I personally enjoyed the combat so no complaints there and also was fine with no tutorial but then again I’ve been playing games for 20 years so it easy to pick up new games.

Great article and thanks Bioware for another great games I can add to all your others I own. Looking forward to whats next.

Mass Effect isn’t a perfect game. The learning curve can be steep, the textures routinely pop-up, the side-quests are redundant, and the emotional content, for me, still doesn’t quite match the best moments of the Half-Life 2 series. But it gets so much right. The depth and replay value of the writing is astonishing. Even now, on my sixth playthrough, I’m still coming across new, memorable dialogue, some of it quite hilarious. The facial animations are so good that often a character’s emotions are discernible just by sight. The combat varies enough with each skill-permutation that I still find the gameplay very enjoyable. In the last few days, for instance, I’ve discovered the joys of hacking AI opponents and watching them turn their guns on each other. I’ve also been stunned to discover how violently a maxed-out biotic can throw opponents across a room. And despite the pop-up problem, I find much of the game simply beautiful, particularly the lighting and the alternately blurred/focused perspective vision.

So kudos to Bioware. They’ve made a prospective RPG fan out of this shooter fan. I can’t wait for the second part of the trilogy!