Mass Effect Legendary Edition (2021)

I've wanted to go back and play all of these games and have been fighting off the urge for years. I purchased the original ME1 on release on the 360 and completed one playthrough. I started ME2 a couple of years ago, but got sidetracked playing something else and never went back to it. Once ME:LE was announced, I knew I'd purchase it at some point. It was just put on sale over the holidays for 50% off, so I grabbed it and started ME1 after having resisted the temptation all of these years. It's been so long since I played ME1 that it was effectively like I'd never played it. I really wanted to start from the beginning of ME1 so I could carry over my save data to ME2 this time. As of the time I'm writing this, I completed my first playthrough of ME1:LE about 10 minutes ago.

The game looks absolutely stunning. The face life it received makes it feel like a current gen release, almost. There are a few aspects of the game that feel dated but those are such minor gripes they aren't even really worth mentioning. If anything, playing through ME1:LE in 4k makes me appreciated all of the work that's gone into much of the refinement in current gen games, for example motion capture, lighting, etc.

I have beaten ME3 like 3 times, but never had access to the DLC, yesterday I beat the Citadel DLC for the first time! That is some amazing DLC. All the DLC in ME3 has been great, but the Citadel encompasses everything I love about Mass Effect bringing together most of the characters from past games, and giving them a chance to shine, amazing.

And it has so many impactful and profound moments between Sheppard and the various characters, so good!

ME Legendary has crashed twice now during the final fight with Saren. For anyone who doesn’t know, it’s an easy but relatively tedious fight. I have to start it over twice now, with no guarantee it won’t crash again, isn’t great.

Big points for the original which has never crashed on me in over a decade.

Update: just found a thread that says the workaround is not to use biotic abilities. Great :S

Update: yup, that worked. So PSA for anyone considering a run of ME Legendary, avoid rolling Adept until BioWare patches this issue out. Also avoid using biotics for crowd control if you bring a companion like Liara. Best to roll Engineer and pick the Operative specialization while towing Garris and Tali along for the final fight until this can be fixed.

I was lucky because I was running as an Operative, and I had specced Liara with Overcharge. I stopped using her biotics and we just focused on tech abilities and regular weapons. And for anyone who asks why I bring an Adept on the final fight against waves of Geth and Reaper Saren, it’s because Throw does wonders for crowd control when you’re running up the side of the citadel tower, and Singularity usually helps with the adds during the Saren fight.

While this doesn't affect me directly, because I rarely spec in a way that I later regret after all these years, but it's kind of baffling that BioWare didn't add the ability to re-spec in ME. They changed level progression, they added inventory management tools, they tweaked a number of other elements, but they couldn't add a re-spec button somewhere in the menu?

On a somewhat related note, especially for newcomers, it also boggles my mind that they didn't fix the power wheel for squad members. You can still select more squad abilities than can be displayed on the power wheel, despite the fact that there is always one unoccupied slot that could accommodate the extra power. I guess this was impossible to fix.