I have tried to play this game since it was released numerous times and just couldn’t get into it. After putting 110 hours into the Mass Effect Legendary Edition recently, I decided it was finally time to blow through it. After 40 hours I can say that the game is more enjoyable than I first realized, but also has more flaws than I imagined. Most of the major visual bugs are patched out at this point, but what remains is the core game that can never change or improve without an actual sequel.
I love the premise of Andromeda. The game takes place 600 years after the events of the original trilogy and that’s because a private company sent every species known to Council space out on several arks to the Andromeda galaxy and establish lives on then discovered “golden worlds”. Everyone stays in cryostasis while an illegal AI named SAM watched over all the arks. You play as Ryder who wakes up to the human ark being hit by something called the Scourge. This is a space phenomenon that honestly is never really explored or explained in the game. Strange tendrils reach out and destroy worlds and ships. Your brother also ends up in a coma as his pod was damaged during the incident.
This is where you learn the basic controls and how to interact with the world. The core ideas and gameplay loop of Mass Effect are intact. You can read datapads, and talk to people for extra information and story, but in the end, your conversation choices make zero difference in the story. Whoops. I’ll get to that later. Once you finally try to explore the first golden world you realize it’s not. The Scourge changed it somehow, and all the golden worlds are no longer habitable. This sense of fear is something I wish the game touched on more. Being lost and stranded in space with no way back home is a really great idea, but they never play upon it. Once you land on the first planet, you learn how to do everything else. Controlling Ryder is a breeze, and the character is nimble, has a jetpack to jump around on ledges, can infinitely sprint, and the shooting is more akin to standard third-person cover shooter gameplay, but barely.
Let’s go over the combat. Sadly, Mass Effect 3 had more satisfying combat than Andromeda. It plays well, but it’s very generic and just gets the job done. Once again, like in Mass Effect 1, there’s too much loot. Weapon mods, augmentations, armor, armor mods, minerals, random collectibles, etc. This means that while each weapon looks unique, it doesn’t feel too unique. A shotgun feels like a shotgun, and an assault rifle feels like an assault rifle. They just picked a center lane for each weapon type and stuck with that. Games like Gears of War have weapons that have their own unique personalities. They are almost characters among themselves. At least in Mass Effect 3, the weapons had punch and weight to them, while these do not. The combat is mostly boring, and the same enemies repeat forever. You have the kett, Remnant, and the usual raiders. The kett are the main enemy as you are trying to stop the archon from using this Remnant tech to destroy worlds. More on that later. Then the Remnant is just a generic, boring robot. Each faction has different enemy types, but the game, in general, is pretty easy, and I rarely ever died, even during boss fights.
The biggest change in Andromeda is being able to explore actual planets. There are quite a few here, and they are actually really fun to explore. There are many side missions that involve your crew, and there are tasks, but honestly, just exploring and doing the main missions was the most fun I had in the game. The open maps feel like major filler, and while the worlds look beautiful, the new vehicle you get is much better to control, and it can get upgrades, but no combat; it’s 90% filler. There are tasks you can complete, but most don’t have objective markers, so you either have to wander around aimlessly looking for them or use a walkthrough. In the end, most missions don’t give you any rewards at all outside of XP. Unless you are a completionist, there are zero reasons to stray outside of the main missions. This is really a bummer, and most of Andromeda is just filler with no real rewards or pay-off.
There are also way too many things to keep track of. AVP missions, R&D, buying and selling, modding, unlocking cryopods teams, and bonuses. It’s just too much. AVP missions are pointless, as you just send teams out to complete missions for you. There’s a co-op multiplayer section tied in here, but why bother? The rewards are pointless. Andromeda tries to create an economy but ultimately fails, as it doesn’t need one. The game is too easy, so most of the weapons are useless. Once you get a level five weapon, you’re good. I had one of each weapon, and the mods are nice; they actually do help, but this meant I never needed to buy anything after the second world was finished. I mostly collected so many minerals on missions that I just R&Ded the weapon I wanted, and that was it. I needed research points to research the weapon, and then I could develop it. I also found the most rare weapons as loot. By the time I got to the third and fourth worlds, I stopped caring about all that and ignored it. I just continued to level up. Another thing I don’t like is that elemental ammo is now expendable, and you need to acquire it as it’s limited. It was hard to keep track of when I was using it, as there’s no sound or icon flashing that shows me when it’s gone. The icon just disappears.
So the main reason you explore these worlds is to establish a base and to clear each world’s hazardous conditions by activating three Remnant monoliths and then the vault. The monoliths sometimes require you to solve a sudoku-type puzzle using glyphs. Yep, I sighed at that too. At least it’s a real puzzle, but why do we need these? They just slowed the game down, and some are insanely difficult. Once you get into the vault, you activate consoles to get a path to the purifier console, then run out as the gas chases you. You do this about six or seven times, and it gets more boring as you complete each one. One thing I liked was seeing each race and how they fit into the Andromeda Initiative. It really feels like a reboot of the series while keeping the core of it intact—sometimes too intact.
That leads me to the main reason why most people felt so engrossed in the original trilogy: the choices. The dialogue is now split up into five emotions, and the binary moral system is gone, but each choice doesn’t really do anything. The only thing you can really control is who you form a relationship with. There is so much dialog and so many choices, but they mean nothing in the end, and that is one of the major problems with the game itself. I enjoyed the story itself, and the personalities and politics of the races remained intact and were in full force here, but my character was probably better off just not having any dialog choices. That would have been a bold new move, rather than keeping a system that is hollow in the end. And essentially, that’s what Andromeda is. A bunch of systems from the trilogy are either just there because they’re familiar and don’t do anything new, or they’re just there for no particular reason. This leads me to the Galaxy Map. BioWare just can’t get it right, even four games later. Sure, you are actually on a map this time and can zoom across the system, and it’s pretty cool for the first few times, then you want to skip it after that. It’s slow and uninteresting after a while, and there’s no reason to explore most planets outside of reading their descriptions. Sometimes you can launch a probe when Suvi announces an anomaly, but that’s it. So while the map is visually more impressive, it’s still pointless.
The visuals are outstanding, as the game uses EA’s Frostbite engine, but the game is horribly optimized. Frame drops happened mostly in cut scenes and in random areas. Sometimes dropping into single digits. It didn’t matter if it was on an overclocked RTX 2080 or an overclocked 1660ti. Both exceed the minimum requirements exponentially. The game still looks good with detailed textures and models, and I can’t explain just how beautiful the worlds are. I really felt like a space pioneer when exploring them. Overall, Andromeda is only worth a play-through for hardcore fans. If you just pick up this game, you’re going to get bored and not feel interested. It’s clearly geared towards fans of the series, as a lot of events carry over from previous games, and the knowledge of the races and events that took place reflects a lot in this game.
Mass Effect was a big part of my teen years growing up. It was a massive sci-fi odyssey that let you explore planets, and BioWare created a giant world with lore that could rival Star Wars. Alien species with in-depth military and political backgrounds, and the amount of detail spread across the whole game that fully incorporated the lore and detail. Being able to talk to numerous species such as the Elcor, Hanar, Volus, or Asari about their individual lives or more galactic issues. It was fascinating and ground-breaking for the time. The facial animations, the graphics, and the sheer scope of the game were unheard of. Fast forward over a decade later and it’s still impressive, but video games have evolved and so have action RPGs. The flaws are big red scores on the game, but it’s still fun to play through.
The game starts out like any other BioWare or Western RPG. You create a character, and pick a class, and a background. Mass Effect’s character customization was never grand, and LE’s improved version helps a bit, but it’s still not very detailed. You can choose a pre-made character, but I chose to create from scratch. I picked a class that balances biotics and weapons and a female. Biotics are powers you can use in the game (and describes how humans become biotics in fascinating detail) and you’re off. You start out right off the bat learning that dialogue is a huge part of the game here. In fact, every choice you make shapes the ending and the outcomes of missions that carry across all three games. You can be Paragon or Renegade based on how you respond. There are usually three different levels. Nice, mean, and down the middle. One major complaint players had was the Renegade path was Shepard just being a complete asshole and nothing in between. It also doesn’t serve you to be neutral through the whole game either. This path can unlock dialogue options for either side that can change the tide of the entire game including making missions easier or harder.
