Great Space Opera
Customer Rating: 
If you enjoyed Bioware's Knights of the Old Republic you will defiantly enjoy this game. The story is pretty original and the combat is enjoyable.
pluses
* Fun Combat
* Great Character Graphics
* Controls work pretty good for combat
* Story that's entertaining and draws you into the game and keeps you playing to see what happens next
* Great Voice Acting
negatives
* DRM
* Inventory screen sucks
* Although the character graphics are good the world graphics are very plain and low quality (I assume this is because its a port from the Xbox 360 which is limited in its graphics compared to a PC)
* Game feels very short even with all the side quests (Another limitation from being a Xbox 360 port?, I guess they can only fit so much on a Xbox disc)
* Responses you can choose from are pointless for the most part as you will still end up in the same place regardless of which choice you make
* RPG skills seem superficial, I can snipe easily with my pistol as I can with my sniper rifle. Even though I don't have any skill points in my pistol skill set. Go figure
* The controversial ""sex scene"" is nothing more then a PG rated movie sex scene, have no idea what the controversy was about.
* There are some NPC's you can talk to on your ship but there story never gets updated after the first time you talk to them, they just keep saying the same things over again. I'm guessing they had to release the game before they got around to writing dialog for these crew members.
It's probably better on X-Box
Customer Rating: All review numbers should be high. After all, nobody buys a game they expect to hate. So when you see low scores, that's often a sign of disappointment from someone who wanted to be a fan.
i have played the PC version of Mass Effect far enough to get all the characters but quit after that. The biggest reason is technical. i've double checked a couple of times now and my system exceeds the recommended specs and i still get single digit frame rates, even with all the options turned low. This is surprising given that Mass Effect is nowhere near as pretty as other games that play just fine on my PC (Bioshock, Gears of War, Stranglehold, etc.). i don't normally have problems playing games, but this one is ridiculously slow. At a minimum, they should change their minimum and recommended specs.
The game is unstable, and when it crashes, it tends to crash your whole system. It's been a long time since i've had to reboot my PC three times an hour. i've installed the patch and done all the standard things (latest drivers, etc.) but this game just doesn't want to stay up. i know some of the problems are related to the anti-copying Secure-ROM software (which many people here have already said is unethical; at a minimum, it should tell users it will be installed and give them a way to uninstall it when they uninstall the game). My review isn't based on the ethics of Secure-ROM but i can say that it's caused me to reboot at least once. Most problems, though, i'm guessing are because the port from XBox to PC wasn't done very well.
As for the game, it's your standard Bioware game. You've probably played others and know if you like them or not. They're not for everyone. If you look at their history, Bioware has slowly moved from making role-playing games to making movies. It's well known to game designers that it's hard to get both a strong plot and open, flexible gameplay. Some games try hard (e.g., GTA) but Bioware realizes its talent is in story telling, not graphics, AI or level design (none of which the game does well; the AI is a surprising step backwards from Jade Empire but still better then KotOR). Continuing that trend, Mass Effect is a lot like watching cut scenes with occasional game play. Oddly, a lot of that game play is first person shooter. Bioware does not make good first person shooters. With the FPS aspect, the game actually feels a lot like Deus Ex, a game many people liked, but not as an FPS.
The story, characters, quests, etc. are probably pretty good. i can't say i'm in love with many of the characters (Rex is OK, but not as much fun as HK-47 or Boo). It doesn't seem as good as Jade Empire but it does offer significantly more places to explore than that game did. The love plot, a staple of all recent Bioware games, isn't done very well here (at least when i played a female character). i can't tell you how the game story, subquests, etc. turn out over the long run because i gave up on the game (80% technical reasons, 20% boredom).
As always, the graphics are serviceable but not impressive. Levels are linear and make the world feel very small (Bioware has a talent at making a major city feel like it was the size of an average high school). You still can only select two allies and you have no control over them. That's always been a ridiculous limitation which i assume they use to compensate for the poor pathfinding. Bioware AI tends to be towards the bottom end of the AAA game developers.
But you don't buy a Bioware game to, um, play a game. Bioware games are epic stories containing characters with character. If you liked previous Bioware games (or Deus Ex) and don't mind the new console FPS-like combat system, you'll probably enjoy this game. Assuming your computer will let you play it.
A Fantastic Space Epic
Customer Rating: I know there is a lot of controversy over Bioware's use of DRM and although I agree they should find a better way to protect against piracy, I can't fault the quality of the game over these other issues.
This is a great space epic. I really enjoyed Bioware's vision of the future and the amount of detail they put into populating our galaxy. The races, the different cultures, the wars, the technology, it was well thought out.
The story was also very good, even with the basic fact that the main character is already a well respected warrior, instead of the typical peasant from nowhere. The enemies were well developed as well, as was the great danger the galaxy faced.
Overall, I really enjoyed this game. Comparable to Baldur's Gate and KOTOR and definitely better than NWN or Jade Empire. I look forward to the reported sequel.
