Mass Effect 1 may have the best combat in the series.

[Mikeyfell]

Mass Effect 2 had better combat because the Biotic and Tech powers were...uh, what's the word...Useable.
ME1's biotic and tech powers were about as useful as farting on your TV, The Sniper was the only half decent weapon on the higher difficulties, after you dumped all your experience into your pistol and sniper and equipped a couple heat syncs there was no situation you couldn't shoot your way out of by holding down the trigger.

ME2 had a much bigger range of actual worthwhile combat strategies.
And Mass Effect 3 was an unplayable broken mess with controls designed by dog without a brain that didn't understand the concept of buttons.

 

[repeating integers]

I will say I very much appreciate how, in ME1, biotic powers went through shields as if they weren't there like they are supposed to do. In the followup games the devs apparently decided game balance was more important than actually adhering to the game's internal lore and made shields block biotics, which is shit.

 

[Exius Xavarus]

The only thing I really appreciated about ME1's combat was the fact that the sniper rifle actually moved around when you were zoomed in. It does bother me a bit in games the way you can have a sniper rifle with the strongest scope in the game, and somehow in the middle of combat without any iron sighting you can hold that sucker perfectly still. In ME1 it felt like using the sniper rifle actually took some effort and finesse, rather than just feeling like a more accurate version of every other gun with a longer cooldown.

Everything else sucked, though. The upgrading system was totally convoluted and took way too long to mess with.

While movement on the sniper rifle was nice for realism, I felt like it was too much. Shepard was even more unsteady than Leon Kennedy, and that was pretty unstable. It was a nice feature, but in battle or not, sitting there while holding out the sniper rifle, Shepard waves half a foot, if not more, in either direction. It hurts the realism, for me, when I can hold it steadier under the same conditions as an untrained civilian, than a highly trained commander. :/ Unless all the areas Shep and Gang go to are very, very windy.

I honestly thought ME1 had the weakest combat of all three games. To be brutally honest, I thought ME2 had the best combat of the trio. The universal cooldowns sucked, sure, but ME2 was so much more fast-paced. ME3 even more fast-paced. I loved it to bits, but with something they're trying to turn primarily into a shooter, I like streamlined RPG mechanics more, as opposed to more in-depth RPG mechanics. That's not to say I didn't like them, though. If they'd balanced it out I think an RPG shooter is quite viable.

In ME1's case, however...no. Tech is absolutely worthless. The only Tech abilities even remotely worth it are Overload and, to a lesser extend, AI Hacking. Although AI Hacking didn't do much for me. But with Tech being worthless, I had no reason to bring anyone that specializes in it. As a Sentinel, I was greatly disappointed. Because all I did was cast Overload to break their shield and fire off with my nerf pistol. That's literally about it. I'd use Warp on occasion but not very much. Sure, ME1 had potential, but I don't think it was executed very well(this is ignoring all the bugs I constantly experience that really really hampered my experience).

 

[Casual Shinji]

No, Mass Effect 3 had the best combat, it was amazingly good. Mass Effect 1 automatically fails for not having the Vanguard's charge.

Couple the vanguard charge with nova though, and the game turned piss easy. Not that it wasn't fun to do, but I could basically leave my weapons and crew on the ship with the amount of damage I was doing.

OT: Yes and no. It was definately cluncky, but I liked how areas were more open and didn't depend on a cover mechanic.

 

[Falseprophet]

There was no variety in the weapons, and sniper rifles were basically pointless.

Not true. On some planets where I had to infiltrate a base and there was a swarm of geth or mercenaries hanging around outside, I could take them all out by parking the Mako on one of the ridges overlooking the base, getting out, and picking off the enemies one by one. ME2 never gave my Infiltrator those kind of longshot opportunities.

But the plot of ME1 is also stupid (worst beginning plot to a game I've ever played) and the plot to ME3 is...yeah. So ME2 does a really good job of doing fun things with fun characters and if you're calling that the story (which is fair enough) then in my opinion it really is the best of the series. (ME1 has better world building though. Even if the dialogue that does it is dumb, with Shepard asking really stupid questions that she should already know)

I agree with most of your opinions on ME2's story (strip out anything dealing with Cerberus and the Collectors and it's some of the best writing in a video game ever), but I'm curious why you think ME1's beginning is stupid? It's not brilliant or anything, but I thought it did a fine job of setting up the rest of the game.

 

[Lex Darko]

i dont understand why everyone hates the story of mass effect 2. i personally found it to have the most interesting story of the series

I don't get it either. It was more self-contained and character driven so maybe that's why. I thought it was great because it was so character driven. It's the best game in the series. It improved almost everything and it expanded Mass Effect universe a lot.