Once you learn the ropes and get into your first mission you will learn how to play with the combat and shooting in the game. Mass Effect never had amazing combat, but the shooting here is slightly improved and is more enjoyable than it was before. You can move into cover, peek around ledges, sprint, and throw grenades. You can carry four weapons. Assault rifles, pistols, shotguns, and sniper rifles. Throughout the game, you can acquire crap tons of loot that allow you to mod the weapons in various ways as well as acquire new weapons and armor. This is essential to staying alive and you also need to manage your crew’s armament as well. Over the course of the game, you will meet various characters such as Wrex the Krogan, Liara the Asari, and Garrus the Turian. These characters are quite memorable and some even offer missions. I didn’t particularly care for Kaiden or Ashley as they were just boring humans honestly, and there is nothing exciting about their personalities and you only learn about their past through optional dialogue when visiting them on the Normandy (your ship) after each main story mission.
One of the major hub areas of the game is the Citadel. A giant spacecraft that trillions of aliens live on. There are various parts you can visit and can easily get around through a fast travel system. There are about a dozen missions to complete on the Citadel as well as vendors to visit. Some missions are given to you here to complete in space, but overall the Citadel isn’t a very enjoyable place to explore. Most of Mass Effect suffers from slow exploration, linear corridors, and various other problems. It’s a flaw of the times as the Xbox 360 wasn’t powerful enough for the vast open worlds we have now and there were also time constraints for development. Honestly, exploring in Mass Effect just isn’t very enjoyable. I only really liked the main story missions. Side missions are a bore fest with nothing truly gained outside of cash and loot and there’s too much of it. The game is so short that you will end up with millions of credits with nothing to spend it on. About halfway through I acquired the best gear just by completing missions and opening crates.
It’s a very unbalanced game difficulty-wise. I found the game very easy early on as acquiring loot so fast and quickly means you can kill everything in a couple of shots. This also led to me never really venturing outside of my pistol as my class specialized in that weapon. I nearly maxed out my level by the end of the game and there are so many different things to put points into that it feels unnecessary due to the short length of the game. All these biotic powers, weapons, mods, and classes for a game that can be finished in less than 20 hours? I wound up finishing everything in the game in about 33 hours. While this sounds strange that there would be so much RPG stuff in a short RPG, the game mostly just runs itself. I micromanaged my inventory a lot, but the game is so easy that I never worried about trying to find the best stuff. It basically falls into your lap.
That’s also not the weirdest thing about the game. The MAKO driving sections are a notorious and infamous chore and bore-fest. The vehicle has a mounted turret and shoots grenades, but there’s not much reason to use it outside of main missions. The vehicle is floaty and the worlds you drive on are insanely difficult to navigate. The terrain feels like it was made by a child who was given a terrain deformation editor and they went nuts. Nothing makes sense, there’s no logic. Just cheer cliffs and mountains on every single planet that are a pain to drive on. You can go around and discover hidden anomalies and metal deposits (these are for credits), but it’s such a chore and it’s boring. The first few planets are interesting, and it’s fun to feel like you’re exploring planets in space, but they’re completely empty. There are no other colonies or cities to visit outside of the Citadel itself. Just hours of empty driving and getting out to do a stupid puzzle to complete a few fetch quests.
Most side missions are given once you enter a new cluster on the Galaxy Map. You are looking at a solar system and can click on planets and you get a zoomed-in view of them. These are actually quite awesome and they are all different. You get info sheets on what type of planet it is and that part is really more fun to explore than actually landing on planets. Most clusters have one planet you can land on, and once you enter a cluster that has a side mission you will get an incoming message. Then you land, explore, find anomalies to complete the fetch quests, find deposits for credits, then you go into the same three generic interior buildings that are rotated to shoot something dead to complete the side mission. Maybe there’s one that involves dialogue to complete the mission. These interior levels are boring with just a few hallways and open rooms.
With that said, what’s the point of completing side missions then? Maybe completionists will want to for achievements, but it’s not needed to get the credits to buy weapons and armor. You end up getting all that stuff organically as you play anyways. The most enjoyable moments are the dialogue sections though and combat is fun for the most part. It’s just clunky and most everything feels underutilized. However the story is fantastic and the majority of characters are memorable, and that’s Mass Effect’s strongest point. The world-building, the lore, the characters, the story, the writing, and everything involved in that.
The game looks good and the LE upgrade is definitely several steps up visually from the Xbox 360 original. There’s better lighting, higher resolution textures, more detailed models, and everything in between. The music in the series is also fantastic, and the PC graphics options are decent. There’s ultrawide screen support which is a huge plus in my book as well. Overall, Mass Effect 1 Legendary Edition improves mostly on the visuals and that’s it. You can’t fix the core gameplay too much. They tried to add sprinting, but it’s only for three seconds, so why bother? You can skip elevator rides, but only some of them, and interesting dialog takes place here, so again, what’s the point there? I also had physics issues, stuttering, slow down, and the game would randomly crash sometimes. Hopefully, this gets patched at some point.
If you can look past the awful MAKO missions, the clunky combat, overly easy difficulty, and the unbalanced loot system, the game is worth playing. The main story is short, and the side missions aren’t worth investing time into unless you want to complete everything. The story, lore, characters, and dialogue are what make the game so great, but it really hasn’t aged well over the years and feels like a time capsule of two generations ago.
Mass Effect 2
Mass Effect had a lot of issues when it was released and many things needed to be balanced, tweaked, and changed, and BioWare listened with Mass Effect 2. You can immediately see many improvements, especially right after playing the first game, but some issues were fixed in the wrong way or weren’t quite realized enough. As a sequel, the game is bigger, more in-depth, more fun, and definitely a much tighter experience overall.
One of the first things you will notice right away is the game plays more like a traditional cover-based third-person shooter. The shooting is tighter, the weapons are more satisfying to shoot, and the cover system is a lot better. One of the first major changes in the implementation of ammo was in form of thermal clips. I know in Mass Effect 1 it was said that the weapons shave off pieces of metal and each gun has a small mass effect drive, but for some reason, thermal clips are now needed. You can pick thermal clips off of dead enemies or around the levels, but you also now have more limited use of weapons in your class. Each class can use specific weapon types. The game also ditched the traditional loot system in favor of set upgrades that you acquire throughout the game for everything. Each weapon has 5 levels of damage you can upgrade to, there are biotic upgrades, but your biotic powers are now set in stone based on class. Once you pick your class your weapons, biotic powers, and even ammo type you can use are all permanent. Some people didn’t like this and felt it was the opposite direction of endless, mostly useless, loot.
I actually felt this was an improvement as BioWare went with a more traditional cover shooter system so they took out most of the RPG elements outside of adding stat points to one of your four or more powers based on your level. I chose to use any weapon type, but I couldn’t use sub-machine guns. I also had access to all ammo types, of which there are four. This actually came in handy when dealing with certain enemy types, as there are a wider variety of them. I used incendiary ammo for organic enemies, and for Geth and mechs, I used a disruptor ammo type. I felt the cryo was a bit useless, but I also had access to my two teammates’ powers, and I could command them to use them at will. You can acquire new weapons by discovering them around areas, as mission rewards, or sometimes at shops. There aren’t many weapons in the game, so just be aware of that. At least they feel more unique instead of just a statistic change in a massive pile of crap. Shepard also moves faster in this game, and the entire pace of the main missions and side missions is even faster and more streamlined.
Another huge change is the level design. In the first game, the only unique areas were during the story missions and side missions were a boring hodgepodge of empty hallways that led to empty square rooms. At least in this game, there are more worlds to land on, about three times as many, and there are about twice as many teammates to acquire so that means more unique areas as well. Each teammate is a mission in itself to acquire them and then they each have their own mission to gain their loyalty and this is used to advance your romantic relationship with them. There just aren’t more worlds, but they feel more lived in. Sure, they’re still small and linear and cramped, but the Citadel is what it was in ME1. You’re now just on three levels of the wards and the shops. There are aliens everywhere; the backdrops look gorgeous; there are more ambient sound effects; and it feels great—for the first visit. The game is still very static, and I wish alien positions would switch up or more random events would happen. Nothing ever changes, and every NPC is glued to that spot forever. It still feels good to be in these areas, and the extra detail everywhere is really noticeable.
Side missions are now acquired during main missions or other side missions. You might find a datapad that has a mission, or you will find messages on your personal terminal. The navigation of the galaxy map has greatly improved as well. All missions are now shown on the galaxy map, and there are bubbles on each nebula or cluster with the name of the mission. You can now directly control the ship on the map, but it’s honestly pointless and feels half-baked. You have fuel and probes now, and fuel is used to get across solar systems in a galaxy. You still need to use a mass relay to jump around the major clusters in the galaxy. The fuel feels stupid, as that’s all it’s used for, and probes are the answer to taking away the MAKO and finding resources.
