Pros: Graphics, character, story, dialogue, pretty much everything...
Cons: except inventory control, vehicle fighting, and the grenade button!
The bottom line: The finest RPG I've seen, any RPG fan will be drooling to play this game.
I’m a big RPG (role-playing game) fan, and a well-done video or computer game RPG makes me salivate. So when I heard all of the wonderful things said about Mass Effect, Bioware’s latest, I just had to go buy it. Bioware is best known for working on some of the Forgotten Realms Dungeons & Dragons computer RPGs, as well as the Knights of the Old Republic Star Wars RPGs, and they definitely have a reputation for quality. Mass Effect tops them all, though, with a wonderful story, great voice acting and vivid animations that make all of the characters come to life. Bioware has taken everything that’s good about the RPG genre and made it even better. This is the best game I’ve played this year, by far.

Mass Effect is set in a galaxy populated with interesting alien races, also avoiding the typical “humans run everything” stereotype of most science fiction games. Humans, in fact, have just recently joined the galactic civilization, and many of the aliens are still suspicious of them. Humans haven’t been allowed to join the Galactic Council, and there haven’t been any humans allowed in the Specters, the elite military force that the Council uses to enforce law and do the dirty jobs that the regular military may not be able to do. It’s nice to see a non-human-centric storyline, though the story is about humans trying to become part of this society.

You play Commander Shepard, and you’re a soldier in the Alliance Navy, the human military arm. Your character is completely malleable, from how he/she looks (yes, you can play a woman) to your history. You’re given a few choices regarding your history, and characters that you interact with will sometimes mention part of that history when they talk to you. This just adds to the immersion factor.

As part of your character creation, you will decide a class, which will decide what your skill sets and weapons proficiencies are like. You can also be a “biotic” character, using mental disciplines to do things like lift enemies so they can’t move, throw them into a warp field that will damage them, and things like that. The more biotic or mechanically-adept you are, the more restrictions on the type of weaponry you can use, so choose wisely based on how you like to play!

Mass Effect is sort of an action/RPG hybrid in a way, though it’s more RPG than anything else. It’s very dialogue driven, though the action (which I’ll detail below) can also get quite frantic. The dialogue is wonderful for a video game, as Bioware’s writers have done it again. As is usual, you are given dialogue branches where you decide what you’re going to say in response to what the character you’re interacting with said. What’s unusual is that the choices just give a feel for you’re going to say; they aren’t exact quotes. Thus, the conversations seem much more fluid and realistic, almost cinematic in a way. You can still say everything that’s possible in a dialogue tree to get as much information as possible, as long as you remember that the responses on the right-hand side of the tree are more geared toward ending the conversation while those on the left try to elicit more information.

The story itself has its twists and turns, and it’s not completely predictable, which is nice. I won’t say too much about it, mainly because it should be experienced with as few spoilers as possible, but it definitely sets itself up for a sequel. I’ve heard that Bioware plans a trilogy, so I’m anxiously awaiting the second part. It is self-contained though, so don’t worry about any cliffhangers like Halo 2 supposedly had. Each characters has a shade of gray to it, which is a definite plus.

As with many Bioware games, you have the option of being either good or bad. Unlike Knights of the Old Republic 2, though, it’s not a scale that wavers between the two extremes. Instead, you get Renegade points for doing bad things (or just being a callous a-hole) and Paragon points for doing good things. These meters are independent of each other, so you can build a wishy-washy middle of the road character if you wish to. These ratings can also affect how other characters see you, so keep that in mind as well. I haven’t played through the game a second time, but I’ve heard that the ending can be changed depending on what you are as well (I was a Paragon the first time through, of course).

You also have companions that will join you, and they have their own stories as well. As is usual with Bioware, a couple of them will be romantic interests that you can pursue if you want. Whenever you’re doing anything (on a planet or mission), you can have two of them with you at any time, so you can choose which ones complement your own skill set. The characterization of most of them (especially the non-human ones) is excellent. Wrex is a hoot, a huge, walking lizard-like creature who has some Biotics and is good with the guns. Just talking to him in the hold of your ship can be a lot of fun, and I’d love to go out carousing with him. He’d be a blast.

