Review: Mass Effect: The Best RPG of 2007 (Page 3 of 7)
The Mako ground vehicle is the perfect way to navigate around harsh alien environments
Loose Lips
Of course, not everyone will be enamored with the frequent conversation trees that unfold any time you chat up an NPC, but BioWare wisely chose to communicate the bare essentials quickly, so those who don't have the patience to dig deep under the surface can quickly and efficiently move on without missing anything critical to the mission at hand.
Likewise, there's an enormous and beautiful galaxy to explore, filled not just with shrewdly designed mission-centric worlds, but also uncharted planets to land on and explore with the absurdly agile Mako vehicle. Zipping up mountains and down ravines to recover debris, examine anomalies, or explore underground bunkers is endlessly addictive, but it's also entirely optional. If you're the sort that wanted to explore every last cave in Oblivion, you'll love the sheer volume of things to do and side missions to wrap up. If you're not, you're free to just move on to the next stop on the main story-driven mission path which involves a deep and satisfying narrative that I won't ruin for you.
Field Training
Let's move onto the battlefield: When you're not talking, exploring, or looting containers with a simple button-pushing decryption mini-game, you're going to be killing something from an over-the-shoulder view. This being an RPG, your class has an enormous impact on how you battle. Three of the class options focus on combat, technology, or biotics respectively while the three remaining classes offer a balance between two disciplines. For example, Soldiers get improved health, can train in all weapon types, and can quickly learn to wear heavy armor, but the Adept can lift and throw objects and shield your three-humanoid squad. Anyone with a combat emphasis can get right into the thick of the action, while tech and biotics specialists are better off using special abilities to hinder approaching thugs.
As you level, you'll climb ranks in existing talents and unlock new ones, earning special abilities along the way. An assault rifle user might invoke Overkill to keep his weapons cool while another character might temporarily diminish damage taken via Immunity, or raise a one-way shield by manipulating dark energy.
Mass Effect features a complex yet intiutive dialogue system that allows you tackle any given situation in a variety of ways
While it is first and foremost an RPG, Mass Effect still features plenty of intense combat action
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