Legendary Review ME1

Well, against my better judgement, I went ahead and bought it. I guess I'm just more of a Mass Effect fan than I wanted to save money.

I'll be adding to this as I play but I just wanted to add some notes before I forget things.

Let me just say that this MAY HAVE SPOILERS. I'll try to keep it to a minimum but be warned.

First, I'm a little annoyed by the launcher. I'm the kind of person who likes total and 100% control over their system. When I run a game, I don't like other programs cluttering up the background, taking up resources I'd rather have the game using. The Launcher runs in the background all the time. I'd rather it not be there. However, it appears to be fixed. I tried running the individual ME1, 2, and 3 games separately, but each game appears to be hard-coded to run the launcher first.  This appears to be bad design. Looks like we don't have any choice but to have the Launcher running in the background, taking up CPU and memory resources all the time while we're playing. ☹️

Mass Effect 1

The game isn't as different as I'd hoped. Oh, the graphics are phenomenal compared to the original. There have been a few gameplay changes, most of them... questionable. Some good.

First off, the Mako: Bane of my existence. An absolutely horrible vehicle design made a TINY bit better by the new weight and gravity settings. Still horribly bouncy. One bounce and it flips around 180 degrees. That STILL happens all the time. The new gravity settings just make it so when you use the jump jets, it doesn't go as high any more... which isn't such a good thing.

However, there is now a new flaw in its design. The Mako can now get stuck on its back. My Mako flipped over and wouldn't right itself. Had to re-load a save. That happened twice so far and I've never had it happen on OldME1.

The new afterburner to me appears to be completely useless. It has absolutely NO use at all when going over inclines. In fact, using it on an incline makes getting up even worse! It does work better on horizontal surfaces, about 20% faster. And the "camera shake" that happens every time you use it ended up giving me a headache. And you can't use it at the same time as the jump jets. The Mako ends up going completely vertical?? How does that follow physics?

The new direction based controls are HORRIBLE. I turned them off immediately. Maybe that's just something I would need to get used to but after so many years of the original way, I'm not willing to put in the effort.

Thresher Maw attack? Infinitely better! These things were far too simple in the original game. When the thing's tentacles popped out and the maw started barreling towards me underground, I was like, WOAH!!! I BETTER MOVE IT! It Added a whole new level of urgency to the fight. It's still rather easy once you get how it works, but it's a lot more fun now. Kudos!

Weapons, still getting used to but I like how every weapon model has a different method of attack and firing now. Some have constant bursts, some grouped short bursts... It'll end up forcing me to like some over others. Which is a good thing. Variation.

Combat is a lot different. Haven't decided yet. In the original game, enemies always kept to their spawn locations before you enter the room. This is no longer the case. During the Luna fight, when I entered, I accidentally fired at nothing. When I opened the door to the main room, all the enemies had gathered RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE DOOR. All of them immediately fired when it opened and completely obliterated me. There was absolutely no way I could have survived. Not so sure if that's good or bad...

I don't like how shields work. Previously, shields had to be penetrated BEFORE you took damage. Now, you take damage whenever you get hit, even if you have full shields. So, what's the point of shields now if they don't protect you from damage? This appears to be a HORRIBLE design change. Now, having more shields appears to be useless and I have to force everyone to have medical mods instead now.

I really don't like that they removed the Spectre weapons. Those were the best in the game. Far better than any other. This was a MASSIVELY bad choice. Removed all the best weapons in the game?  I don't like that AT ALL.

There are still some bugs.  Like the original bug of there not being any "Heat Sink" mods between level 3 and 7? Still a problem. Weapon and armor spawns appear to not have changed at all.

Speaking of... the locker combination mini-game? A LOT harder. The things spin around at least twice as fast as before. HARD combinations are basically impossible... and they were far too difficult before. So far, NONE have locked me out though. I'm wondering if that was removed? I ended up doing a hard-mode one over 30 times before I got it. I was determined to do it but it takes FAR too much time. Gonna just use Omnigel from now on. That will cut into my funds to lose things to Omnigel to keep my supply up.

The combination minigame has a new BUG now. If you get close to one of the barriers on the side, your arrow will STICK to it, unable to move forward even if nothing is in front. Now, you don't have to just get by the barriers, have to give them a good amount of clearance now too or else your arrow will stick to it. I don't understand why things were changed that weren't broken?

The keeper quest was altered. I don't know why. It was always 21 keepers in the past. Now it's 20? Why change it? Was reducing it by ONE keeper really that big a deal?

Looks like the "Bane" quest (if you can call it that) is still bugged. Quest still doesn't go anywhere. Why not fix it or remove it if it doesn't go anywhere?

Oh, and before I forget... In new systems, in the old game asteroids would "blink" to show you where they were. This was completely removed. They are now 100% undetectable unless your cursor is on top of it. This will cause the loss of a LOT of resources. Not a good decision.

Post ME1 Notes:

I've seen multiple new bugs. Quite a few times I left the Mako on a planet and all controls froze. Unable to click on anything, re-enter the Mako, nothing. Had to re-load a save every time.

The Spectre weapons FINALLY showed up when ALL missions were done and I was on the Citadel during the Normandy's lockout at the very end of the game. I'm glad they finally showed up, but it was FAR too late.

There were a number of times when my Shepard got "locked" facing one direction. She was facing one way and I was trying to move the other. It looked very weird and made moving quite difficult. One time it happened was during Bring Down the Sky. I'm hesitant to call it a "coincidence" that it happened exactly during the timed bomb sequence when I needed to move QUICKLY and suddenly couldn't. Luckily it cleared up after a minute each time. Still weird though.

The final cutscene where Shepard shows up was spoiled when the other characters kept popping in and out of the scene. Anderson's "Where's Shepard?" was directed at a patch of grass.

I did like the cutscene changes. Although minor, made things better. Final fight was a little bit harder, not much. Hardest part is Cyber-Saren wouldn't stay still long enough for me to put him out of his misery. The Geth in the fight was a nice addition. Just made things a little more confusing.

Overall: All in all... hard to say. The new bugs make it worse, graphics make it better. Missing content, missing missions, missing weapons. Some changes good, some bad, some just confusing. Lots of the original bugs and flaws still exist. Lots were fixed. Lots of new ones.

Is it any better? I really don't know.