Mass Effect

[Himuro]

My theory was right. This world is so huge that all the quests are thoroughly spread out.

Holy crap, this place has so many damn quests. The first world (er..second?) it's so much like Taris. You can spend so much time doing crap here.
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She knows stuff.

[Tullaryx]

How's the dialogue tree working so far? I read from reviews that the choices given is not what's spoken by your character but a completely new piece of dialogue that matches the tone of your choices. I know in past BioWare rpgs the choices you pick in the dialogue tree is what's spoken by your character.
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[Himuro]

It's the same as always, nothing special. The presentation is perhaps the best I've seen in a cinematic rpg though. It's so natural.

Yeah, the choice on the tree isn't what your character says. Sometimes it surprises me. One time there was a choice for *sigh* and I chose that. She (my character) said,"I should just kill both of you." and I didn't want to say that lol

My biggest issue right now is that you can't talk to your party members directly like in past Bioware games. At least, not yet.

I love how they brought back the party member one liners from their older games. :lol "Smell that? Fresh blood mixed with stale booze."
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She knows stuff.

[jjrrs]

[Himuro]

[glen]

Man this game has frozen up on me two times all ready man. Had to restart the game both times because i saved just before it froze up and it will not load it self up from there because of it man that sucks got to sart all over again from the start.

Just as soon as the game was getting real good to Damn. Sucks tobe me man.
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I fought the law and got my a** kick big time.

[Parallax]

Just so you know, you can talk to your party members, at length, as soon as you get your ship. Then, it's a lot like Bioware's KOTOR offerings; in-depth dialogs can be undertaken aboard the ship with any of your party members.
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He's a victim - not a perp - and I'm choosing to let him go.

[glen]

I found that out there to there Paralax. You get points for it to in prove your players in your party and in the group thats not fighting with you at the time you do put them in to fight with you. Just got my ship right now but i am not leaving yet so i can finish all the little storys first on the main ship base that give you points to add to your players. Right now trying to find the last of the keepers got 20 of the 21 of them but i can not find the last one DAMN IT then on to the next little story there man.
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I fought the law and got my a** kick big time.

[Ley]

Has anyone noticed that at times the voice actor of a NPC appears to change, then revert back to the original voice actor?
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Can anyone tell I'm bored?

[Leb]

They record dialogue loops with various voice actors for each race. If they decide to include something from one loop into another, you'll occasionally be able to hear the difference.

Otherwise, it's all in your head.


"...Shepard."

[Himuro]

[jjrrs]

[Parallax]

[glen]

Yeah the voices start to drive me crazy after awhile of them talking saying the say crap over and over. I just turn the volume down till there something going on that i want to hear. The music drives me crazy as well tried to turn it down but it still louder then the voices in some parts of the game soyou can not hear what they are saying with out turning the volume up till its on fully just to hear what they were saying to each other.
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I fought the law and got my a** kick big time.

[Himuro]

I beat the game yesterday, with a total clock of 48 hours.

Overall, I say I loved the game. I have problems, but it was still a blast. I'm not sure if it's my game of the year though. Actually, I'm kinda stuck on that subject at the moment. Between Portal, Persona 3, and Mass Effect I can't fucking choose which game I enjoyed the most. They're all so good. Portal and P3 are definitely the more polished, better games but I'm of the opinion that there's a distinguishable difference between best and favorite. I would laugh at someone who said Star Wars was the best movie ever, but I could respect if it was their favorite.

That said, here's my run down:

+ Amazing presentation for an rpg. Mass Effect's cutscenes feel like the next step up for rpgs.
+ This is the ONE game that makes you feel like a space badass. It is one of the few games where I actually feel important, and that *my* decisions actually affected something, which is rare.
+ Space lesbian sex awww yeah.
+ All of the story worlds are fucking amazing.
+ Good story overall, with tough decisions you have to make.
+ Good characters.
+ Excellent music.
+ Extremely fun battle system.
+ Good difficulty curve. Even with overly powered Spectre weapons I still died once in a while if I wasn't careful. I can't wait to play it on Hardcore mode.
+ A step forward past Kotor and Jade Empire, two games I only *liked* and didn't end up *loving*.
+ High replay value. I can't wait to start a new game.

- The game is in, some ways, a step back for Bioware.
- The characterization is very anti-Bioware. Most of the game, the characters say the same damn thing. In past Bioware titles you could talk to your party members at any time and usually they would have something new to say. They also regularly made a comment when you made a decision and, sometimes, fought over your decisions. Mass Effect doesn't have this. Hell, you can only really talk to your party members on the Normandy. Bioware dropped the ball here, and imo, is the game's biggest flaw, but despite that, I loved the characters (except Carth...I mean Kaiden). They all had their quirks, their flaws, but remained likable throughout, and unlike say, FFXII, even though they lacked characterization you still felt like you could connect with them.

- Another step back for Bioware is the sidequests. Sidequests are one of my favorite things about Bioware games. They tend to varied and interesting. I did all the sidequests I could find in ME and most of them were lacking. What I like about western rpgs is that their quests tend to be story oriented and things that infuse a little more "oomph" into the game's plot and themes. Mass Effect ditches this for fetch quests and collectathons. I mean, you had some of those before, but not to this degree, and they certainly didn't eclipse the story based sidequests either.

- Non-story worlds are boring and lacking. They are all riddled with mountains, they have no goddamn terrain diversity, there's no wild life to speak of sans 2-3 planets, and all of them tend to have a similar layout: anamoly, debris, some random hideout where mercenaries are, with the same damn boxes with the same damn corridors. When Bioware hyped up the space travel, I thought they'd put more thought into it.

- The main story is extremely short and lacks meat.
- The ally achievements are, for the most part, a burden.
- Texture pop in is ridiculous
- The auto-save feature is useless.
- Some people may consider this a bad thing, and that's the learning curve. The battle system definitely has a learning curve.
- The inventory system SUCKS.
- The sidequests expose one niggle and that is repetition. Reviewers complained about how Assassin's Creed is repetitive, but Mass Effect is much more so. Going from planet to planet gets dull and the reason I did all the sidequests I could find *this* time is because I don't think I could stomach doing it on later playthroughs.

I would say Mass Effect is a flawed masterpiece. It does a lot right, but the few issues most have with it bump it down a few notches from what it could have been, had those issues been worked out. I really wonder what ME would be like if Bioware had oh...6 more months to develop the game. It definitely feels rushed in some spots.

I'd give the game an 8.5, which on my scale, is a great game.
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She knows stuff.