Yes, the MAKO is gone! Hallelujah!, but now you are stuck with another mundane chore: scanning planets for resources. There are five resources needed for upgrades, with Element Zero being the rarest. Most of your Eezo is acquired on missions in containers rather than planets. What you have to do is hold down a button to scan the planet, and a bar graph will spike high when there’s a strong amount of an element in that spot. It’s incredibly tedious and feels like a chore, and there’s zero fun in it. Sure, you can acquire a better scanner later, as each crew member you recruit has a major upgrade to offer the Normandy, but it doesn’t make things better. What’s more annoying are the limited probes. Why? I can only get more at a fuel depot, and those are only near mass relays. So, if I’m in a system that has no depot, I have to travel back on the map and fuel up. Just give me unlimited fuel and probes! This limit makes no sense. I also don’t like how there’s no zoomed-in view of each planet like there was in the first game. It’s just a small ball on a screen. At least each planet has a unique description.
While the galaxy map is slightly improved, it introduces new issues, and the dialogue system hasn’t changed a bit. Shepard is a little less of an ass in the Renegade options, but the binary moral system is really crippling as the game tries so hard to be extreme on either end. There are now some quick-time events during certain scenes that allow you to perform a Paragon or Renegade action that can boost that meter, but at least the smaller choices in conversations now add a little bit too. The top, middle, and bottom responses are good to evil in their respective order, and you will get maybe two points for responding nicely even in parts of the conversations that don’t matter. Sometimes you can win an entire dialog-driven scene by having your morals polarized more on one side, but I will give BioWare credit for its continuity. Every action you take in the first game reflects whether it’s a crew member who died on a small side mission and you just get a message about it later. I noticed every action I took in the first game unfold and take hold here, and these actions also had dire consequences.
The main story is still really short, with only maybe half a dozen missions or so. The last three crew members are optional, and there are a couple of crew members attached to DLC. Sadly, these crew members don’t have any dialog trees, and their characters aren’t expanded upon enough. With that said, the new characters are really likable, memorable, and well-written. The expanded lore and world feel grand despite the game’s actual limited scope. I felt I had more control over the dialog, but the binary moral system is constricting in itself and is one of the main issues I have with the whole series. The game is about as long as the first, but it feels more satisfying as you aren’t spending 10+ hours driving around in a boring MAKO. I finished almost everything in about 35 hours, and it feels solid and thorough. Less filler was scrapped for more actual content.
The Legendary Edition upgrades are mostly visual, and they look great. The game is several steps up from the first game visually, and the voice acting has improved a bit. There are more scripted events, cut-scenes, and animations. But the same 3-second sprint still exists, which is annoying. Overall, Mass Effect 2 is so much better than the first in every way. The story feels grander, and the Collector’s are a new formidable enemy. More questions are answered that you actually care about, but also more questions are raised, and the game ends on a cliffhanger. I liked having to choose teammates to do certain things on the final suicide mission, as some might die, but you don’t know in what situation or how. Sometimes it’s not even the team member you actually pick who might die, but yes, team members die at the end, no matter what you do; it’s just a matter of who. I loved every minute I was in the game and couldn’t put it down.
Mass Effect 3
Here it is. The finale to one of the largest video game sci-fi epics ever created. It’s a huge undertaking, and when Mass Effect 3 first launched, it became infamous for its disappointing ending, which basically had to be rewritten and patched back in. This is it. The final push against the reapers and any other enemies that stand in Shepard’s way. The game focuses heavily on shooting and veers more away from a traditional RPG, but it also has a more focused mission structure with a lot of writing and dialog with choices that mean even more than they ever did before.
The main focus of the game is to now gain war assets towards defeating the reapers. This is your main goal and what all your main and side missions will give you in the end. You have a minimum meter and can’t engage in the final mission until you’ve met this bar. This is all based on a score, and it’s broken down based on what you have done. All main missions give you the largest chunk, as your next big goal is to basically figure out what to do with each species that we have learned about up until now. The krogan and turian conflict, the krogan genophage, the quarians, the rachni, and the geth. All questions are answered, and each main mission focuses on the main characters that either survived during Mass Effect 2 or just in general. Dealing with each and every major issue with all species is pretty incredible and cool. It feels right that everything led up to these huge decisions.
One of the first noticeable things is the improved combat. It’s more cinematic and feels closer to something akin to Gears of War. Infinite sprint, finally, with snappier cover mechanics and dodge and roll mechanics, and the guns feel more tweaked, unique, and satisfying to shoot. This feels like a proper third-person shooter now, with some RPG stats tacked on. However, despite the more unique weapons, which include a loadout bench, and the fact that each weapon can have two mods attached, the game is still too easy. I rarely ever died, and when you fully upgrade a weapon to level five, everything dies in a couple of bullets. I wound up finding preferences for how the gun feels over how much damage it can do. I feel there are way too many weapons for such an easy system, and every enemy feels like cannon fodder. While there are now only Reaper enemies and Cerberus enemies, they repeat often and get boring to shoot. I was never afraid of any situation, and I could even stand out in the open most of the time and just mow everything down without a scratch. While the combat feels great, it’s not challenging, and all the effort feels almost wasted.
Once again you command the Normandy ship and its layout has changed once again. It’s lost more streamlined and you no longer have to walk around talking to everyone hoping to unlock the next relationship stage. You only acquire five squadmates this time and most of you already have met before. I really felt no need to walk around the ship anymore except to invite people to my cabin to advance a relationship. You are informed when someone wants an invite so the whole relationship thing is better and streamlined. The game switched focus from a lot of planets to visit for side missions to just very unique and cinematic main missions with a few side missions here and there. There really aren’t many. There are a ton of main missions and it keeps the pace going. Most side missions for acquiring war assets come in the form of probing planets. Don’t worry, it’s not as tedious as ME2, but this time you just probe the flashing spot on the planet and get your asset. And very rarely do you ever land on a planet for something. This allows you to solely focus on main missions and map exploration, which is pretty much the same as in ME2.
The map removes the need for probes and just has fuel, which I still don’t really get. Now that the Reaper threat is imminent, you can scan the map as you fly around to find hidden assets. Sometimes this will alert the reapers, and they will swarm you on the map, and you usually have to escape and come back. So, once again, the map is improved in some ways and hindered in others. Never did BioWare really get this system down working flawlessly. The only place you can now visit off-world is the Citadel, and nowhere else. It’s also been streamlined as you visit different areas again. There’s a central elevator that takes you around to the five different levels, and it’s mostly used for war asset acquisition. You overhear people talking, and you then need to go to that system on the map and probe a planet for the thing they’re looking for. Sometimes it’s something you pick up on the main mission, but sadly, these can be easily missed, and there’s no way to go back if you do.
I found the binary moral system hindering once again, as it matters here more than ever. It still unlocks certain actions during scenes and dialog options during important scenes, but I don’t like being either really nice or really mean. There’s no in-between, and after going through three games like this, it’s really annoying and holds things back. It feels so black-and-white here that I almost predicted what outcome would happen if I chose a certain response. Other than that, the ending itself was satisfying, and you can replay the final scene and go through your options to see different outcomes. I didn’t like how I couldn’t get a detailed epilogue of what happened to each surviving crewmate and my romantic partners. You get concept art stills and Hackett giving a speech at the end (which doesn’t spoil anything), and it felt pretty generic in the end. Like a fizzle and hiss rather than a huge emotional finale.
The visuals in ME3 are better than ever, with insane details in the backgrounds and overall detail of the game. I found zero crashes and glitches with this game, as with ME1 and ME2. I did actually find one glitch where I fell through a floor, but I think it was my own fault that time. I did also find the DLC in ME3 kind of weird. There’s one DLC that’s all about comedy and stopping a clone of Shepard. You get an apartment that you can deck out? Why? It’s not like this is a game I want to spend time in a player’s home. I can buy furniture and stuff, which is not very exciting and completely useless. This DLC also has more mini-games in the form of an arcade and is basically an entertainment strip mall. While I enjoyed the funny one-liners and overall humor that the main game lacked, this added feature was super strange.
Overall, Mass Effect 3 improves by giving you more cinematic story missions, less filler, improved combat, and bigger choices than ever before. You really feel like all of your actions from the past have caught up with you, for better or worse. While BioWare still can’t seem to nail down combat and the galaxy map well enough, it works. Combat feels great, but it’s way too easy, and thus the time and effort spent on creating so many unique weapons and mods is a complete waste. Why bother when I can stand there and mow down every enemy with the same weapon through the whole game? There’s no incentive to mix up the weapons and experiment. With the ending being iffy and the DLC being kind of weird, I enjoyed my time with ME3 but also felt the flaws were glaringly obvious. It’s still a great ending to one of the greatest video game franchises ever made.
