I completed Mass Effect 3 for the second time, finishing out the remastered Legendary Edition trilogy. Like Mass Effect 2, I had almost no recollection of playing the original game 9 years ago, and so it felt like a new experience, save for a few bits here and there that had stuck with me.

Like my other posts, there might be spoilers in here. So if for some reason you've not played these games yet, it's a good time to stop reading.

That's right - this dude is back to finish the job he accidentally started two games ago.

It's funny - going into the Legendary Edition, most of my memories were of the first game, and I always considered that one my favorite by a long shot. I still look back on it fondly, but after playing them all once more, back-to-back, I feel a little different about it. Both ME2 and ME3 are excellent games, each telling an entertaining story, and each refining the experience in its own way. The sequels also feel more fleshed out and more focused than the first game, and just all around more polished. I'm not just a fan of the first game now; I'm a fan of the entire trilogy.

Emotion runs high in the third game. It opens with a full-scale Reaper invasion of Earth, and has Shepard flee in order to rally the other races of the galaxy to help stop the annihilation of all sentient life. At every turn you are reminded that the battle rages back home as you hop around space trying to make friends, recruit allies, and fight back the enemies.

The finality of it all is palpable, and this leads to many great moments in the story. For example, I'd had Garrus on my strike teams throughout all three games, and so at one point, when I took him up on some downtime at the Citadel, he and Shepard shared a really fun moment as they took turns shooting at clay pigeons. It was touching to see these two friends, who had been through so much, take a minute to appreciate each other as the fight of their lives loomed.

I also made a late-game decision to romance Liara, who Shepard had kept at arm's distance throughout the trilogy, and that lead to many satisfying sequences as the game drew to an end.

It was powerful to see all these characters grow throughout the series, and to show love for each other before taking on the final mission, which none may survive. It is a credit to all the work BioWare did with these games that those moments feel so real.

Weirdly, there is no boss fight at the end of ME3. That is something I did not remember. Instead, you face a series of difficult enemy encounters that lead up to the finale, where you can choose one of three potential futures for the entire galaxy. I was glad for no boss fight, but I still don't like the run-up to the end sequence. The AI you meet when you activate the Gauntlet is strange, and I don't like how it has to explain the entire story to you, to tie everything together. The story itself is fine though, and even though the ending of the game was altered a bit since the first time I played ME3, I didn't really feel like it needed it.

I chose to destroy the Reapers, along with all non-organic life, and it was good, though I was sad to see Legion be killed. I was surprised at the end, when after the Citadel was destroyed and all Shepard's friends had gathered to say goodbye, I was treated to one final scene where it is pretty heavily implied that Shepard survived the ordeal. That I had never seen before, but I guess you can get that small change to the ending if you manage to grow your defense force to a certain size.

So I did enjoy the game and conclusion pretty thoroughly, but I had a few gripes too, as usual.

I am still not a fan of the way Ashley Williams' appearance was changed. It still looks really overdone compared to her modest introduction on Eden Prime in the original game. I get that she has advanced in her career and gotten past Shepard, who she bonded with in ME1, but no other character in the game was redone in such a ham-fisted way. It's honestly distracting.

Though Ashley was the biggest change, I felt like all the women of Mass Effect were sexualized more, to lesser and greater extent. I'm not a prude, so I don't mind if games dare to venture into that territory - but after the modest start with ME1, where the focus was the story, and all the men and women had somewhat realistic proportions, ME3 (and to some extent ME2) just got sexier - for no reason other than, I'm assuming, to be more of a spectacle. This change isn't as prevalent in the Legendary Edition, since the characters all use the same model assets throughout the remaster, but it's something I noticed in my original playthrough and something that just felt off this time around as well.

Finally, though I appreciate all the added content the included DLC provides to the game, I didn't really care for the odd change in tone it carries with it. In one new sequence, you're lead on a wild goose chase around the Citadel after a failed assassination attempt on Shepard - okay, fair enough. This endeavor eventually includes every member of your crew in the same fight, which is fun, but throughout this segment, the characters make an endless series of action-movie type jokes. The jokes are funny, and I did have a good time hearing the lighter side of the crew, but this happens in the middle of saying goodbye to old crew members who you might never see again, working diplomacy between proud and jealous alien races, and preparing for what might be the final fight for all sentient life. It jut feels like too big a departure from the otherwise serious tone of the game.

Anyway, those are pretty minor complaints. I spent many, many hours playing through the Mass Effect Legendary Edition, and I loved the experience all over again. The Mass Effect trilogy is a masterpiece.

Now... maybe it's time to finally give Mass Effect: Andromeda a proper playthrough?

