I bloody hate this game. Not because it's bad on the whole, but because it holds SO much promise that Bioware failed to exploit to its fullest potential or in some cases fucked up completely. Captaining your ship. Exploring the universe. Fighting from cover. Squad tactics. Characters with intricate backstories and personalities. relationships. The basics for all of them are there but every last one of them falls short in order to leave me feeling satisfied.
The voice acting and facial expressions are made of wood. I fail to empathize with any of the characters. Although the alien party members, such as the beautiful blue-skinned Liara are portrayed to be sortof awkward at communicating with humans, even the human-on-human dialogues feel emotionless and detached, even in a military context. When I saw the names of the voice actors in the credits I felt embarassed in their stead. Everyone seems to be on valium, if you catch my drift. They could have made something very imaginative and thought-provoking out of the whole inter-species friendship & love thing, but it just didn't grip me the way it could have, should they have put more effort into the characterization and the voice-acting and the dialogue trees.
The dialogue options are hailed by many reviews to be innovative but in the end it always boils down to the same old overdone "good" answer -"neutral" answer -"evil" answer system. And to make things worse, the dialogue menu always puts them in the same order, making the whole process very generic and unexiting. Pick the top right, you're Obi-Wan, pick bottom right, and you're Darth what's-his-name.
The squadmate AI... doesn't work. You can't get them to take cover properly, they'll just stand out in the open and do nothing more than serve as targets while the player does all the real work. When the enemy's up close they won't even melee like the player does, they're every bit as dumb and expendable as their opponents, standing out in the open taking pot shots. This goes especially for the soldier classes, who NEED proper cover use in order to be effective. The other classes have it easier because they can use biotic powers to restore their own shields, which makes up for all the damage they're taking. Hence playing as a biotic or technician focused character is way more dificult because you can't rely on soldier class squadmates to make up for the lack of firepower. YOU have to do the shooting because you just can't rely on your squad to back you up. In summary, tactics are rather awkward no matter what your playstyle is.
Why all this criticism? It's simple. Before downloading this game I spent a fortnight playing Dragon Age: Origins which, although it's a completely different genre (tactical RPG), shares a great many features with Mass Effect.
A universe with a rich and detailed lore and flavour, moral choices, a form of squad tactics and relationships between characters. Only this time all of it is near perfect. If you want to play a real Bioware game I strongle suggest Dragon Age. It has everything Mass Effect has but better. Beautiful, enthralling shakespearian voice-acting. Living, thinking, breathing characters you can love, respect or hate. No stupid simplified good-evil spectrum; in my subjective opinion the moral twists of the storyline in this game go way deeper than those of Mass Effect. Instead of a spaceship, the party campfire serves as your base and place where you talk to your party members to learn more about them and have them learn more from you through conversation. Instead of the Milky Way, it's the kingdom of Ferelden, swords and magic instead of guns and biotics, etc.
You can set up tactics for your party members that can be fine-tuned in a way that each party member is a cog in the machine as is expected in RPG's. Or you can micro-manage every 5 seconds if you want. It's up to you, but it's really not necessary if you learn how to play, unlike Mass Effect, where to me the squad management seems broken from the start.
So there you have it: Fuck you Shepard, thank you Alistair.
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