Legendary Edition Changes
The changes made for this release are nice, but a lot of effort felt only half-baked. You can now sprint anywhere in Mass Effect 1 and 2, but only for a few seconds, so why bother at all? The visuals are greatly improved in all three games, but a total remake would have been better. Why not take what Mass Effect 3 improves on and change these over to the other two games? Get rid of the MAKO levels entirely in ME1 and just drop me down into the side missions from the planet. Allow me to collect resources from others, as they’re only used to gain credits anyway. The Galaxy Map should have also been changed in ME1. While driving around the map wouldn’t benefit much, it would at least fit into the rest of the game. Some might say it doesn’t leave the game as original as possible, but these features are widely disliked by fans.
Combat could have also been changed from Mass Effect 3 in both games. While ME1 is more of a traditional RPG in terms of loot, why not scrap it entirely? There are a lot of design questions about this game, as it mostly feels like just a visual overhaul, and that’s it. At least the game runs well on modern systems and consoles, and that’s what mostly counts. This would also have given the developers an opportunity to redo the ending of the series completely. Take the fan feedback from the last decade and use that to rebuild a better ending.
Here it is. The finale to one of the largest video game sci-fi epics ever created. It’s a huge undertaking, and when Mass Effect 3 first launched, it became infamous for its disappointing ending, which basically had to be rewritten and patched back in. This is it. The final push against the reapers and any other enemies that stand in Shepard’s way. The game focuses heavily on shooting and veers more away from a traditional RPG, but it also has a more focused mission structure with a lot of writing and dialog with choices that mean even more than they ever did before.
The main focus of the game is to now gain war assets towards defeating the reapers. This is your main goal and what all your main and side missions will give you in the end. You have a minimum meter and can’t engage in the final mission until you’ve met this bar. This is all based on a score, and it’s broken down based on what you have done. All main missions give you the largest chunk, as your next big goal is to basically figure out what to do with each species that we have learned about up until now. The krogan and turian conflict, the krogan genophage, the quarians, the rachni, and the geth. All questions are answered, and each main mission focuses on the main characters that either survived during Mass Effect 2 or just in general. Dealing with each and every major issue with all species is pretty incredible and cool. It feels right that everything led up to these huge decisions.
One of the first noticeable things is the improved combat. It’s more cinematic and feels closer to something akin to Gears of War. Infinite sprint, finally, with snappier cover mechanics and dodge and roll mechanics, and the guns feel more tweaked, unique, and satisfying to shoot. This feels like a proper third-person shooter now, with some RPG stats tacked on. However, despite the more unique weapons, which include a loadout bench, and the fact that each weapon can have two mods attached, the game is still too easy. I rarely ever died, and when you fully upgrade a weapon to level five, everything dies in a couple of bullets. I wound up finding preferences for how the gun feels over how much damage it can do. I feel there are way too many weapons for such an easy system, and every enemy feels like cannon fodder. While there are now only Reaper enemies and Cerberus enemies, they repeat often and get boring to shoot. I was never afraid of any situation, and I could even stand out in the open most of the time and just mow everything down without a scratch. While the combat feels great, it’s not challenging, and all the effort feels almost wasted.
Once again, you command the Normandy ship, and its layout has changed once again. It’s become more streamlined, and you no longer have to walk around talking to everyone, hoping to unlock the next relationship stage. You only acquired five squadmates this time, and most of you have already met before. I really felt no need to walk around the ship anymore, except to invite people to my cabin to advance a relationship. You are informed when someone wants an invitation, so the whole relationship thing is better and more streamlined. The game switched focus from a lot of planets to visit for side missions to just very unique and cinematic main missions, with a few side missions here and there. There really aren’t many. There are a ton of main missions, and it keeps the pace going. Most side missions for acquiring war assets come in the form of probing planets. Don’t worry, it’s not as tedious as ME2, but this time you just probe the flashing spot on the planet and get your asset. And very rarely do you ever land on a planet for something. This allows you to solely focus on main missions and map exploration, which is pretty much the same as in ME2.
The map removes the need for probes and just has fuel, which I still don’t really get. Now that the Reaper threat is imminent, you can scan the map as you fly around to find hidden assets. Sometimes this will alert the reapers, and they will swarm you on the map, and you usually have to escape and come back. So, once again, the map is improved in some ways and hindered in others. Never did BioWare really get this system down working flawlessly. The only place you can now visit off-world is the Citadel, and nowhere else. It’s also been streamlined as you visit different areas again. There’s a central elevator that takes you around to the five different levels, and it’s mostly used for war asset acquisition. You overhear people talking, and you then need to go to that system on the map and probe a planet for the thing they’re looking for. Sometimes it’s something you pick up on the main mission, but sadly, these can be easily missed, and there’s no way to go back if you do.
I found the binary moral system hindering once again, as it matters here more than ever. It still unlocks certain actions during scenes and dialog options during important scenes, but I don’t like being either really nice or really mean. There’s no in-between, and after going through three games like this, it’s really annoying and holds things back. It feels so black-and-white here that I almost predicted what outcome would happen if I chose a certain response. Other than that, the ending itself was satisfying, and you can replay the final scene and go through your options to see different outcomes. I didn’t like how I couldn’t get a detailed epilogue of what happened to each surviving crewmate and my romantic partners. You get concept art stills and Hackett giving a speech at the end (which doesn’t spoil anything), and it felt pretty generic in the end. Like a fizzle and hiss rather than a huge emotional finale.
The visuals in ME3 are better than ever, with insane details in the backgrounds and overall detail of the game. I found zero crashes and glitches with this game, as with ME1 and ME2. I did actually find one glitch where I fell through a floor, but I think it was my own fault that time. I did also find the DLC in ME3 kind of weird. There’s one DLC that’s all about comedy and stopping a clone of Shepard. You get an apartment that you can deck out? Why? It’s not like this is a game I want to spend time in a player’s home. I can buy furniture and stuff, which is not very exciting and completely useless. This DLC also has more mini-games in the form of an arcade and is basically an entertainment strip mall. While I enjoyed the funny one-liners and overall humor that the main game lacked, this added feature was super strange.
Overall, Mass Effect 3 improves by giving you more cinematic story missions, less filler, improved combat, and bigger choices than ever before. You really feel like all of your actions from the past have caught up with you, for better or worse. While BioWare still can’t seem to nail down combat and the galaxy map well enough, it works. Combat feels great, but it’s way too easy, and thus the time and effort spent on creating so many unique weapons and mods is a complete waste. Why bother when I can stand there and mow down every enemy with the same weapon through the whole game? There’s no incentive to mix up the weapons and experiment. With the ending being iffy and the DLC being kind of weird, I enjoyed my time with ME3 but also felt the flaws were glaringly obvious. It’s still a great ending to one of the greatest video game franchises ever made.
Mass Effect had a lot of issues when it was released and many things needed to be balanced, tweaked, and changed, and BioWare listened with Mass Effect 2. You can immediately see many improvements, especially right after playing the first game, but some issues were fixed in the wrong way or weren’t quite realized enough. As a sequel, the game is bigger, more in-depth, more fun, and definitely a much tighter experience overall.
One of the first things you will notice right away is the game plays more like a traditional cover-based third-person shooter. The shooting is tighter, the weapons are more satisfying to shoot, and the cover system is a lot better. One of the first major changes in the implementation of ammo was in form of thermal clips. I know in Mass Effect 1, it was said that the weapons shave off pieces of metal and each gun has a small mass effect drive, but for some reason, thermal clips are now needed. You can pick thermal clips off of dead enemies or around the levels, but you also now have more limited use of weapons in your class. Each class can use specific weapon types. The game also ditched the traditional loot system in favor of set upgrades that you acquire throughout the game for everything. Each weapon has 5 levels of damage you can upgrade to; there are biotic upgrades, but your biotic powers are now set in stone based on class. Once you pick your class, your weapons, biotic powers, and even the ammo type you can use are all permanent. Some people didn’t like this and felt it was the opposite of endless, mostly useless loot.
I actually felt this was an improvement as BioWare went with a more traditional cover shooter system, so they took out most of the RPG elements outside of adding stat points to one of your four or more powers based on your level. I chose to use any weapon type, but I couldn’t use sub-machine guns. I also had access to all ammo types, of which there are four. This actually came in handy when dealing with certain enemy types, as there are a wider variety of them. I used incendiary ammo for organic enemies, and for Geth and mechs, I used a disruptor ammo type. I felt the cryo was a bit useless, but I also had access to my two teammates’ powers, and I could command them to use them at will. You can acquire new weapons by discovering them around areas, as mission rewards, or sometimes at shops. There aren’t many weapons in the game, so just be aware of that. At least they feel more unique instead of just a statistic change in a massive pile of crap. Shepard also moves faster in this game, and the entire pace of the main missions and side missions is even faster and more streamlined.
