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submitted 18 hours ago by gingerbrat@hexbear.net to c/games@hexbear.net

Damn, I need to rant about this with company, so thanks in advance for reading. Spoilers ahead.

I have a (bad) habit of replaying these games on a yearly basis. There's mutiple reasons, the most prominent perhaps is the fact that up until the end of the third game, they are so engaging and fun, the stakes are always incredibly high and ultimately, your decisions really shape the world around you. Curing the genophage, saving the geth, destroying the collectors, defeating Sovereign - it's slop, but it's fun slop.

Then you get to Earth by the end of the games and everything starts falling apart. The "beam" between Citadel and Earth is suddenly called "the conduit" by everyone and there is no explanation for it, and it's not like there wasn't the conduit in the first game. At the very end, once the crucible is activated, nobody apart from Shepard knows what the thing does. Still, the fleets are all fleeing, including the Normandy, but nobody knows what's going on. That probably includes the players by that point.

There is so much more in between these examples, but I don't have the beans to go over all of it. It's just a fucking mess.

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[-] Carl@hexbear.net 22 points 16 hours ago

Mass effect two and three are good but they diverge from Mass effect 1 in that they're much more like third person cover shooters and much less like RPGs, so that gameplay balance doesn't sound interesting to you take that in mind. If you like the world in the writing and don't mind the gameplay then I would say definitely check them out, even with the disappointing ending Mass effect 3 is still like 90% good Sci-Fi action slop.

[-] chgxvjh@hexbear.net 7 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

I really hate how rail roaded the later parts are. Most of the world is completely off limit unless you are on one specific quest.

In ME1 they actually managed to make it feel like a continuous world. Even with stuff like long elevator rides instead of load screens. Items are also the coolest in the ME1.

Andromeda takes in many ways the best of all games but sucks for other reasons. Like quest lines where the game requires you to board the ship just to read an email, and the email is just that someone wants to meet you in person. That shit legit made me quit and leave the game unfinished.

[-] gingerbrat@hexbear.net 4 points 12 hours ago

I second this, and I also think they're worth a try if you've never played them before.

this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2026
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