Need help deciding on mass effect.

I'm hugely biased (you could probably guess that, since I like Mass Effect enough to post semi-regularly on the Mass Effect forums) but my answer is "Yes. Yes, you should buy the first three. And then you should probably buy Andromeda later unless it looks like the game is actually on fire."

Yes. You'll enjoy it.


Tastes like chicken

I'm relatively new to ME myself, and would certainly recommend playing the Trilogy. I would however advice NOT buying the Trilogy boxset on disc, because if you plan on playing on PC, Mass Effect 3 can ONLY be installed via download from Origin....which means the disc's are usless.
I found that out first hand when I bought the boxset back in October.

I wouldn't play the games necessarily for story or lore since, in large part MEA is a bit of a reboot...not a full on one of course...but a little. But buy the games because they are great games to begin with, and you should get a feel of what your typical BioWare title is like. Since I do not think the tones will be too different. If you like the trilogy, you'll likely enjoy Andromeda.

I`m doing a full ME PT at the moment.Shooters are not really my thing(I`m a DA fan ),but I`ll buy MEA and I think playing through all three games is a nice way to pass my time until MEA arrives

I tried various 'solutions' but non would work, because Origin was asking for an Activation code which I already used to activate the games when I installed ME:1 and 2.

This is quite a well known issue with the box set, that EA never bothered to fix.

Like everyone says - play the trilogy.

BUT....

If you want to use a gamepad, don't buy it on pc. Buy it on console. For whatever reason, BW didn't include gamepad support for the trilogy on pc. DAI was the first pc game to include it.

There might be a mod that lets you use the gamepad but it's much simpler to buy it on console if you'd prefer not to go K+M. Bonus: no Origin.

The ME Trilogy is a great series of games.  If you're enjoying ME1, then by all means buy the other two and continue your playthrough.  Note that the combat gameplay style does change rather significantly between ME1 and ME2.

As for Xbox 360 platform (since no one has really posted about this yet) - You can sometimes purchase the remaining two games for the Xbox used and very inexpensively, but the individual discs do seem to be getting harder to find here.  Also, some of the prices I've seen for the Collectors Editions have been pretty steep.    There is also a complete boxed set for the Xbox 360 of the entire Trilogy that generally sells for around $27 CAN here new.  Some of the DLC for ME2 does not sell directly from the Xbox Marketplace, but requires an activation code for what is known as the Cerberus Network, so if you're buying used discs, make sure you get a set that has those codes with them if you think you'll be interested in any of the DLC.  As of the last time I checked, ME2 and ME3 were not available for download from the Xbox store either.

ME:A will be apart of the ME Trilogy.  The saves from the Trilogy are not importing into ME:A and that saga (as Bioware is calling it) is starting in a completely different galaxy than the Trilogy.  They are promising a few mentions of Trilogy characters as a connection, but not much more than that, so playing the Trilogy definitely should not be critical to playing ME:A.

I don't see why you couldn't play the trilogy after Andromeda if you wanted to tbh, but I would highly recommend going with PC as you can mod. MEUITM is essential for me with ME1 as it makes the game look incredible with much higher definition. For ME2 I use a mod to skip the hacking games, and in ME3 I've modded the ending (after playing it vanilla the first time).

You don't have to. If you don't have other games to play to keep you busy until MEA is released, I would say get the trilogy. The best thing about the trilogy is it has replay value. If you do decide to play the trilogy before MEA is released, you can post your playthrough in this thread.

All four.

if you want to play the Trilogy as it should be (personal opinion), you need to install MExplorer tool and use it to install ALOT in the 3 games.