Another huge change is the level design. In the first game, the only unique areas were during the story missions and side missions were a boring hodgepodge of empty hallways that led to empty square rooms. At least in this game, there are more worlds to land on, about three times as many, and there are about twice as many teammates to acquire so that means more unique areas as well. Each teammate is a mission in itself to acquire them and then they each have their own mission to gain their loyalty and this is used to advance your romantic relationship with them. There just aren’t more worlds, but they feel more lived in. Sure, they’re still small and linear and cramped, but the Citadel is what it was in ME1. You’re now just on three levels of the wards and the shops. There are aliens everywhere; the backdrops look gorgeous; there are more ambient sound effects; and it feels great—for the first visit. The game is still very static, and I wish alien positions would switch up or more random events would happen. Nothing ever changes, and every NPC is glued to that spot forever. It still feels good to be in these areas, and the extra detail everywhere is really noticeable.
Side missions are now acquired during main missions or other side missions. You might find a datapad that has a mission, or you will find messages on your personal terminal. The navigation of the galaxy map has greatly improved as well. All missions are now shown on the galaxy map, and there are bubbles on each nebula or cluster with the name of the mission. You can now directly control the ship on the map, but it’s honestly pointless and feels half-baked. You have fuel and probes now, and fuel is used to get across solar systems in a galaxy. You still need to use a mass relay to jump around the major clusters in the galaxy. The fuel feels stupid, as that’s all it’s used for, and probes are the answer to taking away the MAKO and finding resources.
Yes, the MAKO is gone! Hallelujah!, but now you are stuck with another mundane chore: scanning planets for resources. There are five resources needed for upgrades, with Element Zero being the rarest. Most of your Eezo is acquired on missions in containers rather than planets. What you have to do is hold down a button to scan the planet, and a bar graph will spike high when there’s a strong amount of an element in that spot. It’s incredibly tedious and feels like a chore, and there’s zero fun in it. Sure, you can acquire a better scanner later, as each crew member you recruit has a major upgrade to offer the Normandy, but it doesn’t make things better. What’s more annoying are the limited probes. Why? I can only get more at a fuel depot, and those are only near mass relays. So, if I’m in a system that has no depot, I have to travel back on the map and fuel up. Just give me unlimited fuel and probes! This limit makes no sense. I also don’t like how there’s no zoomed-in view of each planet like there was in the first game. It’s just a small ball on a screen. At least each planet has a unique description.
While the galaxy map is slightly improved, it introduces new issues, and the dialogue system hasn’t changed a bit. Shepard is a little less of an ass in the Renegade options, but the binary moral system is really crippling as the game tries so hard to be extreme on either end. There are now some quick-time events during certain scenes that allow you to perform a Paragon or Renegade action that can boost that meter, but at least the smaller choices in conversations now add a little bit too. The top, middle, and bottom responses are good to evil in their respective order, and you will get maybe two points for responding nicely even in parts of the conversations that don’t matter. Sometimes you can win an entire dialog-driven scene by having your morals polarized more on one side, but I will give BioWare credit for its continuity. Every action you take in the first game reflects whether it’s a crew member who died on a small side mission and you just get a message about it later. I noticed every action I took in the first game unfold and take hold here, and these actions also had dire consequences.
The main story is still really short, with only maybe half a dozen missions or so. The last three crew members are optional, and there are a couple of crew members attached to DLC. Sadly, these crew members don’t have any dialog trees, and their characters aren’t expanded upon enough. With that said, the new characters are really likable, memorable, and well-written. The expanded lore and world feel grand despite the game’s actual limited scope. I felt I had more control over the dialog, but the binary moral system is constricting in itself and is one of the main issues I have with the whole series. The game is about as long as the first, but it feels more satisfying as you aren’t spending 10+ hours driving around in a boring MAKO. I finished almost everything in about 35 hours, and it feels solid and thorough. Less filler was scrapped for more actual content.
The Legendary Edition upgrades are mostly visual, and they look great. The game is several steps up from the first game visually, and the voice acting has improved a bit. There are more scripted events, cut-scenes, and animations. But the same 3-second sprint still exists, which is annoying. Overall, Mass Effect 2 is so much better than the first in every way. The story feels grander, and the Collector’s are a new formidable enemy. More questions are answered that you actually care about, but also more questions are raised, and the game ends on a cliffhanger. I liked having to choose teammates to do certain things on the final suicide mission, as some might die, but you don’t know in what situation or how. Sometimes it’s not even the team member you actually pick who might die, but yes, team members die at the end, no matter what you do; it’s just a matter of who. I loved every minute I was in the game and couldn’t put it down.
Mass Effect was a big part of my teen years growing up. It was a massive sci-fi odyssey that let you explore planets, and BioWare created a giant world with lore that could rival Star Wars. Alien species with in-depth military and political backgrounds, and the amount of detail spread across the whole game that fully incorporated the lore and detail. Being able to talk to numerous species, such as the Elcor, Hanar, Volus, or Asari, about their individual lives or more galactic issues. It was fascinating and ground-breaking at the time. The facial animations, the graphics, and the sheer scope of the game were unheard of. Fast forward over a decade later, and it’s still impressive, but video games have evolved, as have action RPGs. The flaws are big red scores on the game, but it’s still fun to play through.
The game starts out like any other BioWare or Western RPG. You create a character and pick a class and a background. Mass Effect’s character customization was never grand, and LE’s improved version helps a bit, but it’s still not very detailed. You can choose a pre-made character, but I chose to create it from scratch. I picked a class that balances biotics and weapons and is female. Biotics are powers you can use in the game (and it describes how humans become biotics in fascinating detail), and you’re off. You start out right off the bat learning that dialogue is a huge part of the game here. In fact, every choice you make shapes the ending and the outcomes of missions that carry across all three games. You can be a paragon or a renegade based on how you respond. There are usually three different levels. Nice, mean, and down the middle. One major complaint players had was that the Renegade path was Shepard just being a complete asshole and nothing in between. It also doesn’t serve you to be neutral through the whole game either. This path can unlock dialogue options for either side that can change the tide of the entire game, including making missions easier or harder.
Once you learn the ropes and get into your first mission, you will learn how to play with the combat and shooting in the game. Mass Effect never had amazing combat, but the shooting here is slightly improved and is more enjoyable than it was before. You can move into cover, peek around ledges, sprint, and throw grenades. You can carry four weapons. Assault rifles, pistols, shotguns, and sniper rifles. Throughout the game, you can acquire crap tons of loot that allow you to mod the weapons in various ways as well as acquire new weapons and armor. This is essential to staying alive, and you also need to manage your crew’s armor as well. Over the course of the game, you will meet various characters, such as Wrex the Krogan, Liara the Asari, and Garrus the Turian. These characters are quite memorable, and some even offer missions. I didn’t particularly care for Kaiden or Ashley, as they were just boring humans, honestly, and there is nothing exciting about their personalities, and you only learn about their past through optional dialogue when visiting them on the Normandy (your ship) after each main story mission.
One of the major hub areas of the game is the Citadel. A giant spacecraft that trillions of aliens live on. There are various parts you can visit and can easily get around through a fast travel system. There are about a dozen missions to complete on the citadel, as well as vendors to visit. Some missions are given to you here to complete in space, but overall, the Citadel isn’t a very enjoyable place to explore. Most of Mass Effect suffers from slow exploration, linear corridors, and various other problems. It’s a flaw of the times, as the Xbox 360 wasn’t powerful enough for the vast open worlds we have now, and there were also time constraints for development. Honestly, exploring in Mass Effect isn’t very enjoyable. I only really liked the main story missions. Side missions are a borefest with nothing truly gained outside of cash and loot, and there’s too much of it. The game is so short that you will end up with millions of credits with nothing to spend them on. About halfway through, I acquired the best gear just by completing missions and opening crates.
It’s a very unbalanced game, difficulty-wise. I found the game very easy early on, as acquiring loot so fast and quickly means you can kill everything in a couple of shots. This also led to me never really venturing outside of my pistol, as my class specialized in that weapon. I nearly maxed out my level by the end of the game, and there are so many different things to put points into that it feels unnecessary due to the short length of the game. All these biotic powers, weapons, mods, and classes for a game that can be finished in less than 20 hours? I wound up finishing everything in the game in about 33 hours. While it sounds strange that there would be so much RPG stuff in a short RPG, the game mostly just runs itself. I micromanaged my inventory a lot, but the game is so easy that I never worried about trying to find the best stuff. It basically falls into your lap.
