10th Anniversary Special: Video Game Review - Mass Effect: Legendary Edition

10 years ago to this day, I started doing this blog with a post known simply as "Getting Started". At the time, I was quite inexperienced in the way of doing reviews of things and never really found a way that worked until a few years down the line where I started reviewing things regularly and worked to meet a high standard where I would happily go in depth instead of just saying a simple "it was good" and leave it there. 10 years is a long time, but it has been great fun sharing my opinions about all sorts of things. Of course, I know now that some reviews I can do better than others especially now that I'm strictly only doing film, TV and video game reviews (with the occasional stage show review) along with top 25 lists, monthly updates and the occasional post where I talk about something else but keeping in line with things. So as it is Thursday, it's a video game review to mark the occasion, and today we're going to look at a remaster of one of my all-time favourite trilogies of games. To many people, Mass Effect is a series that while very much fictional, has helped people get through some tough times and learn the power of friendship and that things will go your way if you just keep shouting and tell shops that they are your favourite shops. Plus that no matter what happens and what people believe in, there are those who will follow you to hell and back without question. Because often what they want aligns to what you want even if there has to be some disagreements and fall-outs along the way. Those are the things I definitely learned from the trilogy, and I've become a better person for it. So let's see if this remaster does the series justice and proves that Mass Effect is not done yet and ready for this current generation of gaming:

So I won't go into detail of every game as I have reviewed each of them previously, but I will go into what's changed and what's been improved. The compilation is not in its complete form as it's missing the multiplayer aspect of Mass Effect 3 (which was removed due to the size of the compilation, but compensated with a rebalancing of the Galactic Readiness system) and the Pinnacle Station DLC from the first game (source code was corrupted, and it was made outside of BioWare, but a similar DLC can be found in the third game). Out of all the games, the first game was the one that needed the most work on. This is because even though it's a fine game, it had a lot of painful boss battles, unbalanced Mako gameplay and felt more in line with BioWare's other RPGs while its sequels carved their own paths. Nevertheless, most of those things have been updated and improved. More consistent character models between games is also what I consider a big change considering that characters such as Tail, Garrus, Liara and Ashley go through a few changes across the games. Loading times are also significantly reduced (though many of us still enjoy listening to the elevator banter). All the games can be launched from one launcher with a universal character creator where you have more customizable options and be able to use the default FemShep face that was first introduced in the third game across all the games. And there is a photo mode because some of us still want to capture our fond memories of playing the games the first time around.

While the compilation is very much a partial remake but done similarly to how the Mafia trilogy returned, this is by far the best way to play the original Mass Effect trilogy. All up to date to take advantage of newer technologies, and I'm really happy that I was able to buy and play them all over again. A shame that it doesn't have all the features from their original versions, but what we don't get, we get something else to compensate. There are however some glitches that remain, but its very much as playable as before with everything we've come to know and love about the series such as the themes it carries, the lessons we learn and continue to learn from it and that you should never catch a krogan on a bad day or a turian that's stressed out. Really glad I got to write these many things for 10 years and I hope to continue doing so now that I have effectively mastered the writing that I would probably not be able to do as well as it is now when I first started this blog. 9/10