A Legacy.
The Mass Effect Trilogy is a sci-fi epic where players guided and shaped a galaxy in an effort to stop a threat that would see the eradication of all life. It’s a cycle that has repeated for thousands of years and seemed destined to continue, unless, of course, Commander Shepard can unite the galaxy like no one has done before. While some aspects of the games still show their age, this is without question the definitive edition of three games that have earned their spot in history, a collection worthy of the title: Legendary.
Released back in 2007, Bioware had recently left the confines of the Star Wars universe in search of their own sci-fi pastures, building a universe that to many, would rivel the war in the stars. Mass Effect was a game where your weapon was as important as your dialogue, disarming your opponent through conversation, or a laser shot to the face. That, and a series of biotic powers that could hurl enemies over a cliff, set them on fire through Incendiary ammo, or cripple their shields, leaving them vulnerable. It was also a narrative told over the course of three adventures, with choices that would bleed into others, a feat that really hasn’t been done to this effect since.
As you ventured further to save the galaxy from certain death, your choices would dictate the state of the galaxy, the lives of those around you, or the repercussions of a bad choice rearing its ugly head when you would least expect it. While not all of those choices were grand sweeping alterations to the narrative, many still remained emotionally impactful, making it feel like my choices truly shaped the galaxy.
Mass Effect would evolve from game to game, becoming bigger, bolder, and more about placing a gun in Shepard’s hands than where the series first planted its roots. Sure, Mass Effect started out as an RPG shooter but would transition into a shooter RPG with the release of Mass Effect 2, a game that would come to define the Studio in many ways, and the game often considered to be the best in the series.
When it comes to the trilogy, many have their favorite. While I adore the final act of Mass Effect and the stellar final mission of Mass Effect 2, it was replaying Mass Effect 3 and its incredible DLC where this final chapter for Commander Shepard crept up as my favorite of the trilogy, a title that had recently been something I gave to Mass Effect 2. Now, I’m not going to say that 3 ended in a way that felt satisfying, but after coming back to it with a bit of a different perspective, not to mention playing each game back to back within a week, as opposed to years in between, I found it felt like a natural progression to what I and Commander Shepard set out to do; stop the Reaper threat, at any cost. I’ll also state that playing the game now, as opposed to its original release which was heavily muddled in EA’s business practices of the time, finally made this entry feel like it always should have been; a complete vision instead of a piece-meal series of offerings.
What is incredibly exciting about this collection is not only the fact that it looks better than ever, but that new players all over the world are experiencing it for the first time. The last time I played this trilogy myself was during its original release, so while certain parts of the game came back to me like it was yesterday, there was a great deal that I had forgotten about, and the fact that I hadn’t played Mass Effect 3’s DLC before, allowed me to have a solid few hours of content that I never had the chance to experience. This is why Mass Effect 3 resonated so well as the Citadel, Leviathan, and Omega DLC chapters are some of the best stories and moments of the series. While Pinnacle station’s corrupted source code prevented it from being included, it wasn’t a piece of Mass Effect content that I really remember being worth it in the first place.
The central story of Mass Effect is about saving the galaxy from certain destruction at the hands of the Reapers, a mysterious enemy that is so ancient, that any mention of their name is met with skepticism and denial. As Commander Shepard, you'll go to great lengths to prove their existence, and combat numerous forces under their control, all while trying to act as a figurehead of the human race as an agent for the council, an intergalactic group of alien species that have their doubts about humanities place and their significance throughout the galaxy.
Of this entire collection, Mass Effect has certainly seen the most work done to bring it more in line with the other two, changing and updating the UI, controls, lighting and textures, and some alterations to combat and weaponry, not to mention a much more forgiving cool-down for your medi-gel. While it doesn’t feel as fluid as Mass Effect 2, and especially not 3, it does feel remarkably better to play than it did before, even if at times it does feel a bit stiff due to some outdated animations, some wonky camera work during cutscenes, and a clunky cover system. To get a feel for how these changes truly felt, I loaded up and played a few hours of the original, and it is certainly noticeable in what BioWare has done here to update it without feeling like they overhauled everything and lost its identity. It’s not quite the revamp I was hoping for, but it certainly took a game that was merely good at the time and has made it edge that much closer to “great” territory.
