Mass Effect Legendary Edition Review (deorai037)
I've played through the Mass Effect trilogy three times, all on insanity. Two playthroughs as an Infiltrator (including my LE playthrough) and once as a vanguard.
MELE is a really good deal. One of the most distinctive aspects of the Mass Effect trilogy is that your decisions carry over between games, affecting entire storylines in substantial, sometimes joyous, sometimes tragic ways. Although the quality of the writing (most notably, the ending sequence of ME3, or the Jacob romance. If you know, you know) is not always perfect, I absolutely respect the sheer commitment to such an ambitious and epic scope. As a result of this design choice, the best experience for the Mass Effect trilogy is to play all three games, in order.
With this in mind, the single biggest barrier to playing the Mass Effect trilogy was playing through Mass Effect 1. Many of the design choices originally made in ME1 very clearly demonstrate the ways in which it is a shooter *designed by people who don't normally play shooters.* The result was that while ME1 was an excellent roleplaying experience, as a shooter it was clunky and frustrating to play.
MELE adds some gentle but important fixes to ME1 that make it much more playable, making the trilogy much easier to jump into. They removed the awkward, drunken shaking of the original sniper accuracy mechanic (you'd think a decorated soldier like Shepard knows how to HOLD A GUN) and replaced it with mild bullet spread (much more acceptable). They removed the bizarre XP penalty on killing units from inside the Mako (back in my day, we'd whittle things down to the last nub of HP, hop out of the mako, snipe it, then hop back in, to get full XP. Being able to stay in the Mako makes vehicle segments much more enjoyable). They changed the UI and brought it in line with ME2/ME3 UI (it used to be that your health bar was a tiny series of bars in the corner of your screen that you could barely see in-combat). And the addition of a horizontal booster and the reduction of the Mako's bounciness makes Mako exploration segments much nicer (that little boost to get over the top of a hill is so, so nice).
Aside from the improvements to ME1, having all of the DLCs included makes MELE a much richer experience than the original trilogy without DLCs was. In particular, the Mass Effect 2 DLCs Arrival and Lair of the Shadow Broker are, frankly, key parts of the trilogy, in that they serve as an important bridge between ME2 and ME3.
As a final parting note, Femshep x Liara forever!