Mass Effect Legendary Edition

Mass Effect has had a rough decade. Mass Effect 3 was released in 2012, and while the game itself was praised, the ending was controversial and caused a split in the fanbase, and a rift between BioWare fans and the devs making the games. In 2017 Mass Effect: Andromeda was released, and the less said about it the better, but the term clusterfuck comes to mind. The game was broken, buggy, looked terrible and the backlash was so negative that EA put the Mass Effect IP on ice. For the last several years Mass Effect has effectively been dead, until it was announced that a new Mass Effect game is in the very early development stage last year.

In what I assume is an attempt to restore interest in the IP, EA released Mass Effect: Legendary Edition. A remaster of all three games from the original trilogy with better graphics and tweaks to gameplay. I played through all three games straight through, getting the entire story of Commander Shepard at once instead of having to wait years between installments. Here's what I thought.

Overall I had a lot of fun, it was interesting to play all three games back-to-back-to-back, it made the changes in gameplay between the three more obvious. The first game received the most tweaking as the combat was clunky and dated (it was released in 2007). It's still clunky, but it's a lot better than it was. Cover actually works now, and health and shields have been revised to work the way they do in 2 and 3. I made some different decisions this time through, and I romanced a different character. I did play as a Soldier, which is the most basic class admittedly. But that's because it's the best class to play through all three games on insanity, which I did. #GitGud.