Reviews VideoGame / Mass Effect 1

I'll give you the rest but I'm not convinced by the paragon system, 'specially combined with the persuasion system where it becomes rather stupid, forcing you to rotely stick to one set of actions if you want to be able to talk to people and get the best out of situations. Otherwise it's really eratic, and although not in name, most renegade actions are basically just about being a dick to someone often for little reason. Then when you combine that with the wheel that's not very accurate at representing the options...

I also degree on class variance, because when you compare Vanguard/Sentinel/Adept/Infriltrator in ME 2 and ME 3 they all play wholly difficult, whereas here Vanguard is really indistinguishable from Sentinel or Adept and the cooldown timers are so long on the adept abilities that you spend most of your time just shooting stuff. But the skill system was good, even compared to ME 3 (although you have the exact same number of actual abilities, just you have to upgrade them in smaller increments and you have the gun/charm options added on). (and being thrown by enemies was kinda irritating =D)

But I do think most of the review is spot on and I agree with you completely in the summary

I agree the Paragon/Renegade is kinda YMMV, and ultimately (taking the series as a whole) the Renegade options never amounted to more than being a dick to people. I think one of the failures of ME 3, for instance, was that Paragon choices through the series were rewarded and Renegade choices were punished, which clearly fits the good/evil scale better than the idealist/pragmatist scale it was supposed to be. But just within Mass Effect, I didn't find Renegade to be particularly egregious. Sure, there are some dick moves, but most of them are just Shepard with a short fuse, not willing to take any crap at any point. It's far from perfect, I'll give you that, but I at least give props that it's more refined and nuanced than the Kot OR light/dark slider.

I used to think that way about the classes too, but I'm realizing that as you progress the cooldown times decrease very significantly. Maybe it's just that I'm currently playing on a higher difficulty, but the difference between shooting things and using powers effectively has been noticeably greater. And there's a big difference between a shotgun and a pistol. Perhaps Mass Effect 2 had an appropriate class variance, but I'd definitely say Mass Effect 3 didn't. In ME 2 at least classes are restricted to certain weapons, and the unique class powers added diversity. I still never got the overwhelming impression that Engineer, Sentinel, and Adept were significantly different play styles though. I suppose that's a lot of personal preference though. In ME 3, where each class has access to every weapon (literally every single one), it allows more character customization but less class specialization. There's not much reason to play a Soldier when you can play a Sentinel to get the added powers without sacrificing much in the way of combat ability. There's not much reason to play an Adept when you can play a Vanguard and have the increased toughness to go with the biotic abilities.

So yeah...a lot of this is personal play style differences. I get the feeling of more control over character/class development with the skill trees in ME 1 too. The word count limit on reviews doesn't really help for elaborating either :P In general, I think Mass Effect gets kind of a bad rep in the gameplay/combat department, and that it's a lot better than people often give it credit for.

I feel you on the word count limit =D I'll agree that ME 1 was the least bad in terms of Paragon/Renegade (although ME 3 at least had the respect system to alleviate the dialogue problems) but I think the idea was misconceived. It doesn't get challenged much in ME 1, but when you get to Legion's loyalty mission in 2, it's clear that an idea that was going to binarily judge you for an action was bad from the start. It works in Star Wars (and Star Wars only, hear that Bioshock?) because the setting is meant to be black and white (although even then Star Wars game have never accurately represented the lure of the dark side and the struggle to stay good. I would pay good money for a game that could do that).

I'm going to have to disagree with you hugely on the Adept/Vanguard thing. In ME 1 an adept was a Vanguard who couldn't shoot straight, in ME 3 an adept is someone who hangs back from the action controlling enemy placement with push/throw/singularity and trying to score biotic combos. A Vanguard is someone who shotguns someone to the face and survives by the skin of the teeth by continually charging at enemies when their health is low. The sentinel is nerfed in ME 3, but in ME 1 a sentinel was a soldier who could do a wider range of abilities less affectively than an adept. In ME 2 a Sentinel was someone who, unlike soldiers and adepts, didn't have to worry about cover at all and could move around the battlefield freely.

And the guns didn't matter because if you wanted to play to a classes strengths gun restrictions mattered hugely. It's just you always had the choice of a gimped good at nothing class if you chose to do so. A Vanguard in ME 3 who carried a sniper rifle, couldn't snipe effectively or Vanguard effectively. If you wanted to play as Vanguard as a Vanguard you could have a pistol and later on a shotgun and that was it. You could switch in an assault rifle, but you could never have both like a soldier, and whereas the soldier would use the assault rifle for DPS, the Vanguard should be using the assault rifle to quick finish off a large amount of foes with a low amount of health remaining.

