Bad game
9/21 '14
Playing Mass Effect #1. I am frustrated and annoyed because:
1) the autosave is inconsistent. For example, no autosave before the matriarch battle, one in a mid battle cut scene, none after the battle. I could cope if there were no autosave, but the inconsistency has cost me a couple hours now.
2) moving my avatar around the battlefield during cut scenes. In a game where squad tactics and cover are everything, this is a high crime.
3) even worse, during 2) blowing my cover or making me adopt stupid tactics that make no sense given prior events.
4) learn by dying (not doing). Games that can't be won except by discovering through death all the ways a situation will kill until you find the way it doesn't are poorly designed.
I'm still playing because the story is engaging, but I'm not best pleased.
These complaints are mostly (but not entirely) localized to the matriarch battle, which I'm given to understand is optional and intended as kind of a challenge -- it's basically the hardest battle in the game if you attempt it when it's offered. Even the final battle against the big bad was a breeze compared to this one -- I died probably fifty times fighting the matriarch, and zero times in the endgame.
If I had to fight the matriarch again with my current level of skill I would probably also get my ass handed to me but I don't know. They basically throw you unawares into a crossfire firefight with very little cover, which never happens anywhere else in the game.
So it's not like they didn't know how to balance the game, they just intentionally added a surprise fight that is a several sigma outlier on the game balance chart.
Which is kinda shitty on one hand, and kinda exciting on the other.