Other improvements are the ability to sprint out of combat, being able to finally utilize any weapon on the battlefield without severe penalties, better-aiming controls, accuracy, and while the inventory menu is still awful to navigate, you can now mark items as junk and sort your inventory by name and level, making it a bit easier to sort through your stuff. Sound effects have also been entirely redone or pulled from Mass Effect 2 and 3 to make it sound more in line with its sequels. Another big improvement is drastically faster loading times, and the ability to skip the bulk of your time in an elevator, making exploring far quicker and less tedious when you are required to backtrack. Mass Effect originally allowed you to level your character to 60, but it required multiple playthroughs to do so. Now, while you can still do that, the game defaults to allow a single playthrough to max your character out instead, making you pretty OP by the game’s end, something I and Commander Shepard didn’t have an issue with.
Mass Effect was also the only game in the series to allow you to equip armor to your companions, something we would also see removed in Dragon Age 2. This was designed to preserve the look of each character, instead of having, for example, Wrex running around in pretty pink battle armor. Shepard, however, would continue to have this level of customization, and Mass Effect would also have weapon mods that would affect individual items, bullet types, and various other stats. While this system would be redesigned for Mass Effect 2 to be more based on the weapon type than an individual gun, it would see its return in Mass Effect 3, if a bit simplified.
Likely my biggest complaint with Mass Effect was the repeated use of many of the same interiors, and the bland exteriors you would drive around in via the Mako outside of core missions, which is back feeling more weighty than before, but still not as intuitive as say the Nomad was in Mass Effect: Andromeda. Regardless, the interiors for Mass Effect, especially when you would find planets to explore, were often the same building with crates moved around and different enemies inside. Several missions had you moving through facilities that were often the same hallways over and over again, making the galaxy feel that much smaller as a result. These planetary excursions were often sluggish, making the pacing of the game suffer as a result.
Despite these bland moments, the start of the Mass Effect narrative began here with taking great strides into making a fully realized sci-fi world with real stakes that affected characters that I quickly grew to love, with performances that are in many ways, still at the top of their game. The story of Shepard rising to the challenge, overcoming all odds to stop the Reapers from enacting their plan is one that ends here in spectacular fashion, a sequence that still to this day rivals almost any sci-fi scene across any medium.
Mass Effect 2 is in a lot of ways, a sequel that takes the strengths of the original, and doubles down on them. Many of the missions feel bigger in all the right ways, the stakes grander, and offers more moral choices for Shepard to consider, especially since they are now working alongside a mysterious group known for its extreme solutions to protect humanity at any cost. The cast of characters here is considerably larger, with many returning favorites and all new ones, especially Thane, Jack, Mordin Solus, Legion, and Miranda, who are some of my favorite characters in the series.
The game also starts with an incredible opening, one that almost comes out of nowhere to set the stage for the events to come. Mass Effect 2 is also the first of several Mass Effect games to be published under EA, and once the space dust had settled on the game’s opening moments, it’s vastly apparent of the publisher’s involvement here. That said, Mass Effect 2 is a joy to play, not just in its story and characters, but simply the controls and the more action focus of this sequel. Taking cover is better, shooting feels vastly more enjoyable, even if guns use actual ammo now, and the powers themselves just feel far more impactful. While you have far less to upgrade from character to character, each of your companions now feels more specific as a result, instead of being a jack of all trades. Environments are far less identical from one another, and the Collectors make for a compelling opponent in their variety.
One of the biggest changes in Mass Effect 2 is how you’ll upgrade your weapons and gear as mods act differently here than they did in Mass Effect. Instead of each weapon or gear item allowing for unique changes, you’ll find armor and weapon blueprints that require resources to affect an entire category instead. The resources you’ll need to purchase these upgrades are acquired through scanning planets for resources. As you zoom around the galaxy, which now requires fuel, you’ll purchase probes to send down to the planet surface where you’ll detect waves of minerals that pulse as you scan. Personally, I enjoyed the planet scanning as I could put on a podcast and buy fuel and probes and head back to my ship after an hour or so and upgrade several things at once, including upgrades to my ship that would come in handy during a very pivotal scene.
