Seems to be an unpopular opinion, but 1 was the best in the series as far as I'm concerned.
this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2025
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Imma upvote this so hard, it'll turn your opinion popular.
May be unpopular but I'll stand by it being right!
Had to be Bioware. Someone else might have gotten it wrong.
My favourite sci-fi game of all time is Elite. Because I am old.
There was nothing like it at the time. Not even close. It was the most immersive game you could get
Maybe I should finally play this game......
Oh to play this series blind again, I envy you.
The parts are all good, especially with the remaster, but the sum of its parts is something really unique.
I still remember the first time I drove the Mako. Man they did so well with the atmospheric feel of other worlds in 2005. Could have done a bit better with the wild landscape tho xD Ride em cowboy!
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There’s a graphically updated version of the trilogy, regularly goes on sale for a few bucks
Yep, totally worth the $5 when it comes up for sale. PC controls updated from original so works with controllers now too.
Oh no. EA play, fuck that shit.
I'll have to find a repack or something -_-
Ha, yeah I actually also haven’t purchased legendary edition, for that exact same reason. But it seems we are in the minority in boycotting EA play, so I usually don’t let it stop me from recommending this particular series.
For disclosure, I played all of them on xbox 360 back when they came out, and loved them. I also have friends who bought the LE and had a great experience, I watched them play a bit too and everything seemed to hold up very well
Yeh that is fair enough, there is a DODI repack anyway so I'll probably grab that. I have been considering a 360 recently what with the new exploit that has been made available so maybe I'll grab a cheap 360 so I can relive some of my favourite games from there too.
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The first is very much a story first, combat second style game. I wouldn't pick a "caster" focused character for a first play.
Do it. All mass effects are great. Even Andromeda ( despite the lackluster story )
I've been itching for a similar game these past few weeks and I swear there is nothing contemporary that is quite like Mass Effect. KOTOR is close, but is has aged like milk ( graphically ). Maybe the deus exes? I am still open to suggestions.
Also you'll want to play the legendary edition, I think they fixed some of the less pleasant gameplay quirks ME1 used to have.
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The first game is worth playing even if you dislike the rest of the trilogy, it's just that good. Some people like the second or third game more but the first game absolutely nails the sci-fi setting and mystery of the reapers that the latter games IMO are lacking.
Personally, I find Star Control II, Star Trek 25th Anniversary & Judgment Rites, to be better than Mass Effect 1 & 2 when it comes to science fiction and consequences of choice. Mind, I haven't gotten around to Mass Effect 3 since I abhor DRM and walled platforms, so I might be missing the ribbon that ties the trilogy together.
Thanks for the suggestions. Star Control appears to have a confusing UI (based on the screenshots). Star Trek looks cool I will give it a try.
I haven't played Mass Effect 3 either. Got a bit a burn out after finishing ME2.
When it comes to Star Control II, the controls are actually quite simple, the difficulty of playing mostly come from a lack of quest logs. If you can handle Mass Effect's controls, then SC2 is definitely within your ability.
Through this link, you can get the most modernized experience of SC2, and the game is also freeware. Be sure to opt for 3D0 style, since that has the best presentation.
Star Control II: The Ur-Quan Masters - HD Megamod
When it comes to the Star Trek adventure games, 25th Anniversary can be considered to be Part 1, with Judgment Rites as Part 2.
Thanks again I will give SC2 a try. I prefer pixel art and I want to see the original artists' vision, so I will try the original game first.
Ah, check out that Bone Pit page. You have the choice of three different presentation styles of SC2 - original, 3DO, DOS, plus optional HD graphics to go with them. The 3DO was a extremely powerful and expensive console back in the day, created by EA's Trip Hawkins. That EA, before it went bad. The 3DO mode is pretty akin to what the original developers intended, as Toys for Bob - the Skylanders company, is now making Children of Infinity, a proper sequel to SC2. If you check out the trailer, it is very similar to SC2 3DO.
Free Stars - Children of Infinity
More important than the graphics, however, is the voices and soundscape. The 3DO edition was a voiced game, and they added a huge amount of character to each species that you encounter. They are pretty much why the 3DO version became the gold standard among the SC2 releases. It is the same reason why System 1 and Star Trek 25th Anniversary were best on CD, because the format allowed them to use audio that wasn't possible on the floppy versions. SHODAN just isn't the same without that voice of hers, nor Kirk's style of speech.
ME, as a trilogy, plays on most of the tropes in scifi. The voice acting is pretty great too, barring the Resident Evil 1 level Liara in ME1.
And then Bioware lost all capacity to write dialogue stronger than a wet, overcooked spaghetti noodle.
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Great series! I played them for the first time this year, by the time I got to 3 I was legit tearing up at certain parts. Absolute recommend!
Loved me1! One of my all time faves. Need to pick it up again soon. Started a play about a year ago but ran into a hectic patch at work and it died out. Never finished me3 tough, the gauntlet at the end got too gears of war-y for me and when i ended up having to start from scratch because i ran out of ammo i juat said fuck it and put down the controller never to return
2007 also gave me another two of my all time favorites: portal and super mario galaxy
Super Mario Galaxy is one of my favourites too. Amazing soundtrack and the levels are innovative, fun without being too long.
Gusty garden galaxy <3 perfect soundtrack
The menu music and sounds live rent free in my head.
It took me a few tries back in the day but ME1 is my favourite of the 3. It has the best storyline and the other 2 games were more action/adventure.
My favorite game of all time is Star control 2, and this was the closest thing I could imagine to a modern version it.