Even stronger with the adept. If you were carrying more than two weapons or a sniper rifle or a shotgun as adept, you were playing a class that wasn't good at anything at all. 200% cooldowns were mandatory to get use of the adeptness, and if you didn't want that, you should have chosen a solider to use the bullets effectively.

Sentinel is maybe the most middle of the road as far as guns go that I can comment on ( I don't understand how an infriltrator playthrough works, although I believe the perks are only effective with a sniper rifle) but if you've got a full weapon load, your recharge times are going to be shot (barrier already increases them) and you are missing out on the ammo powers and flexibility of the soldier.

So technically you could have any weapon, but the class would still play wildly differently and if you want to play a class effectively, you need a very particular weapon load out.

Whereas in ME 1 all the classes hang back and shoot people, sentinel has to use cover the same as everyone else, no-one has a playstyle that involves cannoning into the enemy and destroying their shields and adepts recharge times are never low enough that you shouldn't be aiming to kill people with a push or throw.

I'm not sure where I stand on ME 1 gameplay in general. I played it last and I was bitterly disappointed that my sentinel play through involves hanging back and shooting stuff (and no chain overloads :( ) but it wasn't unpleasant as described and although people called ME 3 as having the perfect level up system I would have preferred a middle ground between Me1 and ME 3, ME 3 had a lot more flexibility whereas most of ME 1 was fake choice (you would decide you wanted the next level of overload and then spend the next three level ups putting that choice into option and when you made choices it was so insignificant it barely made a difference. An extra 1% accuracy, yay?) but what ME 1 had was a sense of progression of fulfillment that 3 lacked.

I don't think Bioware ever asked themselves what they wanted to express through the RPG mechanics in the ME series though. Normally they represent growth or refinding ability, like in the Koto R's, Jade Empire, etc but Shepard was meant to be badass before the series begun. It fitted best in ME 1, but by ME 3 the RPG mechanics were expressing absolutely nothing relevant to the story or themes. It doesn't destroy the game, because levelling up is ultimately fun but it didn't add to the game meaningfully. Compare to the actual skill based, squad combat which suggests Shepard is a leader of men, is flexible and tactical and that this is an exciting new world to explore where shooting has become more exotic than just holding the trigger.

Fair points all around. I think, if I'm being honest with myself, the multiplayer in ME 3 has influenced my opinion far more than the single player. It is very much possible to create effective builds with all classes and all weapons, but that might simply be due to the limit of 2-3 available powers apart from weapons and the extremely limited passive trees. Seriously, I play sniper vanguards all the time (especially Asari, because Stasis is a beautiful power for a sniper). Although I guess that's kind of a positive thing about the flexibility moreso than a negative thing about class distinction.

But I do know the AI in single player is a LOT less tenacious when it comes to pressing attacks and flanking. Most of my insanity playthrough was spent behind a single piece of cover, just waiting for an enemy to pop up so I could gun it down. Only the Banshees 75% of the way through the game mixed it up. And just so this doesn't switch tracks to ME 3, it seems to me that the ME 1 enemies are more capable in that regard, pressing the attack and flanking. Unfortunately, due to the cut-and-paste levels, often this means holing up in a small access hallway and picking off enemies one by one, for lack of a better option. Which is definitely a mark against ME 1.

So with all that tangential stuff aside, I'm coming to the conclusion that maybe my problem is not so much with the class variance, but with the general feel that the developers never quite nailed down what role each class was supposed to fulfill, making them play wildly differently with each installment. Biotic charge adds a pretty significant strategy change for Vanguards, and Nova adds yet another strategy change. Tech armor adds a change for Sentinels, but having access to assault rifles/shotguns adds another change. Tactical cloak adds a change for Infiltrators, but the wide range of sniper rifles available and the strategy of shotgun infiltrating adds another change. So in that sense, ME 1, 2, or 3 aren't necessarily better or worse than the other games, simply different in execution.

I guess it could be nostalgia that boosts my opinion of ME 1 as well. Either way, I like this discussion.

It's my turn for being unable to get round a bias as far as AI goes. I can't gauge ME 1 AI because all I can think of is the side mission AI which was the worst AI I've ever seen in a game, for a shooter, particularly one with cover to have AI where the minute you enter the room every single person in it, melee or no just charges the entrance... It stopped me from being able to passively judge how good the normal AI is and how it functions in the non side mission maps, and you've had a lot more experience with that. You're right that at least it made me move in a way ME 3 never did (although I liked Cerberus enemy variety)

I think you might have hit the nail on the head with the change in classes thing, probably a lot of my pain in ME 1 comes from not being able to play Sentinel and Adept in the same way I'd played them in the other games. Thanks for the discussion, you've improved my opinion of ME 1 combat and taught me quite a bit, especially since I think you've explored the combat more thoroughly than I have and it's been cool to hear a bit about that experience (plus since we've both started in different places in the series and had different expectations)