Mass Effect™ Legendary Edition
analyzed 2026-09-24 · sample of 655 English reviews across the whole review history
Across 655 sampled reviews, the story draws the most comment, at 23.1%, and it is overwhelmingly positive, with 117 of those mentions favorable. Characters follow at 12.5%, again largely praised, and graphics at 12.4%. Players describe "the characters are some of the best in gaming" and "the universe is really immersive". The branching paths and carried-over choices recur, as does romance. The sharpest split concerns platform access, at 10.1%, where 57 of 66 mentions are negative, focused on the EA App and its online requirement. Bugs, at 5.8%, are mostly negative, and developer conduct, at 3.2%, is negative without exception. Multiplayer's removal and missing patches come up repeatedly. Elsewhere the picture is warmer: price value, DLC integration, combat, and replayability lean positive, and players note "hundreds of hours of content". Writing divides more evenly, and pacing, stability, and sound design draw criticism. The recurring themes players raise include romance.
numbers checked against this report's stored data · quotes copied verbatim from reviews · plain text is the language model's own wording
Aspects
share of sample, axis to 30% · ± is the sampling uncertainty around each share
- positive
- mixed / neutral
- negative
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story
117 positive · 16 negative · 17 mixed · 1 neutral
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I am excited to see how the story develops throughout the trilogy.
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I really enjoyed returning to the story of Shepard.
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One of the most engaging stories ever told.
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characters
76 positive · 4 negative · 2 mixed · 0 neutral
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You will be getting hundreds of hours of content and a storyrich game that will leave you crying at times, and carinf for virtual characters that you'll remember for years.
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The story is still exceptional, the characters are some of the best in gaming and the overall experience is simply stunning.
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The branching paths of the narrative and the compelling universe and characters will make you want to keep coming back again and again.
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graphics
71 positive · 6 negative · 4 mixed · 0 neutral
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The updates to textures and graphics are solid (especially ME1) and the consistent character models that you can generate across all three games is really great.
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With a few exceptions the higher resolution textures look good and the tweaks in lighting and camera angles generally improve the look of the game.
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It has all the DLC, graphics got a minor update to current gen, still looks and plays great.
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platform access
7 positive · 57 negative · 2 mixed · 0 neutral
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With the now-mandatory EA App, this completely offline, multiplayer-amputated, no online functions whatsoever game is now online only.
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Great games but a trashy port that didn't fix 10-year-old problems.
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Reason one is that to play the game it requires you have and use Origin when no one wants it, and reason two being that its sold as having full controller support and yet I've been unable to use the controller despite attempting to get it to work for over half an hour.
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gameplay
39 positive · 10 negative · 10 mixed · 1 neutral
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The gameplay improvements are welcome, as is the improved Mako in ME1.
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Nostalgia overload, packaged in incredible games
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It has all the DLC, graphics got a minor update to current gen, still looks and plays great.
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price value
34 positive · 4 negative · 10 mixed · 2 neutral
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Worth the $$$, I've forgotten how good the original trilogy is.
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Speaking of DLCs, The pricing for the LE makes it so you save A LOT of money in the long run, seriously.
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If you love RPG's you'll love this, great value for all three games.
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player choice
42 positive · 6 negative · 1 mixed · 0 neutral
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The branching paths of the narrative and the compelling universe and characters will make you want to keep coming back again and again.
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One of the things this trilogy does so well is having a fully customizable protagonist that is still an actual character with backstory and relationships, all of which are your choice as well.
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There are a solid amount of choices that will drastically effect your playthrough and I love the connection!
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dlc
36 positive · 9 negative · 1 mixed · 0 neutral
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It's the Trilogy with proper ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ HUD scaling, an AIO install, and fully integrated DLC.
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The DLC integration is really nice, especially coming from Origin; it's so much nicer when you don't have to download and manage DLCs.
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It has all the DLC, graphics got a minor update to current gen, still looks and plays great.
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combat
30 positive · 5 negative · 4 mixed · 0 neutral
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You take the blue pill -- you play a decent shooter and enjoy the action.
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I never actually touch Mass Effect Series back this remaster come out but this is really something,three games all about the story,sure shooting is cool but most are about stories and i actually really enjoy it.
