I'm still playing Mass Effect....but honestly, I wish they completely remade it.
Without the draw of the story, characters and etc...the first Mass Effect is a product of its time and it doesn't hold up.
I remember being a bit off when Mass Effect 2 removed the RPG/inventory aspect but now...I wish dearly for ME to be the like that. Going to each locker to change each persons weapon selection is freaking annoying and made worst by needing to modify each ammo selection and weapon attachment.
Planet hopping is not fun anymore because nothing is really unique. For instance, the Rogue VI on the moon is just the same three structures with identical objectives of shooting conduits....and its like for mostly all of them.
Though...strangely enough, the more I play Mass Effect, the more I understand the direction of Mass Effect Andromeda.....they were clearly making the game to be a homage to the first game.
Yeah I'm with Smas, a complete remake without mucking with the story would have been great. The side quests in the first ME game are just trash. Even for the time they were bad copy/paste level designs, now it's basically inexcusable and just essentially filler content that required no real design skill. Most barely even have any worthwhile writing. Just "go to planet and clear out the bunker with the layout you've already seen 30 times and read the little summary at the end". The ones with voice acting at least have that to look forward to, but even then the action of actually traversing the areas are a slog.
Also ME falls into the "A good RPG needs to make you spend a bunch of time in clunky menus" shallow way of thinking about the genre. Even at the time I remember thinking ME2 was an upgrade in just about every way, RPG mechanics included. It was much more streamlined. The only thing I really missed was getting EXP from each individual enemy and finding the upgraded weapons and armor. But ME1 had some of the worst inventory management in existence for a triple A game, so I'm glad they got rid of that crap in the subsequent games.
And yes, I've been saying for years now that ME Andromeda is legit better than the first game in every way except the writing. The open world stuff is way better, the combat is better, the sidequests are more varied and interesting. It just lacks in the story/character department which is of course unfortunately what the main draw of ME is for most people.
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Last edited by BackFire on May 25th, 2021 at 09:05 PM
I agree. The sidequests are ****ing terrible and moving around the planets is not that great. I would be OK with trying to climb sheer rock faces....if the payoff was legit but its not.
Aside from a couple...it sucks and totally takes the sail out of the entire story (when knowing the outcome already..so maybe a bit unfair)....but I just dreaded the "Commander.....mister higher up is on line 2...."..."Commander...admiral hackett here....i know your a spectre and shit..but your human first...could you go commit genocide on this planet...." "over an out".
Maybe it's due to the how games were made back then....but I just went to the biotic commune with the religious leader and they didn't make an effort to add any remotely unique to the location." It's so frustrating.
However...i loved it when Joker was like "umm surprise of the century, alliance needs your help because your the only one that can......"
And the weapon/inventory system....it's a dumpster fire. I'm not 100% sure how it was done in the first game....but did characters only have options for weapons based on their class? If not...it still a pile of shit. If so..then that is one change this remastered does not do well...I do not want to change every single weapon in my character inventory screen...because they always seem to use the one weapon class they have no skills for.
I'm not sure I understand. What's your problem with the weapon system exactly?
Yes, you can give Liara an assault rifle if you want, but letting her use it as her main weapon? You just tell her to use her pistol instead, and make sure she has a decent pistol. That's all you have to do weapon wise with her.
Huh. I dunno what to tell you, then. My experience is like this:
Let's say I have Wrex. I only ever give him a new shotgun because I don't level anything else with him. I'm about... twelve hours in to ME1 and I can remember having to tell him not to use his assault rifle like... twice, maybe? And I've done half a dozen missions/quests with him easy.
I honestly don't know what determines the weapon they pull out at the start of combat. I hope you're not giving people that can't use them the latest assault rifles without selling them for those sweet, sweet credits.
The weapons that squadmates use in ME1 just seem random to me. There was a while where I told Liara to just use Pistols and that's all she used for a while. Then there was a mission where she was using an assault rifle and I had to tell her like 4 times to stop.
I did some googling and it seems like it's really random in how it happens. It isn't reliant on what their best weapon is. It can happen when their weapon overheats, but happening when their "proper" weapon is available seems to have no rhyme or reason.
Just another bug that wasn't fixed, I guess.
As far as the other issues with ME1, I actually agree with a lot of them. A lot of stuff was recycled, and while I don't mind the way the sidequests were formatted, I can see why going to the same layouts of bases over and over would be annoying. At the very least, I did feel like the planets were varied enough to not make it as terrible as it could be. Though there were the planets with the ****y mountains that were a pain to drive over.
