💥 TRENDING: Id/ChilledKiwi - Uncensored 2025

The board is set, pieces awaiting your orders Commander. A grand conspiracy is ready to be unravelled. Uncharted worlds beckon through the void. The galaxy, with all its chaos and beauty and horror, is your cosmic oyster.

Straight out of the relay, Mass Effect blasted into the zeitgeist with a fully fledged identity — its world laying a believable stage for an ambitious three game narrative. BioWare in the 2000s were something else — the Banger-Bearers — and this is, for my credits, their greatest achievement. Three sick games all together: DLC streamlined, gameplay/graphics more consistent — this is one hell of a package. Yes, there are cons: dynamic lighting changes, dynamic Miranda-cam changes, but it’s probably the best way to experience the story.

Original versions (whenever EA allows them to actually work) are preferable for a real sense of the gamersphere at the time, if you’re interested in that. Even so, through the gloss, you can still see the shift from a mechanically dense but ultimately clunky gameplay loop in 1 evolve into a streamlined third person shooter experience. Some true wine-swirling gamers will say they prefer the old Mako taking five business days to scale half a mountain before capitulating to gravity and a lack of willpower, but I say Mass Effect is at its best when they figured out how to muffle sound in the vacuum of space.

2 took 1’s foundation and soared with it. Characters are the focus here (the true secret sauce of the series), quests being mostly composed of recruitment and loyalty missions. You and the gang will hop across mostly new planets, leaving as an idealistic legend or a pragmatic necessity. The ending is incredibly ballsy, and a real “this is future BioWare’s problem” move.

3 shines when it follows through with its characters. While the ending is the subject of fading scrutiny, not many can deny the high highs within. Nearly every thread is so damn earned, and the bittersweet, hollow feeling after everything is said and done is a precious experience I’ve rarely gotten in this medium. This series has done it to me twice.

When you take a step back and see what's accomplished here — a fully fledged, epic space opera — it's hard to nitpick. I could sit here and tell you all about what irks me about the games. I won't.
It endearingly turns flaws into charms; idiosyncracies are respected, not shunned. The trilogy narrowly escaped BioWare's incoming implosion; the last great breath of their golden age, a stamp on over a decade of propulsion for Western RPGs. Larian and CD Projekt Red continued with the design philosophy, but I have yet to find something with similar sensibilities match the narrative scope found here. It's truly a unique experience, one that any story-loving gamer simply has to play.

So, Commander? There’s alien shops to swindle! Biotic enemies to overcome! Systems to explore, phenomena to admire and unspeakable nightmares to uncover! Chart a course, give the order, see what’s out there.
But please — make some friends along the way.