That’s also not the weirdest thing about the game. The MAKO driving sections are a notorious and infamous chore and borefest. The vehicle has a mounted turret and shoots grenades, but there’s not much reason to use it outside of main missions. The vehicle is floaty, and the worlds you drive on are insanely difficult to navigate. The terrain feels like it was made by a child who was given a terrain deformation editor, and they went nuts. Nothing makes sense; there’s no logic. Just look at the cliffs and mountains on every single planet that are a pain to drive on. You can go around and discover hidden anomalies and metal deposits (these are for credits), but it’s such a chore and it’s boring. The first few planets are interesting, and it’s fun to feel like you’re exploring planets in space, but they’re completely empty. There are no other colonies or cities to visit outside of the citadel itself. Just hours of empty driving and getting out to do a stupid puzzle to complete a few fetch quests.
Most side missions are given once you enter a new cluster on the Galaxy Map. You are looking at a solar system and can click on planets to get a zoomed-in view of them. These are actually quite awesome, and they are all different. You get information sheets on what type of planet it is, and that part is really more fun to explore than actually landing on planets. Most clusters have one planet you can land on, and once you enter a cluster that has a side mission, you will get an incoming message. Then you land, explore, find anomalies to complete the fetch quests, and find deposits for credits. Then you go into the same three generic interior buildings that are rotated to shoot something dead to complete the side mission. Maybe there’s one that involves dialogue to complete the mission. These interior levels are boring, with just a few hallways and open rooms.
With that said, what’s the point of completing side missions, then? Maybe completionists will want to for achievements, but it’s not needed to get the credits to buy weapons and armor. You end up getting all that stuff organically as you play anyway. The most enjoyable moments are the dialogue sections, though, and combat is fun for the most part. It’s just clunky, and most everything feels underutilized. However, the story is fantastic and the majority of characters are memorable, and that’s Mass Effect’s strongest point. The world-building, the lore, the characters, the story, the writing, and everything involved in that.
The game looks good, and the LE upgrade is definitely several steps up visually from the Xbox 360 original. There’s better lighting, higher-resolution textures, more detailed models, and everything in between. The music in the series is also fantastic, and the PC graphics options are decent. There’s ultrawide screen support, which is a huge plus in my book as well. Overall, Mass Effect 1 Legendary Edition improves mostly on the visuals, and that’s it. You can’t fix the core gameplay too much. They tried to add sprinting, but it’s only for three seconds, so why bother? You can skip elevator rides, but only some of them, and interesting dialog takes place here, so again, what’s the point there? I also had physics issues—stuttering, slowing down—and the game would randomly crash sometimes. Hopefully, this gets patched at some point.
If you can look past the awful MAKO missions, the clunky combat, the overly easy difficulty, and the unbalanced loot system, the game is worth playing. The main story is short, and the side missions aren’t worth investing time in unless you want to complete everything. The story, lore, characters, and dialogue are what make the game so great, but it really hasn’t aged well over the years and feels like a time capsule from two generations ago.
I will come right out and admit that I never finished Resident Evil 7. The game was just scary for me, but I plan to go through it now that I have finished the game. Resident Evil Village is the direct sequel to RE7, where you play Ethan Winters trying to save his daughter Rose, who was taken by Mother Miranda. You end up in a strange village full of new evil villains and a bunch of places to explore.
The entire game is played in the first person again, and the game’s settings and scare factor are set right off the bat. You end up in a seemingly abandoned village, and eventually you end up running away from Lycans. I don’t want to spoil too much of the story by giving away details about each area, but I will describe them. You spend a good bit of time inside the village, acquiring your first couple of weapons and learning the layout and controls. As you meet villagers and try to escape the Lycans, you end up in Lady Dimitriscu’s castle, one of the only areas that have been shown in great lengths for months leading up to the game’s release. This is where you learn to explore, solve a few puzzles, and understand that the entire game revolves around exploring an area and acquiring a key or item that unlocks the next part. This may involve a mini-boss or the onslaught of enemies.
Lady D’s castle has her three daughters chasing you, and they end up becoming mini-bosses. Lady D stalks you through the castle eventually, like Mr. X or Nemesis in previous games. If you spend too much time in one room, she will come through the door in her 9′ glorious beauty. She’s a fantastic character, as all of them in this game are, but sadly, there are only two cutscenes with her, and you don’t get to know her well enough before you finish her off and move on to the next area. There are three more areas that end up being the boss’s lairs. A marsh, a machine factory, and an old mansion. Each area is unique and a blast to explore, but the scare factor in this game is kind of weak. The game gets scary only in certain areas, and the majority of the game is just an eerie atmosphere, but not so creepy. Sadly, a lot of the environment is static and enemies don’t respawn, so the game feels tenser in some areas, especially with a lot of enemies around.
There’s a lot of action in this game, and it ramps up as the game moves on. Just like in Resident Evil 4, you can expand your cache storage and buy weapons from The Duke. He sets up shop in each area you explore and has a central hub that you eventually get to. There are many weapons to buy, some of which are upgraded over others. You buy things with Lei, of which the majority are acquired by selling crystals, gems, and various rare treasures. Large enemies, bosses, and mini-bosses all drop these crystals. You can buy upgrades for weapons as well as parts, just like in RE4. Duke has some limited ammo and explosives you can buy, but you can also craft items by finding parts laying around everywhere. This includes crafting ammo, explosives, and health. At some points, you must make every shot count, but I never ran out of ammo completely and got myself into a bad situation.
One issue I did have with the game was the confusing level design. You have to backtrack a lot, and in some areas, I ran around for 20 or more minutes trying to remember my way back to a particular area because I found the key to move on from there. It got frustrating, and the machine factory is an absolute chore to navigate. Nothing but endless hallways and dead-end rooms. Once you do find the key or door you need, it’s rather satisfying, and there’s a constant sense of progression throughout the whole game. Bosses aren’t very hard, but they just require you to stay on your toes and learn their patterns, and you must aim carefully.
The visuals in RE8 are pretty damn good, and they look great on PC. Sadly, the ray-tracing effects are minimal and not worth the halved frame rate even on my RTX 2080 in 1440p. I noticed no difference with it on or off. The lighting looks great, the textures are well detailed, and it runs well on any system. However, as I mentioned earlier, the environment is very static, and there’s not much interaction or dynamic things to look at. The game is also very linear, despite the areas being quite large to explore. It’s just a bunch of twisting hallways, and the village isn’t all that big. There are some extra things you can do, like shoot all the bobblehead goats, find all the treasures, and defeat optional mini-bosses for treasures, but most people will probably look past all of this. The sound design is amazing, with some really creepy sounds that are both loud and quaint. Being in the large mansion and anticipating something coming around in dead silence was great, and Lady D’s castle is haunting. You expect something to come around every corner.
Resident Evil Village is an evolution of the series, mixing RE4’s gameplay and RE7’s first-person shooter goodness. I do have to say that Ethan Winters stinks as a character, and I hate him. He’s horribly written, and I wanted to spend more time with the main villains, but alas, here we are. It’s sad we don’t get to see more of Lady D or anyone else, for that matter, except when you have short encounters with them in their respective areas. RE8 is a lot more accessible than RE7, and many people will probably finish this game. The difficulty is just right; it looks and sounds good, and it’s just a blast to play through. The scare factor is all over the place, the main areas can be labyrinthine in design, and the extra modes after you finish have varied mileage.
Little Nightmares was a creepy platformer with a minimal story and narrative. The game was mostly all about atmosphere and puzzle-solving. These games cropped up after Limbo was a smash hit, and games like Inside also followed. The only downside to these games is that they tend to not shape any kind of narrative or world-building. There are a lot of interesting things to look at, and clearly, the setting you are in is a curious thing to want to know about. Little Nightmares II puts you in the shoes of a paper bag-wearing kid who is running from something, but you never know what. Throughout the entire game, you go from location to location, not knowing what your end goal is, and even after finishing the game, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of everything.
The game starts out by giving you simple controls such as jumping and picking up objects using the physics engine. You won’t be doing this very often except to use weapons occasionally and throw an object at a button to open a door. The atmosphere sets in right away with your character running through a forest, trying to avoid bear traps, and traversing fallen bridges. Once you get to a certain area, you meet your first main monster, and then you are introduced to combat. I really don’t want to call it that, as all you do is pick up an ax and swing it, but it’s completely based on physics. Usually, you will use an ax to break down walls, but you will use it to fight enemies at the school level, and it’s all about timing. The ax is very heavy, and your character can’t move it very fast, but it works.
