Mass Effect Legendary Edition – My thoughts in 2022

I have a strange history with the Mass Effect series. I played the original Mass Effect when it came out in 2007 but did not get past the first 20 minutes of play. I thought the combat was weak, graphics and sound effects were mediocre, and the settings seemed uninteresting. So I put it aside. I think I tried it again a couple year later with similar conclusion. But the thing is, I really wanted to like it. I had heard that the story was great and that the gameplay is rewarding. Then Mass Effect 2 came out, followed by the next two games in the series. I never really got into the series – Then the Legendary edition came out. The reviews said that if you have never been into the Masse Effect series, then this is the version to get. I picked it up on sale…and it kept sitting in my library. Until now….

I fired up Mass Effect legendary edition a week ago. Wow…it seemed very different from how I remembered it from 2007. The combat seemed tight, and the graphics looked improved. Needless to say, I continued with it and beat it in 14 hours. Here are some thoughts on it. I will list them in Pros and Cons:

Pros:

The story is good. It starts off slow. Initially, I got the vibe that the story might end up being a stereotypical one, but it develops very nicely as you progress.
Not only is the story good, it is told extremely well. The story and lore are fairly complex (and interesting). Most other games would tell a story of this complexity through scrolls that you have to read or audio logs that you have to listen to. But Mass Effect delivers the story through excellent dialogue and voice acting. I found that for (almost) every story related question that popped in my head, there would be a dialogue option with an NPC which would answer that. This is quite remarkable.
In addition to telling the story well, the game does an excellent job of keeping track of the story and lore. You can always go back and refer to it as needed.
Biotics powers are fun to use.
Selecting and leveling up squad mates is enjoyable.

Cons:

I thought the graphics were mediocre (yes, even for the legendary edition).
The game is extremely easy! Tweaking the combat was part of the upgrades in the legendary edition but it seems a bit over done. Playing on the hardest difficulty is barely a challenge except for a couple boss fights. On normal difficulty, you will rarely die if at all. This is a shame since you don’t really need to use the various biotic abilities in combat. Just shoot and you will be fine!
Enemy AI Is bad. Check this out as an example! Often time enemies just run straight at you displaying no desire for self-preservation.
Combat is mediocre, even though it is a big improvement over the original. One of the things that I found absurd was that none of the enemies show any reaction to being shot at! It just looks bizarre. You keep shooting and the enemy keeps doing what it’s doing until it just drops dead. Weird. One of the games that really nailed enemy reaction when being hit was FEAR 3. It is still my favorite in this regard.
Character facial animations are stiff. Everybody is expressionless. This looks even weirder because of the excellent voice acting.
Because of the low difficulty exploration and performing side quests (to level up) is not as meaningful as it could have been with a balanced difficulty. The maximum character level is capped at 60. I reached level 42 in 14 hours. I left a lot of content out there.