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I've finally finished Mass Effect 2 again - and I've got a lot to say about it!

Just an FYI: if you care about spoilers for this 11 year old game, stop reading now.

I'm a fan of the Mass Effect series - I've read the books! - but I remember surprisingly little of this game from my first play-through back in 2010. I didn't replay it as many times as the first game, because I didn't really like many of the changes BioWare made. I have a better appreciation for ME2 now, although there are still some things I find annoying.

My baldy Shepard is back! I like that he's sort of a normal-looking dude, though. It helps sell the game's story.

In a lot of ways, ME2 feels like the game that Mass Effect 1 wanted to be. Gone are the long "gray box" hallways, the elevator loading sequences, and the generic planet bases reachable only by way of the Mako. In their place are a number of custom set-pieces and scenarios that never feel like they've been copied and pasted from another part of the game. There are a handful of large city areas to explore. The expanded interior of the new Normandy is more believable. The combat feels more strategic and punchy, and the game overall just feels more solid. ME2 is what ME1 might have been, had it had a longer development cycle, and a larger budget, I suspect.

Coming straight off the first game, ME2 is much darker - both in presentation and story.

The lighting effects in this game are much more dramatic than the original game, likely the result of the better-produced game world. Sometimes, it's distracting, and I did miss the softer, film-grainy look of ME1, but it's not necessarily bad.

With Shephard relegated to the seedier side of the galaxy, the subject matter in this game is accordingly much darker as well. New, more scary alien races are introduced as villains, as are a number of missions that have you exploring messy subjects like human experimentation, forced captivity, slavery, etc. Many of these themes are present in the first game's lore, but they are brought to life in ME2. There's also more cursing, which I personally don't mind, and is more a sign of the times during which the game was developed, rather than anything that services the characters or story.

ME2 still has the same expansive feel of the first game, minus (most of) the planetary romps. The galaxy map is augmented with a new mechanic where you have to buy/spend fuel to get around locally. Rather than bouncing around planets in the Mako, you now scan planets from the comfort of space and send out probes to mine resources. Included DLC adds the Hammerhead, a hovercraft that you take out on a few short missions, but those are neither interesting or particularly memorable - I didn't do any of them until I was ready to complete the game.

I appreciate all the work that went into ME2. As I mentioned above, levels feel complete and fleshed out, in both size and detail. There are a number of cool surprises in the story: Tali appearing with the Quarian strike team in the opening sequence, Ashley (confronting Shephard!) on Horizon, the reveal of Garrus as Archangel, the battle with the Shadowbroker, and the last addition to your team, a rogue Geth platform. I had a great time cruising around the galaxy collecting team members and helping them out.

The core of the game is less intimate than the first, but it's still quite engaging. I actually felt a bit touched when Shephard met old members of his team and gave them a hug. That is what humanity brings to the stars!

There are the inevitable bumps in the road, of course. One thing that I really dislike is the inclusion of a "mission complete" screen at the end of each sequence. Outside of these screens, the game retains the same cinematic feel as the first - so it is particularly strange to me that BioWare felt that constantly reminding players that this is, indeed, a game, was a good idea.

Another annoyance is that, in the Legendary Edition, it's not uncommon for some bits of dialogue to get cut off just before it finishes. It doesn't happen frequently enough to ruin the game, but it happens often nonetheless. This bug was present in ME1 as well.

The soundtrack is a little less synthy than I want it to be, but there are some cool moments there as well. It's serviceable.

One final gripe is with the end-game sequence where, after the Normandy's crew is abducted, you are given the option to keep exploring/completing missions or get right to the rescue effort. Unless you're familiar with the game, it's not obvious that you will trigger this event until you do - and then it's not obvious that there will be consequences if you don't begin the end-game immediately. Wanting to get the best ending, I had to play through the last few hours of the game twice, because on my first run, I opted to finished up all my open missions before tackling the finale, and nearly all of my crew was killed before I got there.

The end-game is cool. Instead of the standard 3-person mission, you work through a number of sequences where you choose a leader for a second strike team, an infiltrator, and other specialists. Who you choose and their loyalty status determines the outcome, and there are a number of things that can go wrong if you pick poorly.

I'm not a fan of the final boss: a human Reaper, which looks like a giant Terminator robot. It's huge and scary to look at, but the idea that the Reapers, ancient machine-beings that kill all sentient life every 50,000 years, needed to make a human version of themselves is just silly to me. There is some voiceover-provided lore about how they assimilate new sentient races to make new Reapers, but all the rest of them look like insects, so it just doesn't fit.

Anyway, I'm on to Mass Effect 3 now, and I remember absolutely nothing from that game. I will be back with another progress report once that one's behind me!

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