The first area is rather short but pretty cinematic, and things will slow down greatly as the game goes on. After a few areas, you will notice the game adds a lot of puzzle-solving, most of which don’t require much thinking. There are a few physics-based puzzles, and halfway through, you meet a companion that requires some puzzle-solving with two people, but the ease of the puzzles is to keep the pace going. You don’t want to spend too long in any one area. I felt the chase from enemies and puzzle-solving were well balanced. Several screens will go by of just platforming, maybe just empty screens of scene-setting, but I do want to talk about these monsters. The game is very creepy, and the main monsters basically chase you throughout the entire area you are in. The school has a teacher that can stretch her neck out and chase you through vents and under tables. The hospital has a doctor who can walk on ceilings. They show up in some scenes, but not every area has you killing this main villain; the most important part for you is escaping.
There is some frustration with the game, and that’s a lot of trial and error. Some scenes wanted to get across the screen via a certain path, but I got caught by the villain numerous times before figuring out how to do it. There were also control issues with climbing things in which my character got stuck, or I didn’t understand that jumping across a ravine to hang on to my character’s hand was going to be an issue. In several areas, I had to restart the screen over and over until I walked across that beam just right or didn’t get caught. Thankfully, you just restarted that screen, and it helps keep the pace going. I just wish there was more story to be told or something else to hold on to rather than the next creepy monster or setting.
The game looks great visually, with a lot of nice art, but technically, it’s not super impressive. Textures look muddy up close, and some objects don’t have the highest poly count. The animations are great, however, and the controls are good; there’s just that annoyance with the game’s physics. It’s also pretty short, as it can be finished in about 5 hours, and I honestly wanted more. The creature designs are so fantastically creepy and unique, and the game skims the line between gory and just plain dark and creepy. It’s never a gorefest, but it feels like it could be. There are animal guts, but not humans; there are body parts everywhere, but they’re mannequins. It’s a fun line to walk down, and it’s done just right here.
This is actually my third time trying to finish Overlord, believe it or not. I rented this game back when it came out on Xbox 360 and didn’t get very far. A second time on PC, and now my third on PC. This is the furthest I’ve gotten in the game, about 2/3 of the way, but as time goes on, the game ages more poorly than the last time I remember it. It was an early next-gen game for Xbox 360, so all eyes were on it, and it was graphically impressive. It still looks great today and, surprisingly, runs amazingly well on PC without needing any fixes, but the game has a lot of issues.
Firstly, the game is incredibly tedious, and the game has some very poor level design. There’s no map, no objective marker, and the levels are very linear, so even one of these things would have been so helpful. You blindly wander around these areas that all start to look the same, trying to finish objectives. Now, the objectives can all be completed in any order for any area. Your main hub is a tower that you can customize and upgrade over time as you complete the game, and from here you can fast-travel to any level you have visited. The main gameplay mechanic is using the right analog stick and controlling your horde of minions to do your deeds for you, such as carrying items around and combating. You’re very weak comparatively, so entering combat isn’t suggested unless you really need it. Again, not the worst problem.
What really starts to bore me is that sweeping your minions around works well enough, minus some control issues when you have a straggler. The game favors the majority of the horde you end up controlling, and stragglers sometimes won’t join their brethren, making things frustrating. You end up controlling four different minions. Reds, Blues, Greens, and Browns. Browns are your main grunt, do the most combat damage, and have the most defense. Blues can enter the water but can also revive minions. Reds can throw fireballs at a distance and put out fires. Greens can be sneaky and climb up larger enemies, and they are also immune to gases and poisons. You end up spending almost half the game acquiring the three hives needed for the minions to open up new areas in each level. I constantly ran into roadblocks, requiring me to backtrack and wander around a level until I ran into a new area I hadn’t discovered. When I say the level design is bad, I mean piss poor. There are no memorable landmarks, just linear pathways that loop around, and turning around can literally look like two other directions you came from.
While navigation is a serious chore, the use of minions is limited. There are no puzzles to be solved; just destroy everything in their path, and make sure you use certain colors for certain enemies if need be. There are boss fights that are quite challenging, but then another major issue cropped up. You must horde and resource orbs to summon these minions; they aren’t free. Certain enemy types will give you different orbs, but browns are the most needed. I constantly had to go back to a level or two that had easy-to-mine sheep that gave me yellow orbs. I then had to exit the level and reload for the sheep to respawn, just to get enough Browns to defeat a boss. If you’re left in an area with no minions left, you’re pretty much screwed. You are never powerful enough to take out tough enemies alone, and some bosses can only be defeated by minions. There are mana and health fonts you can sacrifice minions into, but they are far and few between, so you really have to watch your health. Minions can loot stuff and find potions to help out a little, and this is the best way to acquire gold in the game to upgrade your weapons and armor.
Once you get used to the controls and gameplay loop, you will really start to see how much aimless wandering you do when you aren’t doing anything at all. I had to always keep a mental note of where a certain area was blocked and by what element, so I could go back and progress and complete another mission. Progressing was somewhat satisfying, but I spent 75% of my playtime wandering around these levels, trying to remember where to go and figure out what part I hadn’t discovered yet. Another issue I would run into is not having the right minions, so I would then need to backtrack back to a spawn hole and get the right minion, but it doesn’t end there. Let’s say you have 20 Browns but now need 5 Blues because an object is in water. I would backtrack to a blue spawn point, I remember, but you can’t send back Browns to a blue spawn point. I then had to go all the way back to the beginning of the area just to send the Browns back. This is stupid and tedious, and there are so many quality-of-life issues that could have improved the game. Let me send back any minion to any spawn point. Also, why spawn points? They’re so far and few between; let me just summon them from the ground, anywhere. I already have a limited amount based on the orbs I collect.
All said, the game might be worth a look if you really love the humor in games like Fable or from the mid-2000s fantasy era. I also felt that despite the game-toting being evil, I never felt truly evil. You can save people for rewards or kill them, but it doesn’t seem evil. The game never went above and beyond this, so I just felt like a misunderstood good guy the entire way. What? The visuals hold up, the control is cumbersome but doable, and the gameplay is unique, but the constant aimless wandering, lack of a map or compass, and poor level design lead to tedium and make the game just plain boring.
You play as Ichiban Kasuga. A naive young yakuza member who ends up in politics of his yakuza family and then later the entire country of Japan’s government. The story is incredibly well written and directed, and I was hooked from beginning to end, at least the story and characters. I love the characters here as they have tons of heart, soul, and personality that make you want to see them through to the end of their journey. The first three chapters of the game are pretty much story and character building. In fact, I didn’t really get to do anything outside of watching cut scenes for the first three hours of the game. I just ran to spots that triggered them and I watched this complex web of characters build their story up, and I wasn’t upset as I was glued to my screen the whole time.
This is the first time I’ve finished a Yakuza game and a rare completion of a JRPG. Usually, JRPGs have great stories and characters, but something within the game keeps me from finishing it. Be it unfair and insane difficulty, too much grinding or late-game issues pop up like needing to quest for something very specific and it makes the progression grind to a halt. Like a Dragon is the first in the series to play like a JRPG and not an action game. The story is fantastic and the characters are well written and memorable, but that’s probably the strongest thing going for the game, and it’s the reason why I slumped through the late game issues to see it through to the end.
Once you get past a certain point in the story, honestly I can’t say anything as every little detail could be a major spoiler, you finally get let loose in the world. However, with this being a JRPG let’s talk about combat first. The game is played in a turned-based style, but characters move around on their own in the arenas. Depending on your job you have various skills that can cause major damage, and this is super important and the core of the entire game. While base attacks are fine early on in the game, they don’t do much later on and you start relying on skills that all use MP whether they’re physical or magic-based. Each attack has a type such as magic, slashing, piercing (guns), bashing, or blunt (physical) attacks. Some attacks might have elemental attributes attached to them, but you really must balance your team. You need characters that can heal, do large AoE damage, and do lots of damage to single enemies. It’s important you have a class that can do one of each of those things as it’s key to winning battles.
Early on in the game, the difficulty feels perfect. There were some challenges, I had to use strategy, really focus on ranking up my character’s jobs, and learning enemy weaknesses. This is also a key point in the battle system. Like a Dragon mocks or makes fun of other games like Pokemon. Early on you come across someone similar to Professor Oak and the entire scene plays out like the beginning of every Pokemon game. It’s pretty funny. The point of this is you acquire a bestiary of each enemy type and when you fight in battle and discover a weakness it will appear over the character when you select that attack. This is vital to winning boss fights and harder battles late game or just in general.
