough was through the Legendary edition released on ps4, xbox one and PC in 2021.

The prime directive
Before the pains of andromeda
mass effect was a flagship for bioware, being a titular series that would promise synergy between each game in player continuity, ensuring that your choices reflected the narrative that you told through play within the confides of the developers vision.
I think part of the reason that I find myself detached or bored when watching someone else play mass effect is because I want to micro-manage each choice to my vision.
Back seating mass effect is like trying to tell david lynch what to do or tarantino on a set, you just don't do it. In Mass Effect, the person in control is the director of this game flick, customising everything from loadout, spec to dialogue choices.
I remember one evening when having a friend over I decided to show them mass effect 1, the ps3 version I should add that came out long after the game had already been around at this stage and after about 30 mins falling asleep during the opening mission. It's a different experience watching versus playing this series.

The original xbox 360 release still holds up surprisingly well, although it does tend to show it's age on level geometry anti aliasing as well as enabling film grain by default which is most apparent during cutscenes so I tend to disable this.
As for the changes that legendary edition made to this game wel for one the game runs significantly better at a higher than 30fps with a much higher resolution or you can opt for 4k. There's been adjustments to facial models and textures bumped up in resolution which is neat as well as fixing the mako tank.
A welcome change is having the other gender sheppard visible on the character select screen now instead of being hidden away under several menus.
Action really wasn't the focus for the mass effect series so the combat in 1 while lacking in comparison to other 3rd person shooters was intentionally made for you to command your allies to carry out various bionic abilities and order them to form your own little strike team of sorts. You could order them to blindly rush in to draw enemy fire and snipe geth from a safe distance or take a cautious approach and have them use their powers to overload and unearth enemies from behind cover.

Conclusion

There was a tactical element to the combat even though the shooting wasn't as flashy or accurate as many of it's contemporaries, but it was serviceable for the role playing game genre it inhabited.
It played into it's strengths of story telling and character progression, you commanded you and your team on this space voyage making choices every step of the way. A game is a set of interesting choices, and mass effect presents them in it's gameplay and narrative. Legendary edition made the action more streamlined to coincide with it's sequels but there's no denying that the heart of mass effect is in it's world building and choosing what sort of commander you are.

Through choosing between paragon and renegade, you've been granted a small instance of control, but in reality the creator holds true creative freedom over the illusion.
Kaiden ended up becoming a farmer on eden prime, the locals took him in as one of their own despite his likeness to buzz lightyear.

Whether you prefer chocolate or vanilla, the options presented are finite, just as a game can only hold so many possibilities, the plot will always arrive at it's designated end.

Multiple routes in games aren't a rarity nowaday but the way they're conveyed through their writing and mechanics tend to follow a pattern that mass effect and pen/paper stories followed. A film is up to interpretation from the viewers perspective and it's up to the director to deliver a vision that can be viewed as theirs, the viewers and the critics.
This was the first stepping stone and it's not my favourite of the trilogy but the building blocks are here.
The enemy variety could of been better, the final boss re-using an enemies movement while also looking goofy previously with a hover platform could also have done with refinement.
It's a rare game for it's time but you can appreciate what it had to offer back in 2007