Forums > Submission Feedback > Zydrate's Mass Effect Trilogy review

This is a solid piece for a lot of reasons. It lacks the technical problems of your last two entries, yet it is far more casual in its tone. This is in keeping with your tendency to produce your best work when you're not trying as hard. You are a paradox, my friend.

Judging this review from a ROTW standpoint is difficult, though. It started off as a blog post, and it certainly works better that way. However, since it migrated to the review section, that makes things a bit stickier for me. You talk a lot about yourself a lot at the start, which is absolutely appropriate for a blog post, but not as appropriate in a formal review. It extended the length of an already lengthy article without adding too much (though again, as a blog post, this is perfectly fine and acceptable).

I have to give you props for a great set of screenshots, which were spaced nicely and evenly, even if I can see that most of them are not yours (as evidenced by the Mass Effect logo in the corners). Your timing on this article is obviously a plus too, as Andromeda's release is imminent. That was a very "journalistic" thing to do, as it means that people who are interested in buying Andromeda will be well-served by reading your recap of the events leading up to it, spoilers and all.

On that note, spoilers tend to bug me in reviews, but I really didn't mind in this case. Obviously, a retrospective article spanning three games has to give some things away, and all of your personal comments regarding each title's strengths and weaknesses wouldn't have worked if you hadn't elaborated on what exactly was going on.

As for my personal comments on the series itself, I have only personally played the first Mass Effect and never finished it. I also had a lot of problems with it. Its combat, shooting, and RPG elements just didn't seem very well implemented or fun to me. Exploring the galaxy and repeatedly plunking down that rover onto desolate planet after desolate planet was a complete snooze-fest. The interpersonal stuff, particularly the romance, felt kind of forced. Above all else, the game just felt like a cookie-cutter derivative of KOTOR. And BioWare, of course, has been following that exact same template for basically all of their games since, even when it's not necessary or appropriate, and that bugs me a bit.

Case in point for Mass Effect: The "morality" meters honestly didn't make much sense half the time, as you could attain high levels of both Paragon and Renegade pretty easily. Where did that leave your character? An angel who is also an asshole? I dunno. They might have had better luck making it a one-dimensional spectrum like KOTOR rather than having two separate bars to track this. KOTOR had a winning formula, and it worked well because it was a Star Wars title, but in Mass Effect it felt unnecessary. Perhaps that's why they finally got rid of this mechanic in Andromeda. The "morale" stuff you mention also sounds like a huge headache. They attempted something similar in KOTOR 2 and it just didn't work. All in all, the Mass Effect series, to me, feels like it inherited too much junk from KOTOR when they should have been rebuilding things from the ground up.

However, I know it's a popular series for good reasons, and you eloquently explain why it's worth looking into. I enjoyed reading this article a lot. I laughed at your occasional snark, and I appreciated the breadth of your knowledge, which can only be imparted by someone who knows the series back to front, including the tidbits about its development history.

I am still deliberating on ROTW so I don't know how this one will place, but it will definitely receive an honourable mention at the very least. Great work.

placid like acid

Yea the whole first part was probably unnecessary and might have pushed the whole article into being "Great" by your standards.

A personal issue I have with this article is that I wish I tapped into the story a bit more to contextualize certain things, as it was very much written for people who have already played it and wanted to see someone else's overall thoughts. I just wish I summarized a bit more than I did.

I disagree with you on most of the Bioware stuff. Yes, they continue to rehash similar formats across most of their games but I'm under the "Don't fix what isn't broke" mindset. I loved Kotor 1 and 2 and I think the morality there was fine. The apex of the whole thing was with Jade Empire, the only Bioware game that legit made me feel bad for taking the Closed Fist (Evil/Asshole) option and I probably will never do it again, except maybe for a Let's Play series.

Happy you enjoyed the read, though :D

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