Mass Effect 2 was an idiot plot. End of ME1 council/leaders agree reapers are real and reapers are coming. ME2 all of the council idiotically forgets that reapers are real and that reapers are coming. Council gets shown actual evidence of collectors abducting entire colonies at once, the collectors a species that was only rumored to exist before Shepard brought them actual proof.

So what does the council do in the face of an obvious and impending threat? Nothing, because it's an idiot plot a plot that only works when characters in the story act in the stupidest irrational manner available to them. That is why fans don't like ME2's main story. The side stories, the crew missions, especially the dlc crew missions were pretty good, but the main campaign story was just dumb.

But don't worry GOW3 made the same mistake, by not letting Prescott tell Hoffman and all the other Jacinto survivors about the "last bastion" of the COG instead going there himself and dying like 10 mins into the game.

 

[Piorn]

I still can't forgive them for scrapping the Mako.
I loved it. The galaxy just felt much smaller without it.

Also, while I liked ME1's combat, coming back from 2 was just impossible, because it felt too clunky.

 

[BrotherRool]

But the plot of ME1 is also stupid (worst beginning plot to a game I've ever played) and the plot to ME3 is...yeah. So ME2 does a really good job of doing fun things with fun characters and if you're calling that the story (which is fair enough) then in my opinion it really is the best of the series. (ME1 has better world building though. Even if the dialogue that does it is dumb, with Shepard asking really stupid questions that she should already know)

I agree with most of your opinions on ME2's story (strip out anything dealing with Cerberus and the Collectors and it's some of the best writing in a video game ever), but I'm curious why you think ME1's beginning is stupid? It's not brilliant or anything, but I thought it did a fine job of setting up the rest of the game.

I'm happy to go into this, but I want to stress at the start that it sort of doesn't matter, because the world-building and level design is so amazing it turns the awful story into a nitpick. I don't want make it seem like I'm hating on a good game.

The biggest problem with the start of ME1 is the council are absolutely right every time, to the extent that I really began to hate Shepard. She finds a coward and smuggler hiding behind some crates, right beside the Spectre who just happened to be shot in the back by someone and that man then tells her that another famous Spectre who Shepard didn't see on the planet and has no business being near the planet, did it. She then reports this to the council and the council say 'Hey Shepard, the word of one drunk isn't enough to prosecute our best policeman' and Shepard starts scowling about 'damn politicians' and the game acts like this wasn't a sensible choice.

Also Shepard recently came into contact with an alien device that gave her trauma enough to cause several days unconsciousness and yet she expects everyone to take seriously the idea that her dream about the world ending in vague undefined ways was a prediction of the future, although she has no evidence herself that it was anything but a fantasy and as far as we know at this point, there's no reason why she'd have visions like that.

But before that we already have the character and death of Jenkins, which no-one dwells for a second on and was foreshadowed about as badly as possible. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzOxcORtePE#t=48s It also takes place and is animated like a school project. And then we have the incredibly forced death of the spectre which involves him managing to turn his back on someone who he's speaking to face to face.

I still can't work out how someone would do that
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I66GaPmI1Dk

Then we have Saren cackling evilly to his space dominatrix.


So no we're back to the plot, Shepard does risky potentially illegal things with people with poor motivation, one of whom admits he has no evidence but is bored of the routine of safe legal police work and is looking for an opportunity to do something reckless, and Shepard finds a voice recording. The council somehow take this as sufficient evidence (because people can't tamper with voice recordings in the very specific length of time of after discovering Mass Effect drives and before ME3). But they refuse to assume that this means an evil alien race of space bogeymen are about to invade and instead give Shepard full powers to deal with it and promise to look into the problem, but stop short of giving her control of the entire galactic fleet.

And she still calls them damn politicians and complains about bureaucracy. And all the people she met join her ship despite only having talked to her one or two times in their entire lives. I didn't even know what Wrex was doing aboard, I couldn't believe that you didn't have more conversations before they pledged their lives in service to you.

It takes until the middle part of the game before Shepard's actions start making sense and then it gets good until the ending where the bad comes back and the game finishes on another council scene. Because those were fun and entirely unstrawmanny up until that point

 

[The Selkie]

As much as I love Mass Effect, I went back to replay it recently and it really felt like a chore because of the combat. Obviously it's entirely subjective, but you can tell by the responses to this thread that the majority disagree with you (for a long list of reasons). If you enjoy it then fair play to you, but I'll only ever be replaying ME1 for the story and characters.

ME1 combat = Halo
ME2 and ME3 combat = Gears Of War

so, if you are a FPS fan, you will prefer ME1 (as I do)
if you are a Xbox fan you will prefer ME2 and ME3 combat.