They simplified some of the planetary resource gathering, ship upgrades and exploration, and I was hoping they would expand on that in the sequels. Unfortunately they did the exact opposite and simplified it even further.
I loved the way weapons worked in ME1, and they had such a logical thought process behind it written in the little lore snippets. But then when ME2 came out they scrapped it for something more traditional.
The hamfisted explanation was also pretty bad as well. It's not super believable that swapping heat sinks was superior.
I think it's logical, but it's sort of like, if it was that easy why didn't they do it sooner? And why wouldn't guns work the old way but "reloading" just instantly dump all heat?
Come to think of it, hearing myself say it out loud, this is exactly how the laser rifles work in Helldivers 2 lol. They overheat slowly. If you fully overheat them or release early they swap out the current heat sink for a new one.
It makes a lot less sense when you could make assault rifles that never overheated
I thought they still did? I played Vanguard so I only had shotguns lol.
Unfortunately Bioware is no longer the same company.
They weren't even the same company when ME1 came out. Jade Empire and KOTOR 1 and 2 were even better, while ME had clear signs of EA sucking their soul out before they even actually announced the sale of the company to them.
Even though I liked ME2 and 3 a bit more, the series overall still has my favorite Bioware cast by a mile and one of my favorite casts in gaming.
The ironic thing is I actually find the setting kinda hokey, but the moment-to-moment action is fantastic. The exposition dump towards the end of ME1 that sets the stage for the larger conflict was so satisfying. A classic example of solid script writing and characterization elevating overall plot and setting.
I should go.
Amazon is creating a Mass Effect TV show. I hope they draw inspiration from Fallout rather than Halo or even Last of Us.
I hope they draw inspiration from the Mass Effect games.
Not to be negative, but save for Last of Us Season 1, none of those series are great adaptations.
Fallout had some great dialogue that was very reminiscent of the games at points, but the lore decisions they made were questionable at best. Ghoulification was changed to be less mysterious and more like the process of mutation; the Sino-American war was simplified from a resource war into Capitalism vs Communism; and the NCR, an imperialist nation and I believe the largest in that area, has been all but destroyed by one nuke to their capital. Also all of the survivors of the NCR are communist, for a reason I'm sure.
Maybe I just needed to rant about the Fallout show. Either way, I sincerely hope they get some huge Mass Effect fans on the team for this one that care about the story the games present above all else.
I'm really tired of this attitude that Hollywood has toward adaptations, where they all want to make it their own. You adapt the story to the best of your ability, and the decisions you must make to adapt to a new medium make it your own. Not rewriting what has come previously.
Mini rant over
I mean, obviously from ME. Fallout has been by far the best video game adaptation so far. It wasn't really an adaptation though because it is its own story. They seemed to really respect the source material. The lead actor played the game so she could do justice to the franchise. Both shows are made by Amazon, so I have somewhat high hopes.
What I'm saying is it doesn't matter what some other adaptation has done, they need to focus on representing ME in a way that preserves its themes and story, what anyone else has done be damned.
As for Fallout, the acting was great, but no, I don't think the writers respect the source material. They respect the feel of the source material, for sure. I love the way most of it's shot, and I really love how the vaults are shown to be much more massive. Leaning into the cultish aspect of the Brotherhood of Steel was an awesome move and I think totally fits the path of their organization.
But, as I said in my last comment, there were a few key points about the Fallout world that they changed without much reason other than to give a new story a familiar setting. And I think that's just inherently disrespectful in a world where large swaths of land haven't been touched by the franchise.
It'd be just as easy to set it in Texas, or Illinois, or somewhere without a ton of solidified lore. But they set the show in a location with >135 years of post-war history and post-war development, that was under control of a nation so large it was manufacturing concrete and colonizing new lands. Then they kinda... just said their capital got nuked and they disappeared and the 12 survivors are communist now???
Also worth noting that East Coast Fallout and West Coast Fallout are very different thematically, with East Coast focusing on rebuilding and West Coast focusing on humanity repeating the same mistakes that led to the Great War (War Never Changes...).
The show wears Fallout's skin, for sure. There's also many dialogue exchanges that feel like nods to how the world works in-game, and I love that. But that doesn't make it a great adaptation, because the Bethesda Fallout games also look like Fallout. And they really shirk exploring the franchise themes in favor of making a zany wasteland to explore.
I'm no hater of those East Coast games, I love Fallout 3 and I've put a lot of time into Fallout 4. But they do really feel like a totally separate take on the same world. With the show, the lens of that take is applied to the world of the original franchise and they definitely misrepresented how realistically ideology works in this world.
All that said, they left enough open-ended for me to want to watch Season 2. But I really hope they delve more into the actual ideologies at play. Because Fallout is not about a wasteland, it's about people, what we believe, and how we repeat our mistakes. They're already halfway there with how the main characters interact, I'm just hoping they apply that writing to the factions.
Longer rant over. Can you tell I'm into Fallout? 😅
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Driving the Mako (is that what it was called? God its been ages) was so damn fun for some reason.
Yo fiddy hit that ramp
Doing jumps off those unreal 3 ass landscapes was more fun than it had any right to be
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Yeah I keep hearing complaints about the Mako but I enjoyed it.
Yeah, a lot of people complained about it back then. So much complaining that they replaced it with the planet scanning in Mass Effect 2. A much worse mechanic. ME2 improved the gameplay in every other way. ME1 story with ME2 mechanics and menu system would be the best.
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Star Wars is a fantasy space opera, not sci-fi.
I thought combat sucked in ME1, especially compared to the follow-up instalments. It did have a good story though and amazing world building.
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