Great game. Really, honestly, great game. An inch from "bestest game ever". So close to flawlessness...
Yet so far. The positive, I have no doubt, you have already read. Greatest RPG ever, huge expansive world. Slightly linear plotline, but well architected and with lots of scope to personalise the experience, and I'm sure you've heard the comment that "no two players will experience the same game". For all the warm fluffiness, go read Kotaku, Gamespot, IGN, or any other of the 8 million "me too" reviews that all espouse on how wonderful the game is. Heaven knows I read them before I bought the game.
And it's allmostly true. And you'll walk away from it better for having played it, because it really is a beautifully choreographed experience.
Naturally, however, there's a "but".
I played it with a friend; and throughout the game, we made jokes about the huge time delays on texture pops, and reminded each other to save, save, save the game. Between that and the sheer repetitiveness of the sidequests (which almost made them worth not bothering with, were it not for a handful of them that have really great storylines embedded in them) there are defintely flaws in the gem.
There are, however, some problems for the completists amongst us. Go off the main story path and you'll find that the rest of the background noise has, for the most part, been phoned in. Side-quest after identical side-quest; each uses what appears to be one of three maps, each with a different set of crates, and some minimal scripting...
That, plus the huge number of glitches in the actual renderer, make it feel like it was released six months to a year too early - the renderer just isn't done yet.
Sometimes you'll spend half your life moving between narrowly-spaced elevators; other times, they're miles apart - almost as if partway through development they feared for their ability to do the complex loads and gave themselves lots of 'room' by inserting more elevators to disguise the problems with the engine.
Moreover, the much-vaunted 'choice' that you have is actually more limited than you might think. On my second playthrough - first with a rude, xenophobic bad-boy and now with an angelic, good-guy wonder boy, I'm enjoying the slight differences in storyline; but for the most part, they're more similar than they are different. Sure, you get to choose to have sex with a different character than the one you would if you were a xenophobe, and yes there is some variation in side-story; but in many cases, choosing the good dialog over the bad dialog gets you an identical path through the story, with only your own words being different.
Too often that's the case. We're not talking about a choose-your-own-adventure style of RPG here - we're talking about choose-your-own-dialog-within-that-plot more often than not. I'm not saying it's bad; it's still a really great experience. But don't actually plan on sitting down and having a completely different game based on whether or not you told Grandma that you were too busy having sex with the woodsman to care if the wolf ate her.
Also: Worst Autosaves Ever. Save early, save often, and don't expect the autosaves to be well placed. This I just don't get. There's no excuse for not having at least half decent autosaves in place. You simply *cannot* assume that the autosaves will be well placed, or thoughtfully, for that matter. The last vehicle run through the mass relay is a great example - just after that cutscene, when you've got 30 seconds to do the run, they should have inserted an autosave. Fail to save it yourself, and you'll be back a full hour behind where you last were in the game, and have to do the run up to that point again.
There's no excuse for thoughtlessness when it comes to autosaves in an RPG; there is a clear, planned progression of difficulty, and it again just smacks of rush and oversight. The first time you lose an hour's gameplay, you'll curse Bioware's name.
,p>Those are the worst parts. The game, however, is brilliant. Really, honestly, genuinely brilliant. I think the quality problems are scary - they ought not to be happening in this way. This is different, in many ways, from previous BioWare releases and a diverging of past quality that is unexpected, and which bodes badly for the future.Props to Bioware for a great game, but I fear for Bioware/EA's future as anything but a grist mill unless they can start being more careful about ensuring a good quality *experience*.