Not really sure how that comparison works - both Halo and GoW are xbox exclusives, so why would an xbox fan prefer ME2 and 3? And surely FPS fan and xbox fan aren't mutually exclusive?

 

[MPerce]

Mass Effect 1's combat system was clunky and it's something the other two games perfected,but considering the the game was released in 2007 I can cut it some slack considering I've played games with even more clunky combat controls in the last couple of years.

Just wanted to say welcome to the forums! Hope you like it here.

OT: I suppose ME1's combat had its own unique charm. There definitely aren't many other games that use a system like that. But in the end, it was a clunky, convoluted and repetitive mess that tried to be a shooter and an RPG and failed at both. ME2 and 3 are definitely more mainstream in their combat, but they are still infinitely better constructed.

 

[Krantos]

I agree. It was more than a little flawed but it felt different. Combat from from 2 on just felt like every other TPS.

Also, giving abilities global cooldowns rather than each one having its own was a horrible idea. All it did was force you to use your gun more. No, I have enough games where I use my gun, let me use my space magic. No? ...Really? ...Please? Dammit.

Really, though, I think this applies to basically everything from Mass Effect 1 to 2. ME1 was flawed. In a lot of ways. But it took risks, it was different. It felt like a sweeping space epic. ME2 was a hell of a lot smoother, but it was, in every important way, safe. It didn't feel like a space epic. It just tried to tell you it was. It was still a perfectly good game, and functionally was superior to ME1, but it didn't have a tenth of its predecessor's charm or personality.

 

[Souplex]

I honestly feel Space Wizards 3 had the best mix of shooting and RPG elements.
Powers can be evolved to rank 6 (Last three ranks are split choices) creating a great feeling of customization, whereas in 1 you just pumped everything to max.
The weapon weight system dramatically improves playing as a power-based class.
Global cooldowns honestly make sense. They make it so power-based classes aren't useless in the beginning, and godlike in the end.
Grenade powers are neat.
You're durable enough to be able to step outside of cover without spontaneously exploding.
You're more mobile (About as mobile as a guy in Gears) which leads to a lot of moving around the battlefield.
Weapons can be modified about as much as they could be in 1.
There's a good variety of weapons. Each one feels distinct.
There's finally some decent melee.

The downsides:
No Mako.
Thermal clips again instead of a heat system.
Some melee-ranged enemies have bullshit insta-kill grabs.

I'd say that 2 was the worst gameplay-wise.

 

[Falseprophet]

I'm happy to go into this, but I want to stress at the start that it sort of doesn't matter, because the world-building and level design is so amazing it turns the awful story into a nitpick. I don't want make it seem like I'm hating on a good game.

No worries, I love the world-building of ME1 too.

And I might end up mostly agreeing with you again. For me, the "beginning" was everything that happened on Eden Prime, which I find mostly fine (not amazing). Most of your issues seem to concern what happens between returning from Eden Prime and Shepard being named Spectre and leaving the Citadel with the Normandy. I generally agree with you there, especially the "smoking gun" voice recording, which fails on so many levels.

And a lot of writers like to write "the hero rails against incompetent institutions stopping her from saving the day" stories, but that only works if the institutions are actually incompetent.

They go way too far the other way in the sequels, where the Council and the Systems Alliance both deny reality (OK, maybe you don't want to admit there's a race of civilization-destroying machines out there, but shouldn't you at least seriously investigate how the geth had a ship that nearly wiped out the Citadel fleet single-handedly, and be prepared in case they have another one?), but then again Shepard is also working for murderous terrorists. Frankly, at times I thought the Reapers were doing the galaxy a favour.

 

[Netrigan]

Not a fan of infinite ammo. Don't mind the odd infinite ammo weapons as they're usually set up to be a last resort kind of thing, but resource management is a major part of any shooter and ME1 just did away with it completely.

So apart from that (and a really clunky cover mechanic), the biggest problem with combat in the first game is level design. The level design really doesn't support multiple approaches to a problem with the only "tactics" being which super-powers to use. Attacking the bar on the Citadel is a good example. Most of the strategy come down to hiding outside the bar and taking pot-shots at the guys inside the bar. Tackling the boss inside has you in an area with exactly two bits of cover... which your squad-mates will instantly grab.

It's just a really, really poor shooter; but then combat is usually the weak point of any RPG/action hybrid. The Fallout games are bad shooters, the Elder Scrolls are bad hack-n-slash, and so on. They don't create situations where the player has to think about how to approach a situation, they just give them lots of powers and inventory items and allow them to level up through a tough encounter.

