Last night, I finished the first Mass Effect, as part of the Mass Effect Legendary Edition remastered re-release of all three of the original games. I'm sort of an opportunistic completionist, so I made sure to do all the achievements. It all took me around 46 hours.
I've played the original game from start to finish a few other times before, but it has been a while, so I didn't remember much outside of the main story beats. I had a lot of fun re-experiencing it, and there were still a few things that I found surprising and noteworthy as I replayed the game.
My biggest surprise was how few mainline missions there are. The number of missions that advance the story and lead you to the end of the game is surprisingly low. They ran longer than I remembered, though, so that was nice. One early mission took me around 2-3 hours as I explored the entirety of the map and completed all the objectives. As I get older, I find it harder to devote that kind of time to games - at least, not without interruptions - so some of the missions took me multiple sessions to finish.
I was also a bit stunned at how clunky - and in the early game, strangely challenging - the combat is. If there is any part of this remastered Mass Effect that cannot hide its age well, it's the combat. Enemies are extremely basic, sliding into cover by just running into it feels weird, and the balance is off; your AI-controlled teammates either require constant babysitting or are an unstoppable force of combat and biotic abilities.
A good portion of the game is the combat, so luckily it doesn't take much time to get used to its eccentricities. But at times I wondered how this game was able to overcome how weird the combat is and become the beloved property that it is today.
If you've played the game using the default male Shephard, or you're familiar with the various promotional materials, you might be wondering who that odd-looking bald man is in the screenshot at the top of this post. Well, I was delighted that BioWare added the option to use a character code to import your old characters from previous play-throughs, and so that's how the game's hero, Shepard, looks in my game.
He is the result of me firing the game up when it first arrived 14 years ago, and in my rush to play, anxiously mashing through the character creator. I figured, once I got a taste of the game, I'd start over with a proper character that looked a bit more like me. But the game was so engrossing, I ended up not wanting to start over, and got used to the way he looked. Now I cannot hear male Shepard's voice without automatically thinking of this weird dude. I like him!
It was nice that BioWare added the option to use a custom character code at the beginning of the first game, so I could easily import this guy from my original play-throughs. It had one odd quirk, in that the skin color was wrong when I entered it the first time, but that was easily sorted out.
My experience with the Legendary Edition is limited to the first game so far, but it's been a good one. The game looks and runs great on my Xbox Series X, and was a joy to experience once more. There were certainly parts that I wish could have been touched a little more heavily by the remaster team, and a few bugs here and there, but despite all that, it's quite easy to get caught up in the sci-fi world of Mass Effect BioWare created.
On to Mass Effect 2 now, I suppose!
