“Every idea must touch another mind to live.”

I’m sure I would have adored Mass Effect if I’d been old enough to buy my own M-rated games when it was released; that I’d feel the warm glow of nostalgia when its soundtrack kicks in, consider its richly-drawn characters old friends, and hold its epic science fiction storyline as a formative experience. But I didn’t get my hands on it until I recently snagged a copy for 99¢ on Ebay. By now the game is older than I was when it came out and its lack of refinement hampered my enjoyment of it.

I try to approach older games with an open mind, to understand their context and consider that their innovations may not feel momentous to me because I’ve played newer games that they’ve influenced. But several dozens of hours have not swayed me from my first impression of Mass Effect, which is that it’s a wonderfully composed role-playing game shakily hybridized with a mediocre action game—an undercooked would-be epic that shines on the page but feels unpolished on the screen.

Upon release, BioWare’s action-RPG was praised by many for its space opera trappings, rich and layered story, dense politics, complex moral decisions, large cast of uniquely-voiced characters, and retro soundtrack. These elements still hold up quite well and are enough to recommend the game by today, especially since there’s a few more games in the series that continue the excellent storyline.

The story is undoubtedly the game’s high point and could have easily been developed into a television series akin to Babylon 5 or The Expanse. It’s expansive and engaging and measured in its use of clichés. The overarching plot concerns a rogue Spectre agent named Saren, a legion of droids called the Geth, and the imminent return of an ancient race of sentient machines called the Reapers that might have previously wiped the galaxy clean of all organic lifeforms some fifty thousand years ago. From this perspective, Mass Effect is predictable and derivative science fiction, though executed with great skill. But once the story settles into its groove and the player begins making consequential decisions against a backdrop of intergalactic politics, it thematically blooms by considering the unique value that humanity might bring to a universe full of sentient creatures. This is achieved through strong NPCs, a diverse and extremely large cast of characters, and a complex lead in player-character Commander Shepard.

The crux is that the game’s rich texture is not drawn from the broad strokes of the main storyline but from the seemingly endless conversations that one clicks through to spur it along. One of the game’s selling points was its dialogue system which offers numerous choices at each juncture in the conversation. Aggressive, passive, indifferent, intimidating, charming—it’s up to the player, and any given choice may have consequences later in the game. Although these notions of freedom and responsibility are oftentimes illusory, as long as the spell holds the abundance of dialogue options and the thoughtful quality of the writing generates a genuine sense of participation that prolonged cutscenes could not achieve, and the emotional responses evoked in the player are a testament to that fact. In no uncertain terms, the player often feels like they have been chosen by fate to represent humanity to the galaxy à la Kip and Peewee in Heinlein’s Have Space Suit—Will Travel.

For better or worse, as with many great RPGS, most of these conversations can be sped through without thought, or in many cases skipped entirely. Your crucial role in the plot is mostly predetermined and your choices have limited bearing on how it unfolds. You’re not going to make a game-ending dialogue choice (though you may lose a teammate; R.I.P. Wrex), so from a certain perspective you don’t need to pay attention. But if the desire is to get back to the “actual game,” players will undoubtedly find the game lacking as a whole. It would be a mistake to play this way, of course, but some players primarily draw enjoyment from beating games, not luxuriating in their story and atmosphere or whatever you want to call it when one properly enjoys Mass Effect.

The basic misunderstanding here is that Mass Effect must be considered primarily as a role-playing game, and secondarily as a squad-based tactical shooting game. You see, RPG players are used to leveling up their character and having combat damage decided by a computer crunching the numbers that they’ve tinkered with for hours in turn-based combat. BioWare is, after all, the studio that made seminal RPGs like Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. With Mass Effect, they attempt to meld the RPG approach with real-time over-the-shoulder combat, but still keep it mostly stats-based. This is fine for a role-playing game because the true pleasures of such are found elsewhere, as has been noted. The problem is that it looks like Gears of War and you feel like it should play that way too. What emerges is a serious case of cognitive dissonance where the player expects headshots and other impressive fast-twitch maneuvers to be rewarded, only to discover through trial and error that the combat system boils down to raw stats dressed up in a frustrating third-person combat system that takes some getting used to and never feels fluid. There’s a certain elegance to it, I suppose, especially if you assemble a squad that mixes firepower with biotic abilities (this universe’s version of The Force), but it doesn’t feel as smooth, nor as rewarding, as games that make over-the-shoulder combat their selling point.

For large swaths of the game, Mass Effect makes the player feel like a genuine protagonist operating in a vast web of complex, intergalactic politics. It delivers an immersive, occasionally cinematic experience that exudes sci-fi grandeur and dishes out lavish visual spectacle. As its initial goose chase gives way to a larger dread-inducing conflict, uncovering a harrowing civilizational cycle driven by ancient alien technologies that no one comprehends, it induces a feeling of awe (it helps when you have exquisite music to accompany those incredible revelations). However, there are too many irritating flaws that’ll wear on the player across however many hours it takes to get through the story (which is actually fairly short as far as RPGs go). Most of those unmapped planets feel disappointingly empty, too many long-winded conversations start to grate, the vehicle sections are atrocious, and the side quests are frequently bare-bones. Regrettably, these shortcomings tend to overshadow the game’s considerable merit and thus Mass Effect feels like a flawed epic instead of a total triumph. Many cite Mass Effect 2 as one of the pinnacles of its era, and some minor choices made here can be carried over into the sequel, so it still makes sense to turn the difficulty down and blast your way through this game to get the full origin story.