If they were going to remake it (assuming Bioware had the actual nous to do it, but that's another conversation), I'd have no problem with them fixing a lot of what was broken. I'm not, though, in favour of them making it less of an RPG. If they can find that balance between that and making it approachable like 3 was, then I'd be all for it.
I just did the sidequest where the monkeys take the module....it was by far one of the worst things I have played in a long time. It's the combination of driving over the same damn mountains....searching each monkey and then finally finding the damn same looking tunnel. Oh just happens to be the last icon on the map that I searched....then opening the tunnel up....going through and checking every damn monkey and viola...the last ****ing monkey is the one that has the damn module.
Oh and then Geth showed up.....and then what drives me nuts...is that the game forces you to walk back through the entire mineshaft to get back to opening. It would of been nice to finish the quest (which was essentially a timesink) and be allowed to fast travel back to the ship without wasting 2 minutes.
It's just little things that drive you nuts. Like I had an inventory filled with items..jam packed with them and going through each character and changing out guns and then changing ammo and weapon talents is a such a chore. It doesn't help that to change a specific ammo type and weapon talent...you have to go through an entire list and find the one you want....such a pain....
And then when you want to sell them, you have to individual select them and sell it....or click on the control stick and send it to junk. No sell all button....
And 1 change that needes to be made....if you find a new ammo type...it should allow you to add it to any weapon without needing a ****ton of them...simple and easy change. You find Shredder V ammo...only need to find it once..and now you can apply it to all weapons.....Without doing this...you need to constantly modify every damn weapon whenever you get a new one..
Hey, you leave the space monkeys and their paragon glitch alone!
I'm gonna be honest, I think the console UI doesn't help things at all. The menu screen when compared to PC just looks... shockingly bad in comparison.
I do feel like the best kind of solution would be something that combines games 1 and 3, though. That way you get to keep weapon mods and stats and so on, and you don't have to spend ages in the menu looking for a specific mod and so on.
I think the easiest solution is to have weapon/ammo mod database. This is what newer games are doing and it's amazing.
Division 2 has this setup. You were consistenly keeping weapons for their talents and etc....now, you find a good gun that has a great stat but the rest is shit...well, just deconstruct and it gets added to the library. Now whatever weapon you find....you can always apply that stat boost to any of them...no need to keep that.
Mass Effect 1 could of easily done this...you find only need to find one ammo type (ex. Shredder VII) and viola, you can now add to all weapons. You still get the RPG thrill of getting a good loot drop....but without the need to sort through a thousand of them.
One thing I realised though. If they ever decide to remake it? I want the weapon and armour crafting from Andromeda brought in. I thought that was an excellent feature.
iirc, if you unlocked a mod that say, made Assault Rifles do 10% more damage, it was a mod you could apply not just to Shepard's assault rifle, but to that of Garrus, James, Ashley etc in the equip table thing.
Welll then that sucks. I would love to have that feature in ME1. Quality of life change.
I don't mind the ammo/weapon mod in ME1, they could potentially add some flavour to the combat (though the combat is not complex enough to warrant it) but sifting through an extensive list of types is exhausting and makes me not want to do it.
Almost done with ME2. Game is still magnificent. Holds up extremely well in just about all areas. And with the upgraded visuals it looks really good too, despite the fact that locations weren't really reworked like they were in ME1.
Nearing the end of ME3 now. So far this is definitely the game with the fewest changes or upgrades. The only thing I may have noticed is the game feels easier on the default difficulty than I remember. Things seem to die really quickly now. Dunno if it's just me or an actual change to the game.
Also the war assets have been tweaked since there is no multiplayer. You need something like 7800 in order to get the "best" ending.
The skyboxes in the game have always looked good, and with the graphical improvements they look exceptional. Reapers roaming in the background while Palaven burns is breathtaking.
Also still believe ME3 has the best character moments in the entire series. Really love the way squadmates talk to eachother while on the normandy sometime, and move around. It's really in this game that I came to really truly care about characters like Garrus and Tali. I liked them after Mass Effect 2, but in ME3, they became something more.
I know most of the discussion about this game has been about the ending and it's various controversies, and that has overshadowed a lot of other aspects of the game, but it does a lot really well and is the most tonally focussed game in the series. It is much bleaker than I remember, and I love that about it.
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May 25th, 2021 05:21 PM
