Which ME do you think is the hardest 1st time around?

ME1 by far. ME2 has a pretty odd difficulty curve with having some pretty heavy stuff thrown at you very early, but ME1 can get really ridiculous if you're just learning the combat system. I always went for Therum first, and that krogan battlemaster and complement of geth kicked my ass. A lot. ME3 remains the easiest still. MEA would probably be more difficult with its hard-hitting enemies, but the extreme mobility you get with this combat system allows you to really work the field faster than most enemies can.

Of course, the difficulty never lasts that long. Once you went down the notches in the skill tree, the difficulty curve takes a steep nosedive and you become godly.

The older the games, the harder they are.

In other words, ME1.

These days games, especially console games, are geared toward being as user friendly as possible.

The toughest games I've ever played are now considered old.

I thought the Inquisition dragons were tough, until I discovered Thousand Cuts. That ruined all the fun.

Seems to be like that with every console game, though. The characters become godly superheroes. Dark souls doesn't count.  It's only hard because they strip you of everything you gained when you lose. This game would be considered hard if they did that. Any game would. Imagine dying to an Architect and then getting stripped of your skill points and whatever else.

Last time I lost a fight to a truly tough boss in a video game, and kept losing, and never ever won, was in Lotro.

And that wasn't even a solo fight. That game had some really tough fights. Your team had to know what they were doing, or fuggedaboutit.

ME3, for some reason I always struggle on Palaven's moon.

I found Insanity the hardest in ME2, global cool down and the companions tending to run out and die or get stuck in random places made it difficult. Anyone else find that some companions seem smarter than others? Playing Sentinel my build didn't really click for me until I'd filled out passives a third of the way through the game, too. I found the companions better in ME1 in all honesty, Liara is a God. And I was a biotic in 1 and singularity is basically cheating

Out of all the games Andromeda has been the most difficult for me. Took me a while to adjust to the combat and I'm still figuring it out on Insanity. Which is not being very kind to me.

And agreed, OP, I always die a few times at the hands of that damn Krogan!

Aside from the Krogan boss in ME1 (you're right, he was a damn right pain on higher difficulty) MEA has been giving me more trouble than ME2 or 3. The enemy flank and rush has been a pain on Insanity. I can't just hunker down behind cover like I used to.

Definitely ME2 for me. My first Insanity run had me raging like never before, especially fond are my memories during the Horizon mission
Andromeda so far has been okay, but then I'm playing NG+ and I don't really know how hard Insanity is with a new character. I don't know if I ever will. Insanity is too tedious for my tastes in MEA and the combos are weak.

ME1, that combat system was atrocious. Never forget my elite soldier who held his Sniper Rifle like a drunkard. Extremely immersion breaking.

ME:A insanity.
ME1 insanity
ME2 insanity.

ME3, lulz. That was a breeze.

I did my first PT of ME:A in hardcore, so I won't compare it to the others until I try insanity, but from the trilogy I think ME1 is the least easy one. It can be hard even at times early on before you get proper gear and level up your powers, and with no need of bullet spongey enemies like ME2.

Well given you couldn't play Insanity first time on ME1 until having completed the game on Veteran, it wasn't too hard first time.

However if starting a fresh level 1 Shepard on Insanity in ME1, that is by far the hardest initally (and becomes ny far the easiest once level 60 with maxed out powers and weapons).

Krogan Battlemaster on Therum... *shudder* Not to mention husk ships, biotic separatists and the Hot Labs on Noveria.

Second hardest is actually MEA. I really struggled in the first few fights on Habitat 7 on Insanity having tried to play aggressively. Very quickly learnt to play super carefully, especially with the lack of manual save on priority missions and how quickly Ryder gets mowed down out of cover. I'm still relatively low level but I imagine endgame could become quite easy with the amount of mobility and powers we have access to.

ME2 is third - reasonably challenging first time but corridor shooter and predictable enemies made it easy to handle situations. Horizon end fight, Derelict Reaper and those Scions on the Collector Ship floating platforms were the most difficult.

ME3 is a cakewalk, can't remember a single difficult fight.

I thought ME2 was the hardest on Insanity. ME1 was more of a chore because bullet sponge and Adrenaline on every single enemy.

ME3 was actually not bad. MEA is only hard at the beginning.