There was a time when entire trilogies of games from the same studio could come out on the same generation and all be reasonably high quality. It rarely happens these days. I'm not saying that's a good or bad thing but games do just take longer to make these days. Admittedly, Mass Effect 3 could have used a bit more time in the oven but that's an oft-repeated complaint at this point.
As a whole, Bioware crafted a great trilogy with some fantastic world-building and wonderful characters. Despite it not sticking the landing, it's easy to get sucked into the narrative. Perhaps the first mistake was in the first game and starting your series with a galaxy ending threat. I suppose when you start a series, you want to give a big hook. Unfortunately, it's always hard to end those types of stories in a satisfying way and you're probably going to end up falling back on chosen one tropes. ME3 tried to hard to wrap up everything in a bow where Shepard is solving century old conflicts in a matter of days. Still, there are a lot of great stories throughout the trilogy that are worth seeing through and the history between the various alien races is always interesting to explore. Developing Shepard's relationships with their squadmates is incredibly endearing. There's a lot of choices and changes that can be made throughout the series and even when most of them only have very minor consequences, it's always satisfying to see something you did in one game referenced in the next. The biggest changes come in the middle with the Suicide Mission at the end of ME2 which is very fun to see how prior decisions affect the outcome.
When it comes to the combat, you can certainly feel the refinement throughout the trilogy. A lot of people say that ME1 leaned harder into the RPG genre whereas the latter two were shooters. It's not an entirely wrong assessment as you can certainly see in the level up screen how you have way more options to enhance abilities and stats in the first game. It still mostly plays like a shooter though. Even with less options to select in character progression, the six different classes gain more of an identity in ME2 and are refined further in ME3. By the third game, the combat is really fun to play. I certainly understand the desire for RPG mechanics but what we get in ME2 and ME3 still works really well.
When comparing ME1 with the other two games, the Mako always needs to be brought up. It certainly adds an exploration element to the game that's lost in the sequels but what's there isn't great. It controls better in the Legendary Edition but it's still pretty awkward and the planets themselves are pretty dull. I would have liked to see it developed more rather than just cut. ME2 has a couple of hubs that you can walk around but they're pretty small and uninteresting. ME3 has one decent hub but it is just one.
So what does the Legendary Edition have to offer? It is nice to have it packaged in one launcher to make it feel more coherent especially when importing a character across the games. It comes with all the DLC (bar one for ME1) which are mostly high quality and were pretty expensive to buy before this collection. It brings a more consistent look across the trilogy using the more refined character models and textures from ME3. And it's just nice to have a high framrate and resolution version for consoles. It feels close enough to being the definitive way to play the trilogy even if I think there's some mods I'd like to get for the PC version such as the one that ports the one mission DLC. I definitely think it's worth buying for new and old players alike.
As a whole, Bioware crafted a great trilogy with some fantastic world-building and wonderful characters. Despite it not sticking the landing, it's easy to get sucked into the narrative. Perhaps the first mistake was in the first game and starting your series with a galaxy ending threat. I suppose when you start a series, you want to give a big hook. Unfortunately, it's always hard to end those types of stories in a satisfying way and you're probably going to end up falling back on chosen one tropes. ME3 tried to hard to wrap up everything in a bow where Shepard is solving century old conflicts in a matter of days. Still, there are a lot of great stories throughout the trilogy that are worth seeing through and the history between the various alien races is always interesting to explore. Developing Shepard's relationships with their squadmates is incredibly endearing. There's a lot of choices and changes that can be made throughout the series and even when most of them only have very minor consequences, it's always satisfying to see something you did in one game referenced in the next. The biggest changes come in the middle with the Suicide Mission at the end of ME2 which is very fun to see how prior decisions affect the outcome.
When it comes to the combat, you can certainly feel the refinement throughout the trilogy. A lot of people say that ME1 leaned harder into the RPG genre whereas the latter two were shooters. It's not an entirely wrong assessment as you can certainly see in the level up screen how you have way more options to enhance abilities and stats in the first game. It still mostly plays like a shooter though. Even with less options to select in character progression, the six different classes gain more of an identity in ME2 and are refined further in ME3. By the third game, the combat is really fun to play. I certainly understand the desire for RPG mechanics but what we get in ME2 and ME3 still works really well.
When comparing ME1 with the other two games, the Mako always needs to be brought up. It certainly adds an exploration element to the game that's lost in the sequels but what's there isn't great. It controls better in the Legendary Edition but it's still pretty awkward and the planets themselves are pretty dull. I would have liked to see it developed more rather than just cut. ME2 has a couple of hubs that you can walk around but they're pretty small and uninteresting. ME3 has one decent hub but it is just one.
So what does the Legendary Edition have to offer? It is nice to have it packaged in one launcher to make it feel more coherent especially when importing a character across the games. It comes with all the DLC (bar one for ME1) which are mostly high quality and were pretty expensive to buy before this collection. It brings a more consistent look across the trilogy using the more refined character models and textures from ME3. And it's just nice to have a high framrate and resolution version for consoles. It feels close enough to being the definitive way to play the trilogy even if I think there's some mods I'd like to get for the PC version such as the one that ports the one mission DLC. I definitely think it's worth buying for new and old players alike.