I should have made this post a couple of weeks ago when I completed my first run through of the game, but I have been lazy again.

Summary: While the game struggles in some areas, it was still an engaging experience all the way through.

Details:
I really enjoy the game, but the UI for managing my inventory requires way to much work. The current system forces me to spend WAY too much time clicking through the UI.

Example, and sure it was my fault for not doing it earlier, but I am a pack rat and in the middle of raiding a pirate base I hit the 150 limit. So I returned to the ship and started the process of equipping all the characters before I sell my junk. What happened next was almost comedic as I opened and closed lockers.

I mean sure the lockers concept is cool. I can when on the ship manage everyone’s inventory in one place, but they give me no way to see the character’s stats when I am there. And since I could not recall which characters had unlocked which armors I needed to take the slow lift back up, run in and out of the ship taking notes on all the characters and finally take the lift back down to the locker.

At one point my wife sat down and watched awhile. She then look at me, the screen, me, the screen then and finally asked why it was taking so long for me to stuff all my stuff in other people’s lockers.

So now I had everyone set up with all my best armor and guns and ready to sell all the extras. Ahh nice, a merchant right next to the lockers. Smart .

Walk over and talk to merchant, select Sell. Bam, a single list of all my non-equipped stuff pops up. What!? That’s right, one giant list of everything. They just ditched the categories from the inventory screen and dump everything in a giant list. Not Smart.

So now I need to scroll down and sell each armor and weapon I have and the make sure not to accidentally sell the upgrades I wanted to keep. Which is another reason why I agree that the buyback page is Smart.

If they do make more ME games, I sure hope the improve this system.

Next up the side quest planets. I actually enjoy the little collection side quests, and did not mind the repeated use of the same several “structure” layouts. But the planets themselves needed a lot more variety. Jungles, rivers, forests, urban come on BioWare are all unexplored planets in your universe going to be barren? Note, I actually enjoyed the driving and combat with the mako, well except against the stupid sand worms, and wanted to see it used in other types of encounters.

With the “bad” out of the way, I though the rest of the game was very enjoyable. I was actually interested in the story, and actually wanted there to be more crew interaction/ side quests/ stories. The combat was fun, and the visuals / audio really worked to pull me into the setting. In a few weeks I will probably re-play the game with my higher level group and see how well it scales.