Originally posted on Wordpress on 17 May 2021
- Purchased Through: Origin
- Hours Played: 9.5 (Therum Completed)
I've been waiting for this remaster since it was announced! At the time, I was thinking about replaying the Mass Effect trilogy, and this was the perfect excuse for a replay. And a couple of reviews, since I'm doing that now.
First of all, the graphics are gorgeous:
All the low-resolution textures in the original version of Mass Effect 1 are gone!
Eyes are way shinier than they used to be - to an almost distracting degree. It's almost too pretty. Characters' faces have actual detail to them: not just scars, but pores, freckles, and other marks on their skin. A lot of Asari and Turian NPCs have some kind of facepaint/makeup, and it's a lot more noticeable now.
Nelyna's facepaint (makeup?) was not nearly as bold or noticeable in the original version of the game. Neither were her underboobs.
I used to wonder what the blurry green lines on the Volus' suits were. Now I can see that they are actual green lines on the fabric, not part of Volus anatomy like I originally thought (I used to think the Volus were spindly plant people).
Due to loading times being decreased, elevator dialogue starts immediately. There's also an option to skip it entirely, but I don't know why you would want to do that. The squad banter is pretty great.
Combat is improved in general. It's still based on the original combat system of Mass Effect 1, but it is definitely better than it used to be.
The Mako handles a lot better. It's not nearly as wonky as it used to be and actually feels...heavier? There's a speed boost option now. The sound effects for the guns are different. And there isn't an XP penalty for killing enemies from the Mako anymore!
The Bring Down the Sky DLC is part of the base game now. It was actually the first mission I did after leaving the Citadel - I had zero idea what Asteroid X57 was since I didn't have the DLC in the original game.
Photo mode is pretty great! There are tons of options. There's even options to remove the party members or Shepard from view. Also, the photos are saved...as bitmap files. I genuinely did not think anyone used bitmap files anymore.
And here's some bugs I've encountered:
- With dialogue, the last word or half a word gets skipped at the end of a sentence sometimes. It seems to be random.
- The biotic & tech color bars on the party member selection screen are swapped. Tech is now blue and biotics are now purple.
- The disappearing Turian C-Sec Officer bug is still in the Presidium Prophet sidequest.
- My computer crashed once during the X57 mission. I have zero idea what it was caused by, but I could only exit the game by using CTRL-ALT-DELETE and trying to switch user accounts. That shut down Origin entirely.