Gameplay
Mass Effect plays much like most other Bioware games do, at least when you’re not in combat. You run/walk around in a third-person viewpoint, with your two companions behind you. When there’s somebody or something you can interact with, the indicator will pop up when it’s within your vision, even at a distance so sometimes it’s difficult to actually find where the item is. If it’s a box or crate with loot inside (and there’s a lot of that!), then you will often have to do a button-pushing puzzle or use some “omni-gel,” the universal substance that will do anything from fixing vehicle armor to opening locked crates. These mini-games can get a bit annoying, but what’s even more annoying is if you don’t have any body in your party with the right amount of tech-skill to actually open these locks.

In addition to the main story missions, there are plenty of side missions to do as well. These will get you experience, money, and possibly Paragon/Renegade points too. You certainly don’t have to complete any of these to finish the game, but you may find the later story missions harder if you haven’t gained a bunch of levels through doing some of these. The missions can be anywhere from talking down a religious fanatic from preaching in a restricted area (or for fun renegade points, getting him thrown out of there) to various Alliance Navy missions that come to you as you explore the galaxy.

Yes, I said explore the galaxy. One of the fun things on your ship is a galaxy map, with systems you can journey to, many of which have multiple stars in them that you can explore. Each star has a number of planets around it, some of which you can only survey, some of which you only get the catalog information about, and some of which you can land on. The astronomical information regarding these planets is extremely detailed and adds to the immersion of the game, but clicking on a seemingly endless series of planets can get boring after a while. You do get a sense of galactic history by exploring each of these planets and reading their descriptions, however.

Going down to these planets (except for the story mission planets, of course) results in one of the most fun yet massively annoying parts of this game: driving around in the MAKO. This ATV can go literally anywhere on the planet’s surface that you’re allowed to explore. What I mean by this is that mountains or other terrain are no obstacle. You’ll find yourself bumping around on almost any surface, going up sheer cliffs (though if it’s too sheer, it won’t work), rocky outcroppings and the like. Only once did I flip over so I had to return to the ship, and a couple of times my characters got stuck in a ravine and couldn’t get back to the MAKO (resulting in me re-loading a saved game). Driving the thing around is extremely cool, though the controls are not completely intuitive and it can be hard to get straight at times.

The annoying part comes when you have to actually fight with it. For some reason, your turret will only depress so far, so if you’re above your target, you’re SOL. Also, your aiming reticule doesn’t give you very good depth perception, as you’ll sometimes find your shot hitting the rocks in between you and your target despite your reticule being on the target itself. Combat in the MAKO often results in rather boring “scoot forward/fire until the turret or enemy fires back/scoot backward out of the way/repeat” duels that get repetitive after a while. And the control system makes it so that you sometimes get turned around and you don’t go backward like you wanted to. Basically, combat in the MAKO really sucks.

Personal combat can be fun, though. You’re allowed to equip one of each type of weapon (Assault Rifle, Shotgun, Pistol, Sniper Rifle) and then you can choose between them by pausing the action (with the LB button) and choosing which one you want to fire with. You have to keep in mind what your skills are, because if you don’t have the Assault Rifle skill (for example), you probably won’t hit anything with it. You can also pause the game (with your RB button) and choose which Biotics or other skills you want to use. You can also dictate what your other two characters will do this way, though you can also set them to automatically use their powers/skills in certain ways: defensive only, or just as they see fit.

Pulling the left trigger brings up your aiming reticule, tightening it a bit and making your shots more accurate. Right Trigger fires (as usual), and everything happens in real time. Thus, it’s a bit more action-oriented than previous Bioware games, but you can still pause the game to aim at times. You do have to watch that you don’t overheat your weapons by firing them continuously. If you do so, you’ll have to wait until they cool down before you can fire again. You have unlimited ammo, which is definitely nice as well.

This brings up the other major annoyance (so major that it will have you tearing your hair out until you look like Lex Luthor): the inventory management system. This is truly the worst system I have ever seen in a video game. You access it by hitting Start and then choosing equipment. That’s fine. But then you have to cycle through your weapon types and equipment, then cycling through the many other weapons of the same type until you find the one you want. Then you have to equip it. Then if there are any add-ons to it, you have to hit a button to go to the add-on screen. You get a list of what add-ons you have, and you have to cycle through them (they are in no particular order - perhaps how you found them?) The thing is, if you already have an add-on equipped and you are just wanting to check and see if you have anything better, you can’t just back out if you don’t find anything. No, you have to actually re-equip what you already had!