 

[BrotherRool]

They go way too far the other way in the sequels, where the Council and the Systems Alliance both deny reality (OK, maybe you don't want to admit there's a race of civilization-destroying machines out there, but shouldn't you at least seriously investigate how the geth had a ship that nearly wiped out the Citadel fleet single-handedly, and be prepared in case they have another one?), but then again Shepard is also working for murderous terrorists. Frankly, at times I thought the Reapers were doing the galaxy a favour.

Oh gosh yes, definitely, particularly when they've just blown up a Reaper and start calling it a geth attack. If I had to name my least favourite story element of the entire series it would be the council hands down. They never get them right. It's also the part where they had to take the most shortcuts where choice was involved too

 

[Netrigan]

As usual i will say the series was 'dumbed down for the dumb generation of gamer' of which i am not a part.

While the second game dumbed down RPG elements, I'd accuse the first game of dumbing down shooter mechanics.

I've gotten into conversations about "tactics" in ME1, which really boils down to doing a bunch of side-missions until your character is a god. I did a playthrough on the highest difficulty level, which ended up being far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far easier than my initial playthrough when my War Hero character couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with a nuke. Once you're leveled up, you can pretty much take out anyone using whatever power you like, because the only enemy which has a hope of killing you are charged up Krogans.

 

[blackdwarf]

I hated the gameplay of the first ME. Main reason why I can't restart that game. Sure, you can call the other two games safe, but something is called for a reason, because it works, even when it is simple. It isn't always the best way of making a game, but it gives a solid basis.

Still love the story of the First game though, that was just something special.

 

[snekadid]

No, Mass Effect 3 had the best combat, it was amazingly good. Mass Effect 1 automatically fails for not having the Vanguard's charge. Mass effect 1 had the best story though with Mass Effect 3 lagging behind because of that which shall not be named and then Mass Effect 2's crappy story coming in last.

i dont understand why everyone hates the story of mass effect 2. i personally found it to have the most interesting story of the series and the story of mass effect 1 interested me the least. basically mass effect 1, to me, is just the game i have to put up with in order to get to the vastly superior other games

.....What? There is pretty much no purpose in ME2's story, other than introducing characters that only make cameos in ME3, you could have skipped over the entire game and lost almost nothing. Its filler before they could get to the ending of the series with nothing of any real importance happening, I mean we learn about the collectors(a race we never heard of that I won't go into details about to avoid spoilers) and we work for Cerberus for a bit before breaking up with them before the third game which has no big connection to the third game except for a couple annoying mentions that seem more in there to make the second game not seem pointless.

Actually, everything in ME3 that relates to ME2 seems like its just there as a honorable mention to a game that just didn't have a purpose.

I agree that ME1's cover system was terrible, but it made run and gun gameplay necessary and I LOVE run and gun gameplay. I don't know why people are insulting the ME1 enemies, theres drones that rocket bomb you, thorian creepers that mob you, husks that run up to you and explode(I forgot about that), wall jumper geth, geth troopers, geth snipers, 2 different types of geth tanks, 3 different variety of gangsters, cerberus troopers with nasty skills, rachni, asari commandos, krogan troopers, thresher maw, varren, and while not enemies... I can shoot a decent range of animals on the planets for shits and giggles.

All that and the enemy AI was better than ME2, They used cover well and when you used cover, they actually FLANKED YOU! ME2 meanwhile, you use cover and they get out of cover and slowly walk towards you with a bulls eye on their face. Plus ME2 only have 3 merc factions each with about 2-3 different types and the collectors with husk, trooper, scion and awakened.... thats a fucking terrible amount of enemy variety.

ME1 did have a clunky inventory system, but weapon customization was great, with 2 different gun options and 1 ammo choice you could make a gun that worked towards what you actually wanted to use. Meanwhile ME2 had 2 of each weapon with no customization options and 1 extra for sniper, shotgun and assault of which you could pick one of them and were missable if you didn't grab them during the one mission you could of. Plus ME1 you can use all the guns no matter your class but your rubbish with them without training, ME2 you can use guns fine.... but you can only use more than the pistol or submachine gun on 3 classes. They also used the clip system really poorly making ammo drop reliant for long stretches which they did better in ME3 but I still prefer the cooldown system.

ME1 is infinitely stronger than ME2, with a stronger/better written cast, actual exploration, missions that were interesting and fun(though the side missions could of used more that 4 different rooms), and again.... a functional story that means something in the scope of the story.

I won't argue against ME3, it's a good mesh of the better points of ME1 & 2(with the exception of heat clips) that works pretty well and comes out very strong (except for that original ending )