People from the races that reside within the Milky Way go into stasis on board large vessels known as arks. Their 600 year journey has the aim to find new planets to colonise in the Heleus Cluster. However, when they get there, the planets are no longer safe; there's a strange substance called the Scourge, the planet's atmosphere isn't as hospitable, and an aggressive race known as the Kett are exploring the cluster. With only key members leaving stasis in order to set up the new home, a team of soldiers accompany human Pathfinder Alec Ryder to investigate the planets and aim to make them hospitable.
The Pathfinder's goal is to explore and take lead on the colonisation process. He has combat skills and an AI assistant known as SAM. The Pathfinder dies on the first mission and transfers responsibility to your character who is his son (Scott)/daughter (Sara). Just like the previous Mass Effect games, you can play as Male or Female.
The story doesn't seem very complex like the main Mass Effect series, but this game puts the focus on exploration, and yet again; it's easy to get lost in the lore. There are many races, and individual characters each have extensive backstories and motives. It's easy to rack up the hours talking to characters you meet across the planets, on the main base called The Nexus, or your crew on your spaceship; the Tempest. Your codex is constantly updated, acting as an encyclopedia and has summary notes on your relationship with the characters.
The dialogue system in the main series was a “Paragon/Renegade” system where you could give good/evil/neutral responses. When reaching a high level of these extremes, sometimes you had the option to Charm/Intimidate. This has been changed to a system with four options; Emotional, Logical, Casual, Professional which gives more personality to the tone of the conversation.
Your primary goal is to colonise a few planets. This process has several mandatory missions then loads of optional missions. You will need to complete some side missions in order to increase the planet's viability level. Once you have met the prerequisite, then your colony can be started. There's many missions that are interesting, but then most of them are just basic fetch quests and general tedium.
These planets have a large area to explore. Your primary transport is the Nomad which is like the Mako. This vehicle has two modes, one is for speed and the other is for steeper inclines. It also has jump jets to help navigate jumps or rocky areas. Most planets allow you to enter/exit your vehicle freely, although planets usually have some kind of environmental problem which drains your life support system.
Your character also has a jet-pack to help navigate the area. There are some moments, particularly at the start of the game where it seemed platform-heavy, but these are actually fairly rare moments. Scattered across the map are points where you set up a Forward Station. This acts as a quick travel point, and a place where you can restore your ammunition.
There's plenty of areas which are really beautiful to look at, but there are some blander areas and some copy-and-paste design. The wildlife on each planet is usually very similar; just basic palette swaps which isn't really realistic when the planets will have a completely different ecosystem.
There's loads of side missions that unlock on The Nexus as you progress through the story. The other races (Asari, Krogan, Turian and Salarian) arks are all missing which have their own set of missions.
The combat is similar to the main-line game, but there are some simplifications. Although you can command your 2 team-mates to attack certain enemies or go to certain positions, you cannot order them to use abilities. The cover system is automatic meaning you snap in and out of cover as you move, but it doesn't always work as you expect. These changes are very disappointing and make the combat gameplay seem too simplistic.
When you level up, you can increase your abilities in Assault, Biotic, Technical, and can be a combination of them. Your character has way more available abilities than your support characters and so you gain more points when you level up. When you spend points in an ability, sometimes you get a choice of the effect (could be extra damage, or larger damage radius).
There's equipment and resources to find as you explore. You can also buy them at shops, or spend your research points to obtain them. I didn't really pay much attention to this system. The menus seemed quite cluttered and hard to compare equipment to what you currently have.
Much was said about the poor facial animations and general bugs. Compared to some games, the animations aren't as good. It's been a long time since this game came out but it generally seemed fine to me. There were times where I saw characters suddenly jerk, or end up floating mid-air though.
The biggest disappointment to me was the lack of music. There is music in parts, but then there's sections where even the general ambience is lacking.
The game might not be as epic as the main series, but the effort to flesh out the universe to make it feel believable is very impressive. The amount of content in the game is very impressive too. I completed the main story with loads of side-quests and only managed to complete 63% in around 40 hours.