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Although the game definitely shows its age, the combat systems are still solid enough to push through it and explore and enjoy what it has to offer.
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bugs
5 positive · 31 negative · 1 mixed · 1 neutral
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… be connected to the internet(offline play is why I bought the Deck) and I've recently discovered that this EA App also loads a bugged profile that prevents achievement unlocks for ME2 and ME3 because the profile pre-unlocks ALL achievements in both games in the in-game tracker, preventing …
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Buggy AF and almost no patches despite how long it's been out.
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Apart from some rough patches here and there, tiny amount of bugs and a bad ending, I don't see any flaws here.
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see more
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world
32 positive · 2 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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The branching paths of the narrative and the compelling universe and characters will make you want to keep coming back again and again.
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The world around us is alive, people talk and generally interact with each other in every large location.
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Overall, you must play those games at least once in your life, the gameplay is a little bit dated of course, but you' ll experience an amazing story where your choices really count and the universe is really immersive.
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replayability
29 positive · 1 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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On my 4th playthrough as I write this and will probably do at least one more.
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It's a good incentive to replay the trilogy if you haven't played it too much before.
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Two playthroughs back to back and got 100%.
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emotional impact
25 positive · 1 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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Took me back when i was a teen and discovered this series for the first time, if you didn't play ME you should at least give it a try, it is an incredible experience.
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I can't describe the feeling I felt when I first experienced this enchanting trilogy and being able to experience it again like this makes me wish I could forget everything and experience it all over again, one of my all time favourite games- I highly recommend it!
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An absolute must have, replaying this series hits me right in the heart.
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writing
14 positive · 10 negative · 1 mixed · 1 neutral
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Nothing else comes close in terms of story design and writing.
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Without even thinking Mass Effect sucks you in with compelling writing, story, gameplay, and of course the fantastic missions.
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I never played the titles when they originally released which I regret however I think this has been to my benefit as I was fully able to appreciate the fantastic story writing and game play.
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controls
13 positive · 9 negative · 1 mixed · 0 neutral
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Controls still are good too.
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Throughout all of the games, they are consistently amazing in delivering enjoyable gameplay, really nice control feel, impeccable story, lovable (literally ;p) characters and some of the most staggering world building I have seen.
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one upgrade that I think happened in ME3 was that you could set abilities to different buttons instead of pausing and using the power wheel, and on nice thing about this version is you have that option available from ME1.
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content amount
19 positive · 2 negative · 0 mixed · 1 neutral
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You will be getting hundreds of hours of content and a storyrich game that will leave you crying at times, and carinf for virtual characters that you'll remember for years.
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This package of hundreds of hours of content is well worth the price tag.
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Surprising amount of content for a 15 year old game. I really ended up enjoying ME1 and the story with it.
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developer conduct
0 positive · 21 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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They were too busy trying to sell us the games we've already paid for before to eliminate the existing issues they never patched in the original release.
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I'll be honest, I haven't been a fan of EA or their company practices for a long time.
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EA's asinine policies like this have made it so I had not bought an EA game in 7 - 8 years.
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lore
19 positive · 0 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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Even now, there are people who STILL play the ME3 OG multiplayer and there are STILL lore debates about key story choices.
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The real strenght is probably the very solid, deep world building.
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This game has the lore and a ton of it, while being a FPS.
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mods
14 positive · 3 negative · 1 mixed · 0 neutral
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Basically get it if you're missing a lot of DLC you always wanted to play, otherwise the originals with e.g. the ALOT mods and a reshade can look just as good if not better.
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And it's now fully moddable as it's no longer online!
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There's some mods to fix the FOV and to get rid of the tedious hacking minigames, so get those two for sure.
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performance
10 positive · 6 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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The launcher with quick access to all three games, short loading times without the long wait for an EA online service that doesn't respond anymore etc.
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The game ran smoothly and I never had any technical problems.
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Despite the improvements one does not need a high level PC to play and has an inbuilt adjustable frame cap ranging from 30 to 240 FPS to cater to everyone's PC ability.
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stability
3 positive · 11 negative · 2 mixed · 0 neutral
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So basically this game has randomly decided it won't work anymore.
