A good cinematic third person shooter, but not a good RPG.
Set in the distant future only twenty six years after humanity made first contact with intelligent alien life, you assume the role of Commander Bobo Shepard. Yes, you can customize his or her first name, but what could be better than Bobo? After customizing Shepard you're greeted by a cinematic intro. The storyline is pretty good, particularly for a BioWare plotline, but it has quite a few problems that shouldn't be present in a western RPG.
The most prominent issue I have, is that Shepard didn't feel like my character. Shepard's personality is pretty set in stone, he or she is a dull soldier-type and unlike past BioWare games you can't shape his or her personality. Part of this is because the dialogue system is dumbed down, and the character is 100% voice acted. You can make dialogue "choices", but the options are very vague and often don't resemble what Shepard actually says, sometimes these dialogue decisions feel pointless because Shepard says the exact same thing no matter what you choose. When I play a western RPG, I expect to be able to fully customize the main character and play him as I see fit, this isn't possible in Mass Effect as Commander Shepard is on rails in both personality and direction. The closest you can come to shaping Shepard's personality is deciding whether he's racist or not, which also effects whether he's a "Paragon" or "Renegade". Essentially, good or evil.
Mass Effect's gameplay is pretty straight forward. It's mostly a third person shooter with some simplified RPG and inventory elements. Not BioShock simplified, you still have an inventory, and you do actually have skills you place points into. Base stats are curiously absent, though, and the inventory system is the same universal "weightless" inventory present in BioWare's previous Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire. The combat can actually be entertaining, unfortunately you spend way too much time listening to other characters talk that combat takes up only a small portion of the game.
Visually ME is pretty good as it uses the third generation Unreal engine. There's also some optional special effects like motion blur and film grain which I disabled, film grain may add to the cinematic feel for some folks but I prefer a crystal clear picture. As far as audio, the game is hit and miss. The voice acting is top of the line as folks have come to expect from BioWare releases, unfortunately the music is pretty bland and forgettable which is disappointing after Jack Wall's wonderful music score for Jade Empire. I'm surprised really, I've enjoyed Jack Wall's work since Myst III: Exile, but his Mass Effect score seemed to sputter and die. Part of this may be because he co-composed with someone else, though.
Mass Effect, yeah I'd say that it's a good third person shooter with a lot of words. A good role playing game? If it were a Japanese RPG I suppose, but in a western RPG I feel that it's a must to feature a protagonist that the player can completely customize. Unfortunately Shepard's personality is defined from the get go and is not very flexible beyond his opinion of aliens, and while Mass Effect is a solid game it's flaws like this that bring it down.
+ Good storyline
+ Great combat system
+ Excellent voice acting, as usual
+ Nice visuals
- Draconic EA DRM
- Pre-defined main character with a set in stone personality
- Fully voiced protagonist
- Dumbed down dialogue system
- Average musical score