You equip your two other characters the same way, but there’s no way to equip any of the other characters until you’re back on the ship. You can’t even see what they have, so if you’re trying to determine which weapons you want to reduce to omni-gel to save room (you can only carry 150 items in total), you have to remember what the others had or just guess. Hopefully they had something just as good! Even equipping your crewmates on the ship is tedious, as you have to access their personal equipment locker to do so. Thus, you have to access Wrex’s locker, equip him, then get out of that screen and access Kaidan’s locker to equip him, etc. I guess we should thank our lucky stars that the designers didn’t spread the lockers all over the ship!

One last thing: Whoever decided to make the “throw grenade” button the “Select button” should be tied up and forced to watch Pauly Shore movies until their eyes fall out. This is the stupidest thing I have ever heard of. Thankfully grenades aren’t that useful in this game, so you won’t find this much of an issue.

The AI is fairly decent, as your enemies (and friends) will take appropriate cover and do their best to stay alive. Occasionally you’ll get a bunch of them running right at you, which is annoying, but not too bad. They can get stuck in patterns at times, though, which makes killing them a bit too easy, but overall it’s pretty good.

Graphics
The graphics are where this game really shines. The character models are very realistic, they move really well during dialogue scenes (which just adds to the cinematic effect) and the exteriors are beautifully done. The detail in this game is amazing, though sometimes this detail results in a framerate drop. There are also far too many load times, though many of these are hidden by (extremely slow) elevators. If you’re on a planet, sometimes the two characters you’re with will start a dialogue, which alleviates the tedium somewhat, and you’ll get a couple of missions by listening to elevator loudspeaker news stories on the Citadel. But there are still way too many of these load times.

But it’s all worth it when you take in the eye-popping visuals. Gorgeous planetary vistas, relatively realistic character movement and facial expressions, all of it is a joy to look at. These are definitely some of the best graphics I’ve seen in a video game in a long time. One problem is the fact that all too many interiors are the same, which creates some monotony if you’re doing every mission (story or side). You go down in a mine, it’s going to look exactly the same. An outpost? Exactly the same. There’s too little variety, unfortunately.

Sound
The voice acting in Mass Effect is pretty good. I love Keith David as Captain Anderson (he’s been in many games, and his voice is very distinctive). The other voice actors are also very well done, with the only minor problem being Mark Meer as your voice (if you play a male character). That’s unfortunate, considering that you’re speaking all the time, but I just found his voice off in an emotional sense. It’s not that he was emotionless, but just that it never varied. It wasn’t monotone, but the tone never seemed to match what you were supposed to be feeling. It was a bit annoying, though I got used to it after a while. I haven’t heard the female Shepard yet, so I’ll have to see if it’s any better.

The rest of the sound is quite excellent, though. The music is very orchestral, and only becomes slightly annoying when you’re looking at the Galaxy Map. Otherwise, it fits the mood perfectly, with crescendos at the right time. It definitely adds to the space opera mood of the story, and it’s interesting in its own right. I wouldn’t mind listening to the soundtrack at some point. The ambient sounds are good as well, especially during the fight scenes. Explosions, the sound of gunfire zinging around you, it all immerses you in the action quite well.

Multiplayer
There is no multiplayer in this game…and really, should there be?

Overall
While the annoyances are really annoying, there is so much good about this game that you won’t care after a while. The storyline will draw you in, you’ll begin to care about the characters around you (which makes it a really hard choice if you have to choose which one to let die at a certain point). The choices you are given range from the mundane to the genocidal as at one point you have to decide whether to kill off the last of a race. I can guarantee that you’ll have to think long and hard about that one, unless you’ve already decided you want to be either a pure renegade or paragon.

If you don’t like dialogue in your games, or RPGs leave you cold, this is not the game for you. But if you love RPGs, you have to get this game. It’s the best one I’ve seen thus far, and raises the bar for subsequent entries in the field. It’s phenomenal.