I was looking forward to ME for a long time. Not what I expect but still an outstanding game.
I suppose I was expecting Dragon Age In Space but the two games are entirely different. While Dragon Age is much more open ended and silly, Mass Effect is far more focused and serious. For example your character in Dragon Age is a faceless blob you customize, but in Mass Effect Sheppard is an actual character, and an epic one at that. I wouldn't dream of changing Sheppard's face or gender.
Your conversation options are much more limited in Mass Effect making for a better story and more believable dialogue. There were a few times I was frustrated by the limitations though. Do I really need to choose from three dialogue options all complaining about Cerberus' methods? Cerberus is awesome. Is there really no option to tell this guy to go eat a dick? Regardless I appreciated the linear storytelling, especially after just finishing New Vegas. And the storytelling/characters are pretty top notch.
On problem I had was that it was tough to tell what the dialogue options were getting at. Sometimes it would say something like "A table" and Sheppard would end up insulting the guy's mother. Or the option listing "You're a failure" would lead to Sheppard saying something very sympathetic and endearing. I got into the habit of saving before important conversations and reloading a lot just to get around this.
Mass Effect 2 has the best in-game music ever, hands down. The environments and characters are gorgeous. I hope they keep making games that explore this universe and its history because it is so rich.
Also unlike Dragon Age, there isn't really any big choices in Mass Effect. I was trying to think what decisions could possibly have an effect on ME3 other than the choice at the end. Along the same lines I didn't understand the Paragon/Renegade system. It seemed to me the roles weren't exclusive of each other so you should just try to fill up both bars at every opportunity. I was mostly paragon but I took the R2 renegade options whenever they came up. Why wouldn't you? It adds to your renegade score giving you more speech options and takes nothing away from your paragon score. Maybe I missed something.
This brings me to the topic of the genophage. The genophage is bloody brilliant. Our earth desperately needs someone to invent the genophage. Why the hell did I keep getting renegade points for openly supporting it! Goddamn, short-sighted, ultra-liberal, hypocritical ethics that have crippled Western society. But I digress. Mordin was by far my favourite character.
I was super disappointed in the lack of RPG elements. There is very little, in fact almost nothing in the way of RPG elements in this game. You put points in four powers, the same as you would in games like God of War or any other simple action game. You don't even get to equip your characters or look at their stats.
The worst part of the game is the combat. The combat was almost bad enough to turn me off the game but, like everything else in Mass Effect, it grew on me. It plays like a second rate third person shooter. It certainly isn't up to par with games like Uncharted and felt more like Matt Hazard Eat Lead. There isn't really any pacing to the combat or enemy spawns. You walk through a bunch of empty halls, come to a huge room, big fight, tons of guys pour out, rinse and repeat. You always knew when enemies were coming. I spent most of my time in cover, just launching magic and letting my AI buddies do the work. It's worth mentioning this game has some of the most helpful AI partners ever.
At the end of the day the combat took a back seat to the epic story and character development. And it really wasn't that bad, just decent enough to fill in the gaps between great storytelling. Mass Effect wasn't what I expected but it was still a great game.
9.5/10