Ranking up your job is more important than leveling up your character honestly. This determines your max health, how powerful your attacks are, and learning new attacks. You get more powerful attacks as you rank up, but the downside is that once you change jobs, you start from the bottom on that job. So you have to grind that job to level it up, and late-game this is incredibly tedious, but more on the late-game problems later. There are thankfully no random battles, but enemies walk around outside that can be avoided. When you fight enemies, the environment is also important, as smaller areas are great for attacks that do AoE damage, and it allows you to wipe out enemies faster in bigger groups.
Outside of combat, there are a ton of mini-games, like in every Yakuza game. Karaoke, classic Sega arcade games in Club Sega, crane games, driving ranges, go-karts, and many others. They’re fun at first, but there’s not really any reason to do these mini-games outside of acquiring items. Items are also an important part of combat, as the most powerful armor and weapons are almost unobtainable until you can start raking in serious cash at the Battle Arena in Chapter 12 and fighting the more powerful enemies late in the game. You can also upgrade Ichiban’s weapons (only his weapons can be upgraded) and craft new items, but honestly, this is only needed if you can’t afford to buy them. There are no unique weapons or armor that can be crafted exclusively, at least that I noticed, and once I started raking in serious cash in the millions, I just bought everything, and crafting became pointless towards the end of the game.
There are shops and restaurants scattered everywhere, and I didn’t pay attention to these too much until the late game. Restaurants can fully restore your health and MP, and bulking up on recovery items becomes super important late in the game as well. I didn’t really use many of these until then, as the game felt perfectly balanced, and the right strategies can keep you alive. There are a couple of pawnshops that allow you to sell items, and this is how you make most of your money early on in the game. You start out digging for yen under vending machines and eventually start earning a small amount of money to buy recovery items and cheap gear. There are also sub-stories, like in every Yakuza game, that are shown as chat icons on the map. These give you items and cash and are mostly pointless once you get the late game, and the stories aren’t interesting at all. You also have extra side missions that can get you larger amounts of cash, called Hero Quests. This is mostly for completionists in the end, but the entire reason this is a JRPG is that Ichiban can see enemies as monsters with different uniforms. It’s “in his head because he feels life is like Dragon Quest.” It’s super silly and a lame excuse to make a realistic game have a fantasy twist, but what other excuse were the developers going to use?
As you progress through the first eleven chapters, you hop around taxis to fast-travel to spots, unravel the story, rank up your jobs, level characters, acquire new armor and weapons and items, and all this sounds like a normal JRPG affair, but then chapter twelve comes and knocks you on your ass. This is when most people will probably quit the game, as it turns into a completely different beast and the way you play must change. This is the worst part of the game, and I don’t see how this was necessary. The game had a perfect flow and difficulty level leading up to this chapter. The first sign hits you when you must acquire 3 million yen for a specific reason in the story. By now, you probably have a couple hundred thousand yen at the most. How am I going to get this much money as street thugs don’t really payout and I can only sell so much? Well, the first stupid idea was that there are specific things you need to do to get this money, and they don’t tell you. First, you have a watch in your inventory that’s worth one million yen. You need to sell that, and then there is a specific Hero Quest you must complete that gives you two million yen. You need to take ten photos of a statue hidden throughout the city. What a serious pain in the ass! I knew right here that the game was going to be a chore from here on out. Then, to make matters worse, the last statue is hidden behind insanely difficult enemies out of nowhere. They were many 8 levels above me, but that wasn’t a problem before. I had to grind for a couple of hours just to beat them to take that photo. Such nonsense!
It just gets worse from here. Chapter seven had you complete one of the two long dungeons in the game. It was challenging, but not impossible. This dungeon is the only way to grind up until now. However, once you get to a new small city, you unlock the battle arena, and this is your main way to level grind by climbing floors and beating waves of enemies. You will be here for probably 6–8 hours minimum. At this point in chapter twelve, you come across a boss fight that cranks the difficulty up to nearly unfair and impossible. I had to grind 15 levels just to get a fair advantage. This boss just absorbs so much damage, and throwing all my powerful attacks at him still kicked my ass. I died and retried nearly a dozen times before I almost gave up. I’d grind five or six levels and try again until I could finally do it. I chewed through recovery items like crazy trying to get through this chokepoint in the game. Sadly, it never lets up after this. From here on out, every single boss is a serious chore and does massive damage, no matter what you do. This is what I have in JRPGs, which is why I rarely ever finish them.
So, you will then need to grind consistently before each major story point that you are warned about. You need to be at least level 65 by the final boss, and man, is it a serious pain? You shouldn’t have to want to quit a game because the developers decided the game needed more playtime by chapter twelve. Let’s make you do over a dozen hours of grinding just to finish the game. It’s stupid, insane, and completely unfair. They had the difficulty balanced out perfectly before, and I was happily enjoying the game. The only reason I kept going was because I wanted to see the ending and how everything came together. The story is that good, but if it weren’t, I would have quit at this point. You’re basically grinding the battle arena and the one dungeon, trying to acquire new gear and rank up your job to get more powerful attacks. I highly recommend being around level 70–75 before tackling the final boss, but at that point, you are 25 levels away from maxing out your character.
The game at least has amazing voice acting (in Japanese, of course), and the graphics are pretty good technically but pretty boring on an artistic level. These are hyper-realistic graphics, and the only artistic flair is the enemy designs. I enjoyed the music as well, but in the end, the last few chapters will test your patience. The mini-games are fun, the sub-stories are boring and repetitive, and the post-chapter twelve grinding is an absolute chore and really hurts the game. However, if you can prevail, get through the grinding, and learn the strategy of balancing your party’s jobs, you will get through an incredible and memorable story with great characters.
You play a woman named Marianne, who is a psychic medium. You start out the game in your foster father’s funeral home, and this is where the game introduces basic mechanics that you will use throughout the rest of the game. It starts out very confusing at first, and honestly, the story is just barely coherent enough to keep up with, but it constantly loses you in spots and then plays catch-up again. The game clearly relies more on characters and atmosphere than storytelling, as there’s no context to keep you engaged, no really long opening scene, just some dialogue that explains who Marianne is and what she can do. Within the first 10 minutes of the game, you will start to experience the scary stuff. Shadows on walls, strange sounds, and the “other side” look very reminiscent of Silent Hill in both concept and design.
This is an adventure game with very little action. It’s mostly basic puzzle solving and object finding. You walk around areas, reading notes and signs, listening to spirit echos in objects, and picking up objects that will be used at a later point. Thankfully, none of this was overbearing or focused too much on. It all felt pretty balanced and was light enough that the exploration and atmosphere mostly stayed center stage. The various locales are fantastically designed and beautiful to look at. The “other side” was mostly created for puzzle-solving scenarios, as you end up going back and forth between the two at the same time. See, this is Bloober Team’s biggest project and something that’s been in development since 2012. They needed the hardware to render two worlds at once via split-screen. This really does tax your system, as frames can drop by almost half in some areas even with DLSS enabled.
As you play the game, these main elements are switched up constantly, and to be honest, it’s really well-paced and feels just right. Some areas I was mostly exploring in the real world, then I would split off into the other side, and then there are some areas that have mirrors that allow you to go back and forth at will. These areas are the most puzzle-intensive, but never difficult. With that being said, the game is very easy, and only one small section of the game has any form of combat. The horror elements in the game are well done, and I love the monster designs. There is a creature that does stalk you throughout the entire game in certain areas, and these result in having to sneak around areas with barriers and hold your breath. The voice acting is superb, and the performances are great. Everything in the game just sucks you in, and I honestly didn’t stop playing until I finished the game.
I also never got lost or couldn’t figure something out on my own. The game is very linear, and as long as you wander around, examining everything that has a white dot on it, you will find your way around. Since the game mostly focuses on the story, there are times I get confused, but you get caught up with the cryptic stuff during the main cutscenes, and in the end, the game was satisfying and had a nice conclusion. The game can be finished in about 6–8 hours, and there’s no replay value, sadly. Sure, there are items to collect throughout the game, but I found pretty much everything in my first run-through. There are also no multiple endings, so the game will end exactly the same no matter what you do.
The game really has to be praised in the sound department as well. There are a lot of creepy ambient sounds and noises, and the voice acting for the monsters is just amazing. Despite the game being just about exploration, object hunting, and basic puzzle-solving, I never felt bored or wished the game gave me more. If the story and characters weren’t so interesting, I’d probably complain about this, as I’d want more gameplay, but we don’t always need complicated combat systems or deep RPG elements in every game. Bloober Team’s games tend to be a bit rough around the edges, but The Medium is rock-solid and shows they can make AAA titles with the best of them. I wish the game was optimized a little better, but with a fantastic story and characters and gameplay that feels just right, as well as great pacing, I can’t complain much.
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