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The EA app continually requires proton layer resets, which in turn have the ability to delete save files.
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Unfortunately I cannot at the moment recommend this game as it fails to launch at all.
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difficulty
6 positive · 2 negative · 4 mixed · 3 neutral
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This game has immense scale; very challenging and I love it.
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ME3: great gameplay, insanity difficulty is insanity, much better combat AI, great DLCs, can be really fast paced
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Adjustable fights to suit all tastes and tricky decisions that make you think.
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music
13 positive · 1 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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Also, dat soundtrack tho...
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Oh damn, almost forgot: The soundtrack is as iconic as the setting.
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Great music, great voice acting, great story, please enjoy these masterpieces for the art they are.
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progression
9 positive · 4 negative · 1 mixed · 0 neutral
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But, it also streamlines the process of progressing from one game, and carrying over the prior game's rewards/consequences to the next.
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They made the leveling system work the same across all 3 games, but you can use the original if you prefer that.
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Side activities are a bit more rewarding and engaging, while the progression system was modified to not get too overwelmed.
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game length
3 positive · 0 negative · 0 mixed · 10 neutral
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[updated review] I have completed all 3 games, took me around 114 hours on my first playthrough, and I am as of this edit working through the games once again.
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Recommend everybody plays at least ME2, but honestly I recommend playing through the whole trilogy chronologically.
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After completing all three games at a little over 100 hours, I wish I could go back and experience it for the first time all over again.
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pacing
3 positive · 8 negative · 1 mixed · 0 neutral
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I didn't like some of the pacing, as a few of the DLC missions did show up earlier for me, and I didn't know the difference so it felt weird to get locked in to a certain questline for a while.
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What I want to add at the end is that this game starts to have a lot of pacing problems at the end of the game.
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ME1: outdated rigid gameplay, boring missions, decent combat AI, overly complex skill/gear system, slow paced
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multiplayer
2 positive · 9 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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Another thing to consider is that this version of Mass Effect 3 has the Multiplayer(AKA Co-op Survival w/objectives) is completely removed.
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The only downside is that there is no ME3 multiplayer, which was a lot of fun.
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The *only* thing that saddens me about this is the lack of the Multiplayer.
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quest design
5 positive · 5 negative · 0 mixed · 1 neutral
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Without even thinking Mass Effect sucks you in with compelling writing, story, gameplay, and of course the fantastic missions.
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The main story is great as are all the side missions.
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The characters are very compelling, I enjoyed the missions and combat, and especially had a lot of fun exploring and learning more about the setting.
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customization
8 positive · 1 negative · 1 mixed · 0 neutral
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The updates to textures and graphics are solid (especially ME1) and the consistent character models that you can generate across all three games is really great.
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One of the things this trilogy does so well is having a fully customizable protagonist that is still an actual character with backstory and relationships, all of which are your choice as well.
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I don't have a point of reference because this was my first time completing all 3 games, but ME3 in particular felt really great to play and seamlessly transitioned all of my choices and character customizations game-to-game.
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updates
3 positive · 6 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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Buggy AF and almost no patches despite how long it's been out.
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They also continue updating their horrible launcher and breaking the game further!
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Avoid until EA actually update their app to something stable and useful.
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addictiveness
7 positive · 0 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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So I find myself rolling eyes or cursing at my screen every few minutes but can't stop playing, and in the end find myself loving all of it way more than it deserves, especially when finally in the one last DLC the series suddenly …
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I have owned the Mass Effect series on 3 different platforms, beat it so many times I've lost count, and it still manages to suck me in.
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You'll get wrapped up in it with no problem and before you know it 6 hours done come and gone and has a great story line from the first (MELE1) to the last (MELE3) and you decisions does effect the whole game.
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exploration
5 positive · 0 negative · 2 mixed · 0 neutral
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Interesting and engaging characters and story, very good space exploration, fun combat, beautiful visuals.
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Always something new to discover, awesome.
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The characters are very compelling, I enjoyed the missions and combat, and especially had a lot of fun exploring and learning more about the setting.
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sound design
2 positive · 5 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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the sound mix in 1 was quite off, often I couldn't hear the dialogue over the background noise/music, but nothing major.
