Board 8 > Games that held up, but...don't anymore. (Mass Effect 1)

(+) Yeah! (+)

I decided to do another playthrough of Mass Effect. My last one was 5 or 6 years ago, around Andromeda, and I remember thinking it held up incredibly well.

Cut to now, and MAN, Mass Effect 1 is janky! Even with the Legendary Edition improvements (or perhaps because of them?), it handles terribly. In 2 and 3, your abilities would lock on to enemies, but in one, they don't at all. I can't tell you how many times I have accidentally used Overload on the air about 3 feet to the side of an enemies, which does nothing. Wild stuff, lol.

I'm still having fun and love the Mass Effect universe, but I don't know if a newcomer would be able to get past the weird, borderline archaic issues it has.

I have said it forever, but I hated Mass Effect 1 so much I never tried the rest of the franchise.

Bad fighting, bad party system, okay story, and great world building.

But holy crap did I ever hate running into battles and seeing both of my party members die in record time.

These were criticisms of ME1 when it came out, too. They just stand out more 15 years later.

It's like when people complain about FFVII's Lego models as if people didn't make fun of them in 1997, too.

Yeah my hot take here is that Mass Effect's flaws were pretty apparent even on release. Who knows though, maybe if I replayed it I'd hate it instead of just thinking it's OK.

Usually my opinions on games don't change much over time so I don't have a great answer here, but the last time I picked up DKC1 and 2 I did not enjoy them. Might've just been in the wrong mood though. The last time I played them before that was back in like 2006 and I loved them then.

ME 1 was fine, as someone who only played the trilogy a few years ago. Certainly an old and flawed game but not unplayable.

The 2 sequels play much, much better, obviously.

I've still got a lot of time for ME1

I bought the legendary edition and never played it still. Only ever played ME1 when it came out and quit about halfway through, mostly due to the criticisms mentioned here. Heard so much good stuff about ME2 though and I definitely have to play through them all. We'll see how tolerable the first game is before I get to ME2.

ME1 was rough on release.

Everyone else has said it, but these were definitely issues with the game on release too. They were probably just easier to forgive at that time. The general quality-of-life on AAA releases nowadays is so high that we see things like Mass Effect 1 and really don't have the same stomach we used to for them.

Mass Effect 1 is great.

love the mako physics

Yeah I had the same issue when I tried to play the series back in like 2014. Never did make it through ME1

PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

But holy crap did I ever hate running into battles and seeing both of my party members die in record time.

See the funny thing is in ME1 my teammates probably die the least in the trilogy even though I play on Legendary. Not that they can't kill you but there are just so many ways to shut them down.

kevwaffles posted...

See the funny thing is in ME1 my teammates probably die the least in the trilogy even though I play on Legendary. Not that they can't kill you but there are just so many ways to shut them down.

Man, I would start a fight and they would just die immediately. I had to max out their defense and health stats before they'd even be alive long enough to do anything. That was on normal mode.

PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

Man, I would start a fight and they would just die immediately. I had to max out their defense and health stats before they'd even be alive long enough to do anything. That was on normal mode.

Defense and HP aren't what matters, it's leading off immediately with CC. The CCing powers in ME1 are absolutely gobsmackingly broken. Unless one of the squadmates you're using is Wrex defenses are irrelevant compared to using crowd control.

(What you play can also affect this, though. I remember in my soldier run my squaddies didn't die except in super pitched firefights because I was drawing much of the aggro. Something like infiltrator will have to be way more aggressive to compensate for not being able to take any damage for the team)