What Mass Effect 2 did so perfectly was make the galaxy we have to explore here not only bigger but vastly more exciting than before. We have all new areas to explore, and while the Citadel certainly sees a better outing in Mass Effect 3, we get to visit several homeworlds of key alien species as well as one of my favorite locations in the series, Omega, which in many ways is almost a twisted version of the Citadel itself. The Normandy sees a massive overhaul, giving you more things to interact with, more rooms to have engaging conversations in, and while we see the return of many familiar faces, circumstances have placed plenty of new ones in front of us as well. Mass Effect 2 also ditches the Mako in favor of the Hammerhead, a hovercraft that packs a punch, but its missions are often one-note, despite being far more engaging than what we had with the Mako.
Mass Effect 2 was also notorious for adding ammo to the world of Mass Effect, a system designed to have you more reliant on all your guns, but the biggest problem was the lack of ammo would often ruin several encounters. One of the changes here in the remaster was in adding more ammo laying about, almost always ensuring that you have more than enough before some of the more elaborate firefights. Another change from the original is lower skill checks for some of the choices you’ll make that can greatly influence Mass Effect 3, making it easier to get the results you want as opposed to missing out on a key choice because you just didn’t make the requirements for it.
But, for as great as everything Mass Effect 2 does, its final mission is still considered the pinnacle of the Mass Effect series and one of the best final missions in gaming entirely. During the story, you’ll collect a large group of companions that each has a loyalty mission of their own, complete with a level created just for that mission. By completing their objective, you’ll secure their loyalty in the upcoming fight against the Collectors. Now, some missions require you to tackle their request in a certain way, and some arguments between companions can actually cause their loyalty to suffer as a result, forcing you to either calm them both down or take a side. This then leads to a final mission that can result in the deaths of some companions if you haven’t prepared your team well enough or made mistakes with picking certain characters for specific tasks. It’s a tense mission that is challenging in so many ways as you fight to keep everyone alive.
While highly controversial because of its color-choice ending, and having much of its content regulated to DLC, Mass Effect 3 kickstarts its opening moments with the arrival of the Reapers. This onslaught almost never fades from the narrative, and while you do have moments that do side-line the threat, nearly every mission or conversation eventually calls back to the dire circumstances the galaxy finds itself in. We learn vastly more about the Reapers here, their plan, the way the cycle works, and how it might very well end. Mass Effect 3 is all about the preparation for the war and how the galaxy must unite in order to even stand a chance.
Mass Effect 3, back when it originally came out, was a distant second to me in comparison to Mass Effect 2. However; as I mentioned before, the DLC which is now fully integrated into the game, causes this third entry to soar, providing not just some of the biggest laughs I’ve had in years with the Citadel DLC, but exploring and learning about the in’s and out’s of Omega, alongside a personal favorite character for me, Aria T’Loak. This also might be many players’ first experience with Javik, a character that felt so pivotal to the Mass Effect lore that I’m still shocked he was regulated to being DLC at launch. Seriously, when you travel to Thessia, take Javik with you, you won’t regret it.
Mass Effect 3 is certainly the most polished of the trilogy in regards to its controls, the skill tree system to its abilities, and the return to outfitting your character with pretty much any weapon you want, complete with mods. Just as was the case with Mass Effect 2, thermal clips are back, as while you can find one of the overheating guns from Mass Effect 1 to use here, ammo is required to keep firing your other guns. Where Mass Effect 3 differs in your loadout is your biotic powers work off a cooldown based on your carry weight, so if you load up with a ton of weaponry, expect your powers to recharge a little slower. This also works vise versa, as I would often just equip two guns to Shepard and reduce their weight so my recharge was so fast I could fire off Throw again after a 2-second cooldown. Personally, it was a system that I felt allowed power-based or weapon-based players to find their own footing. We also see Shepard using ladders and jumping across gaps, something that lends itself to more chaotic encounters as you have more mobility in flanking, and levels often are designed with this in mind. Personally, while I find Andromeda to have the best mobility and shooting, Mass Effect 3 is no slouch and is a blast to play.
Mass Effect 3 also trims down the cast considerably. While you’ll have guest roles in some of the series’ mainstays like Miranda, or Samara, you only have access to about half of what you had in Mass Effect 2. Each character has a few skins now to choose from, so changing their look is certainly fun to do, but I wish characters like Wrex, Legion, Kasumi, or Jack had been able to be part of the squad, especially since they are frequently in missions, or at least seem very available. Regardless, you can level them up when you have them, so you can tailor them to suit your needs instead of them coming pre-installed with abilities you may not be too keen on.
