Mass Effect Legendary Edition - PC Game | Action RPG Sci-Fi Adventure | Relive the Epic Trilogy | Perfect for Sci-Fi Fans & RPG Gamers

Wow, I wasn't prepared for just how well this game was designed! From the moment the conversations began and I saw the cutscene-style dialogue, I was simply blown away. There is not only a very interesting and involving story here, but just as importantly, it is told with the highest level of style that I've seen in a game. This is as close to an interactive movie as I've seen.The combat interface is nicely designed, allowing you to zoom in with your targeting reticle for more accurate shots. You can pause the game at any time with the Space bar and assign commands to yourself or your team members. This is very useful but I actually didn't use it that much. Soon enough you will gain 6 possible team members, and every time you leave your ship you choose two who will accompany you. They all level up simultaneously, so switching among them as needed is not a problem. You can choose to have them level up their talents automatically, so you don't have to micromanage them. Your only obligation is to equip them.For your own character, you gain talent points as you level up, and can assign them to weapons, armor, skills, biotic powers, etc. I never understood how many points you gain each level, because sometimes it was 1, 2, or 3 depending on the level. The level cap is 50 (which I gained immediately before the final battle, how convenient!). Money abounds (I finished with 9,999,999 credits, which is the max) but I never found anything useful worth buying! All your weapons and armor will be found if you explore. Another nice touch is that you don't have to loot bodies. If the enemies drop anything, it automatically gets added to your inventory! I loved this feature.The dialogue in the game is first-rate. It's all voiced, including your own character, and extremely well-written. I enjoyed the dialogue wheel, which is a circular "map" of dialogue choices that lets you choose what you will say. But instead of showing exactly what the main character will say, it gives more of a loose, general guide to the direction of the conversation. For example, the choice might say "Where is he?" but your character might actually speak "When was the last time you saw him?" or something like that. The benefit is that you don't have to read all your dialogue and then hear the exact same thing spoken again. The downside is that you simply have no idea what your character may actually say. This somewhat reduces the conversation to simply knowing which *sides* of the dialogue wheel to choose at any given moment. Options on the left side lead to longer conversations with more information. Options on the right end the conversation quickly. Options on the top lead you down the "Paragon" path, and options toward the bottom lead you down the "Renegade" path. Sometimes you just need to choose according to the dialogue choice's location on the wheel, which feels a little less interactive than it could have.Finally, the game seemed a lot shorter than I expected it to be. There are a lot of systems and worlds to explore, but really the main quest only amounts to 3-4 big quests that only take maybe 2 hours each. A lot of time can be spent doing the side quests (which helps you gain a higher level early enough to make the game fairly easy going), but I was surprised to find that the main quest was just so straightforward. The benefit is that the story is very tightly developed, but for whatever reason I thought the game would be longer.Having said that, I feel it's an obligation to say something about the whole DRM fiasco, which is the only thing that accounts for the game's low rating here on Amazon. I stayed away from this game for a *long* time because of all the DRM issues that people were talking about, and then suddenly I realized that this was much more of a theoretical backlash than a practical one. What I mean is simply this: yes the game was released with DRM of having to activate every 10 or 15 days and a 3-install limit (among other things?) and I'm grateful for the people who so loudly protest these things. However, much of this issue was already addressed by Bioware (no more constant activation required) and yet people continued to complain because they also didn't like the 3-install limit. I admit it seems silly and somewhat arbitrary, but it's nothing that actually affects the game itself or your computer if you install it. I was worried about DRM that could actually damage my computer, but I know of no accounts of this happening with Mass Effect.My point is simple: unless you want to continue to participate in what has become more of a "holy war" rather than a real, technical issue, I highly recommend this game. I can't believe I stayed away from it for so long because of the DRM scare. It's too good to miss because of that.(Installed and ran perfectly on Windows 7 64-bit)Edit: I've always been slightly bothered by my comment above, which seems to diminish the importance of the protests against DRM. I wanted to add this additional comment simply to say that I am very glad there are people out there who oppose any type of DRM, and ideally we should all be rejecting games that use it. I held out on Mass Effect for a long time until a lot of the DRM issues were addressed, but to an extent I more or less "settled" for some DRM just to play the game. Like I said, the game is fantastic, but I'd rather have more people like the protesters than people like me who eventually buy the game, because it's the only way the game companies will get the message.