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Audio problems since day 1, never ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ fixed.
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(UPDATE) The launcher is causing constant problems with the audio almost unplayable, thanks EA for ruining a 10 out of 10 game.
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voice acting
7 positive · 0 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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Great music, great voice acting, great story, please enjoy these masterpieces for the art they are.
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I think a major reason why so many of the characters are memorable (besides just really good story and personality)-- is the incredible voice actors behind them.
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The music and voice acting is obviously top notch as always.
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ai behavior
2 positive · 4 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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ME1 ran perfectly fine, ME2 was much more prone to random crashing, AI being bricked and other things like not registering any achievements, here is to hoping ME3 is not as bad.
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Other than that, I think I may have encountered some minor graphical issue, and the AI(again, sometimes) will kinda freak out, trying to figure out who to shoot and where to take cover.
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Characters writing is on another level, main character is such a sigma male ;) ME 1 is the worst 1, aged pretty bad, AI is terrible, same as animations, bugs like getting stuck in some places but still decent game just old, i would still play it to know the plots.
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ui
4 positive · 2 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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It's the Trilogy with proper ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ HUD scaling, an AIO install, and fully integrated DLC.
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However, the UI changes and other small additions are welcome, not worth $60 but still.
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The combat feels better its much better looking than anything you can mod mass effect 1 with and its generally better with its UI.
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animation
1 positive · 4 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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It also seems like they managed to break Mass Effect 2 with regular animation bugs and the Collector Ship mission sending you to the Shadow Realm if you dare load anything other than the 'mission restart' checkpoint.
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To start, the animations leave a great deal to be desired.
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… as an example) and they will have their head looking kinda down and towards the direction where the NPC is sitting, but their eyes will look straight forward.
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Emergent themes unvalidated
topics reviewers bring up that are not on the validated list; raw counts only, no error bars
- romance 8
Review timeline
monthly peak 9,091 reviews · all languages
monthly share rated positive · 50% reference · months with <5 reviews faded
the timeline as a table
| month | reviews | up | down | positive | note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 2021 | 9,091 | 8,124 | 967 | 89% | |
| Jun 2021 | 3,925 | 3,696 | 229 | 94% | |
| Jul 2021 | 1,853 | 1,759 | 94 | 95% | |
| Aug 2021 | 1,402 | 1,329 | 73 | 95% | |
| Sep 2021 | 1,010 | 950 | 60 | 94% | |
| Oct 2021 | 700 | 652 | 48 | 93% | |
| Nov 2021 | 3,254 | 3,178 | 76 | 98% | |
| Dec 2021 | 1,123 | 1,044 | 79 | 93% | |
| Jan 2022 | 1,301 | 1,226 | 75 | 94% | |
| Feb 2022 | 815 | 756 | 59 | 93% | |