With the Normandy back under Alliance control, the ship sees some massive upgrades and more space to move around in. The mission hub location is largely untouched, but every other room has seen a much bigger space given to it. The control center is a whole new location, providing you with mission updates from Hackett or Anderson, as well as checking on your galactic readiness, a feature that details how successful your attempt against the Reapers will do, and what forces you’ll take with you. Previously, Mass Effect 3 required the use of its multiplayer mode to earn much of that readiness, but that requirement has been balanced out, and simply playing Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 will earn you around what you would have had via multiplayer, which was cut from this release, but the developer has hinted that It might return.
The galactic readiness system makes side quests and exploring the galaxy so important as you earn rewards towards that readiness. These are assets provided by either the quest giver or by taking a side in certain arguments you see aboard the Citadel. You’ll also have to worry about choices you made during the previous two games affecting this as well, such as trying to negotiate peace between the Quarians and the Geth, something that requires some important calls to be made in Mass Effect 2. While it’s easy enough to earn more than you’ll ever need, some choices from the previous games can cut off a huge chunk of this and make it that much harder to have enough readiness for the final battle.
While each game changes much of its playstyle and controls from one to the next, there is familiarity in performing the same general gameplay loop. You’ll travel to a new location, talk with the available NPC’s, get into some firefights, make certain choices, and see those repercussions play out at a later date. Mass Effect certainly sets the stage well for what it does, but Mass Effect 2 and 3 certainly builds on that and while not all your choices come to affect its conclusion, I still enjoyed the journey to stop the Reapers and where my choices did eventually guide me. Again, I don’t think the available endings for Mass Effect 3 are revolutionary or deeply satisfying, but as I chose the “red” ending, I still found it to end in a way that felt somewhat fitting to my character and what we set out to do.
The Legendary edition also streamlines the character creation system by allowing a consistent look for female Shepard through each game as that wasn’t the case before. Originally, you would see alterations to her from game to game, looking slightly off between Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2. You can also switch your class between games if you like, allowing you to correct that possible mistake in a previous game. Mass Effect 2 even comes with the comic book story PlayStation fans had since Mass Effect originally didn’t come to their console at the time, allowing them to make key choices that would affect their time with Mass Effect 2.
Bioware has done a remarkable job at tweaking the visuals, lighting, and texture quality in what this remaster has done to each game. While Mass Effect has certainly seen the most work, each of the three games in this collection looks drastically better than before. Characters look more detailed, the lighting and color depth is far and away better, and while the games still have some janky camera work during their cutscenes, there is very little to really complain about from a presentation standpoint. However; there is one aspect of the games that I feel was a missed opportunity to really have these games stand out; the human faces. While every alien species looks incredible here, even in Mass Effect, the human faces still look bad, especially in the first game. It’s shame that these were not redone as they often look like plastic doll heads, especially Kaidan, with animations that don’t do them any favors. While Mass Effect 2 and 3 are certainly better, I wish, at the very least, that those assets were put into Mass Effect to make them just look even the tiniest bit better than they do.
The Mass Effect Trilogy is superb, regardless of any little issues I have with it, or things I would have like to have seen improved more. Mass Effect has never played better, and even the small improvements made to Mass Effect 2 and 3, especially adding in all their DLC just makes these games even better than they were before. Commander Shepard, regardless if you played male or female, is one of the most beloved characters in gaming, with the voice acting to match. These games are so well-loved for a reason, giving you a collection of characters to fall in love with and to move heaven and earth to ensure they make it out alive. The fight against the Reapers was one we were told would be futile, an effort so massive in scale that it would take the united front of an entire galaxy, a feat that would be spearheaded by you, across all three games, as you attempt to save the galaxy from annihilation. If you haven’t played the Mass Effect Trilogy before, or at least in its entirety, there has never been a better time, and if you have, then prepare to jump back in, and make all those same choices all over again.
Developer - Bioware. Publisher - EA. Released - May 14th, 2021. Available On - Xbox One/Series S/X, PS4/5, Windows. Rated - (M) Use of Alcohol, Blood, Sexual Content, Partial Nudity, Drug Reference, Strong Language, Violence.
Platform Reviewed - Xbox Series X. Review Access - Mass Effect Legendary Edition was purchased by the reviewer.
While there are no native versions for Series X/S, or PS5, load times are much better as the title has seen “some” enhancements for the platforms. At this time, Bioware has stated there are no plans at this time to make Series X/S or PS5 versions of this collection.