With the release of Andromeda looming it's time to put up my 5 cents about this trilogy. It's high time anyway since I often use the games as benchmarks in my other reviews.

As per my usual 2008 self at first I didn't like the game. Back then I wasn't used to RPG elements. I believed the game to be boring, and I hated the lift sequences, I hated the combat, I hated the dialogue, I hated the adventure elements, and I hated the inventory. It took me three tries to properly immerse myself into the game. On my first try I choose a vanguard to play as, but it was a miserable failure. I never even left the citadel. On my second try, I choose a soldier, which was a better choice, but I left the game on auto-levelup due to my belief that a game shouldn't be about fiddling in skill menus, and due to my prejudice against "magic" and "special abilities" and out of small mindedness I refused to use any biotic abilities. I also wasn't used to games where you have a squad so I completely ignored the squadmates. I didn't use the inventory system either. I actually played the game to almost the end using the weapons I had at the start. Because I was so prejudiced against RPG elements and fiddling with the character and inventory menus that I completely ignored it. This of course made the game impossibly difficult even on easy. So my second play-trough was a failure as well. But at least I managed to leave the citadel, and the freedom it gave blew me away.

I couldn't believe, that I had my own spaceship, my own crew, and I could go to any planet I wanted to. And even land on many of them. This kind of freedom in a videogame was unheard of. At least to me. I felt like I was in an episode of a Star Trek show. So after that I took a big breath and decided to start the game again, and ignore my prejudice against the RPG elements. I actually believed that a game should be all action, and everything else was a distraction I didn't want to deal with. I was so stupid.

So when I started playing the game as it was meant to be played, and I started enjoying the cutscenes and conversations instead of moaning for action. Everything fell into place. Well almost everything, but I'll get back later to the negatives.

So the game is a mixture of an adventure game, a third person shooter, and a role playing game. I never saw anything like it before, I had played and was familiar with Kotor, but compared to this it's a clumsy relic from the bronze age.

The game's most important aspect is the story and the characters, that get you hooked on them, if you let yourself that is. (what I failed to do during my first encounters with the game). After that you can't put it down. I finished the game in three days after this. When I was barely able to spend half an hour with it in one sitting before I let go of my misconception about RPG elements.

The voice acting, the story, and the characters make this one of the most amazing games of its era.

But as every coin has two sides, this game has some drawbacks as well. The worst of these is the inventory system in the game. There are a million types of weapons and mods, and ammunitions and other items in the game. You can often find more than fifty items in a single mission alone. And your inventory is limited in it's size, so you can't just keep accumulating stuff. You can't just ignore loot either, lest you get yourself into the situation I was in before my enlightenment. And if you reach the 150 item limit, you can only discard items one at a time. And only category by category. You have to go trough unused ammo mods, unused weapon mods, unused assault rifles, pistols, shotguns, rifles, grenades, armor, armor mods, all separately. And the highlighted item is always the one you're using. So if you go berserk on the "omni gel" button you'll end up dissolving your best items. So in reality to dissolve one item you have to make three separate clicks, on three separate parts on the inventory screen. So discarding 100 items, assuming that you find 50 useful and want to keep those, means you have to make 300 clicks. And you have to do this at least 4-5 times during a playtrough. I can't imagine why no beta tester realized that this system is completely impractical.

Another problem is that apart from the main story missions, every side mission takes place in the same three map layouts, they only move around some items in the rooms. They used a level designer called copy&paste. And it's not just reused textures or a few objects, the whole map is exactly the same three for all side missions.

And another thing about planets, is that each planet you can land on is completely barren. There is zero vegetation, and objects, apart from the planets connected to the main story. It's like they made all of them using Terragen, and dropped the few mission critical objects on them afterwards.

If you play a normal game you can finish it in about 20 hours, but if you're a maximalist like me who wants to do every little sidequest, then it can be 30 hours or more depending on your pace.

+

  • Atmosphere
  • Addictive
  • Story
  • Characters
  • Graphics
  • Sound and Music  




-

  • CTRL-C CTRL-V levels  
  • inventory system  
  • the first part of the game, until you leave the citadel for the first time is pretty boring, and can deter undetermined people from finishing the game  



This is the beginning of the best Scifi game franchises, it might not be perfect. And it's combat is clumsy by today's standards. But if you're new to the game and let this deter you then you're missing out on a lot of good stuff.

graphics/realization: 7/10
story/atmosphere: 10/10
gameplay/controls: 5/10

overall impression: 8/10