Much like its Dragon Age counterpart, Mass Effect is a good game that, despite being held back by its age, sets up a very promising foundation for the rest of the series.

It's a BioWare game, so, unsurprisingly, the writing and characters are excellent and easily its most endearing aspect. The gameplay also holds up surprisingly well for an almost 17-year-old game, with combat feeling weighty and diverse throughout thanks to the squad commands and abilities.

The side content is, unfortunately, what lets ME1 down a fair bit. On top of its fairly repetitive side quests that reuse the same 2-3 environments for every mission, exploring uncharted worlds in the poor-controlling Mako is a dull and, occasionally frustrating, experience.

Much like its Dragon Age counterpart, Mass Effect is a good game that, despite being held back by its age, sets up a very promising foundation for the rest of the series.

It's a BioWare game, so, unsurprisingly, the writing and characters are excellent and easily its most endearing aspect. The gameplay also holds up surprisingly well for an almost 17-year-old game, with combat feeling weighty and diverse throughout thanks to the squad commands and abilities.

The side content is, unfortunately, what lets ME1 down a fair bit. On top of its fairly repetitive side quests that reuse the same 2-3 environments for every mission, exploring uncharted worlds in the poor-controlling Mako is a dull and, occasionally frustrating, experience.