| Mar 2022 | 625 | 568 | 57 | 91% | |
| Apr 2022 | 549 | 528 | 21 | 96% | |
| May 2022 | 450 | 428 | 22 | 95% | |
| Jun 2022 | 785 | 732 | 53 | 93% | |
| Jul 2022 | 762 | 725 | 37 | 95% | |
| Aug 2022 | 484 | 454 | 30 | 94% | |
| Sep 2022 | 514 | 478 | 36 | 93% | |
| Oct 2022 | 384 | 355 | 29 | 92% | |
| Nov 2022 | 733 | 664 | 69 | 91% | |
| Dec 2022 | 633 | 572 | 61 | 90% | |
| Jan 2023 | 988 | 830 | 158 | 84% | |
| Feb 2023 | 814 | 605 | 209 | 74% | |
| Mar 2023 | 519 | 410 | 109 | 79% | |
| Apr 2023 | 718 | 562 | 156 | 78% | |
| May 2023 | 690 | 521 | 169 | 76% | |
| Jun 2023 | 701 | 580 | 121 | 83% | |
| Jul 2023 | 793 | 675 | 118 | 85% | |
| Aug 2023 | 603 | 527 | 76 | 87% | |
| Sep 2023 | 673 | 555 | 118 | 82% | |
| Oct 2023 | 561 | 495 | 66 | 88% | |
| Nov 2023 | 1,146 | 1,048 | 98 | 91% | |
| Dec 2023 | 836 | 734 | 102 | 88% | |
| Jan 2024 | 930 | 839 | 91 | 90% | |
| Feb 2024 | 707 | 628 | 79 | 89% | |
| Mar 2024 | 786 | 703 | 83 | 89% | |
| Apr 2024 | 617 | 541 | 76 | 88% | |
| May 2024 | 1,129 | 969 | 160 | 86% | |
| Jun 2024 | 838 | 719 | 119 | 86% | |
| Jul 2024 | 977 | 795 | 182 | 81% | |
| Aug 2024 | 817 | 729 | 88 | 89% | |
| Sep 2024 | 597 | 535 | 62 | 90% | |
| Oct 2024 | 520 | 480 | 40 | 92% | |
| Nov 2024 | 819 | 733 | 86 | 89% | |
| Dec 2024 | 1,309 | 1,141 | 168 | 87% | |
| Jan 2025 | 1,089 | 988 | 101 | 91% | |
| Feb 2025 | 839 | 755 | 84 | 90% | |
| Mar 2025 | 761 | 701 | 60 | 92% | |
| Apr 2025 | 698 | 649 | 49 | 93% | |
| May 2025 | 732 | 654 | 78 | 89% | |
| Jun 2025 | 643 | 577 | 66 | 90% | |
| Jul 2025 | 736 | 665 | 71 | 90% | |
| Aug 2025 | 793 | 725 | 68 | 91% | |
| Sep 2025 | 585 | 529 | 56 | 90% | |
| Oct 2025 | 813 | 727 | 86 | 89% | |
| Nov 2025 | 791 | 714 | 77 | 90% | |
| Dec 2025 | 763 | 694 | 69 | 91% | |
| Jan 2026 | 832 | 754 | 78 | 91% | |
| Feb 2026 | 657 | 597 | 60 | 91% | |
| Mar 2026 | 712 | 632 | 80 | 89% | |
| Apr 2026 | 648 | 596 | 52 | 92% | |
| May 2026 | 640 | 583 | 57 | 91% | |
| Jun 2026 | 630 | 550 | 80 | 87% | |
| Jul 2026 | 811 | 755 | 56 | 93% | |
| Aug 2026 | 706 | 645 | 61 | 91% | |
| Sep 2026 | 394 | 363 | 31 | 92% |
How this report was made
- Population
- all Steam reviews of the game (every language, purchase type, and verdict), walked newest-first per window; only English-language reviews are analyzed
- Sample
- 655 English reviews, time-proportional draw over 65 windows (newest-first within each), taken from an all-language walk and kept English-only — where English is a minority the sample runs smaller than the draw, and every margin of error is computed at 655
- Aspect yield
- 379 of 655 analyzed reviews carry at least one aspect (57.9%); every share on this page divides by all 655
- Interval regime
- calm: standard margins of error for a share of a sample (Wilson interval), no widening needed
- Fetch paths
- 65 time windows fetched directly (windowed)
- Language mix
- 1,000 fetched: english 662 · russian 83 · german 48 · 18 more
- Steam-marked windows
- none flagged by Steam (Valve's off-topic flagging began March 2019)
- Marked share
- 0.0% of sample inside marked windows, under the 2% floor
- Narrative
- passed the grounding gate first try
- Evidence floor
- aspects and emergent themes appear only with 5+ supporting reviews; smaller counts sit at the classifier's false-positive floor
- Instrument readings
- measured once on the study corpus for this model and prompt: frozen calibration, not properties of this run
- · aspect tagging vs. human labels
- 0.801 [0.752–0.844] (F1 against a human-labeled test set; 1.0 is best)
- · quotes filed under the wrong aspect
- 11.6% [6.6–19.6] of quotes, measured by hand on a sample; lower is better — measured on the prior model (2026-08-05); re-measurement pending
- · independent model vs. production labels
- 0.791 [0.772–0.810] (F1 of the production labeler against an independent judge model) — measured on the prior model (2026-07-25); re-measurement pending
- Versions
- deepseek-flash · prompt classify-v1 · ontology v2
- Run
- serve-20260924T232754Z-44bcf5f8 · code 4716568
full methodology in the milestone write-ups