Mass Effect games rating thread

ME2>ME1>ME3 for me.

ME3 could've been the best if they had kept the dialogue system from 2 while still making Shepard more human and if they'd fixed the plot inconsistencies, particularly the ending. Without that it felt like the weakest to me.

2>3>1

ME1>ME3>ME2

1-2-3
Mass Effect: the story is catchy since the beginning. You will want to rekt Saren by start.
Mass Effect 2: companions make this game great plus the plot is different and refreshing. Also, the suicidal mission is dope as hell omg
Mass Effect 3: the gameplay quality makes it fun to play. I'll rather to ignore to talk about the ending...

3>1>2

Aside from the above, I like it best as a trilogy more than any single game.

I like 2 the best, but it is hard for me to pick between 1 and 3 for the next spot. If 3 didn't have multiplayer, it would not take long to decide. Anyway depends on how I weight it I guess.

1 > 2 > 3

2 and 3 surpass 1 for gameplay and replay value, but the story and atmosphere of 1 carry it for me.

ME1 2.5 out of 5. A pretty basic sci-fi action/RPG game in terms of gameplay, the story is pretty basic what saves it is the universe building and it's characters and the idea of player choice impacting the two more games. Overall it's a good game when played as part of the trilogy but as a stand alone title it's actually pretty boring.

ME2 3 out of 5 A massive improvement over ME1 in terms of graphics and gameplay. But the story is weak and nonsensical and could've been so much better. The character, universe building, and gameplay are where this one shines. The overall storyline for the game feels like a side story to the finale.

ME3 4 out of 5. The best game of the original trilogy despite what feels like a very long and boring prelude and weird ending that just barely works after a lot of editing and two major DLC releases. The original version's MP mode while ultimately not for me is better than it should be although the grinding and microtransactions are annoying.

MEA 5 out 5. This is what I wanted from ME1 huge and varied worlds to explore with fun companions with fun and the best gameplay in the series. While not as "ultra serious grimdark" like the trilogy I think that was a huge plus in my book, we already had the ultra grimdark space opera lets have some fun. The idea of building a brand new society is a very compelling to me.

I have to divide this into gameplay vs narrative.

Gameplay:
ME3 > ME2 > ME1
Where ME3 and ME2 are pretty close together but while ME2 had some of the more interesting and more challenging fights, ME3 had more flexibility for the player with greater variety in weapons, the weight and mod systems and also in dialogue with the reputation system. ME1 is pretty far behind obviously. It got much better with the LE but still, no contest there.

Narrative:
ME1 > ME3 > ME2
ME1 wins easily here. It had the to bear the added responsibility of massive world building and still it managed to tell an incredibly engaging story and set up the potential for amazing sequels. Yes, it had it's clunky moments here and there but as an introduction to this universe, it was dam near perfect. ME2 is last because in my opinion it squandered that potential. It threw out a whole bunch of carefully laid foundation in favor of this weird shoehorned in Cerberus plot. It retconned a lot of established lore from ME1 (mostly to its detriment, making the universe somewhat more generic and less interesting) and it didn't progress the main plot of the trilogy at all which caused major problems down the road. It did tell some really nice isolated character stories but overall - in my opinion - it was a disaster in terms of story telling. ME3 on the other hand get a lot of respect from me. It had to deal with all the inadequacies left behind by ME2 and still, they managed to tie up a lot of loose end, re-focus the plot and bring the trilogy to a point where it could come to a satisfying conclusion (even if they faltered on the last meters with the actual endings but up until then, it was great). All the while, it actually took a shitton of previous decisions into account and allowed new ones as well, which required a lot of lateral spread in the story telling. Honestly, kudos to the authors for pulling that off. It did have it's quirks like Kai Leng and the now even more ridiculously powerful and omnipresent Cerberus but over all, it did a good job with what it had to do IMO.

So there you have it. Overall, since I value narrative a little higher, I'd go with ME1 > ME3 > ME2.
But on a final note, I also will say that these three games just belong together IMO, so really there is very little need to rank them.