Mass Effect 1/2

[Ashe]

I finally just finished the first one, and I'm blown away. The story telling (once you got towards the later half) picked up tremendously and it was superb. I loved the story involving the Reapers, and how realistic their take on space civilization was when taking into account the current state of astronomy hypotheses. Furthermore, the characters were, mostly, fantastic. Some were more boring than others (I wasn't a fan of Kaidan, however, I have to admit that I stopped running him in my group as soon as Ashley showed up. I also stopped using Garrus once Tali was available, but I cared enough about Garrus to check on him and talk to him a lot.) I let Kaidan be the one to die over Ash, since her smart ass bitch persona was awesome to me "Why is it that when someone says 'With all due respect', they really mean 'Kiss my ass?'" Tali was awesome and I hear she'll be a romance option in 2 - So I might have to cheat on Liara to go for her.

I was mostly using Ashley and Liara for the longest time, but then when I did the quests with Wrex, I felt that having that many biotic abilities while I supplied the tech and manually controlled their abilities just made combat much easier. So I shelved Ashley, and eventually shelved Tali as well, learning to fall in love with Wrex. He was easily the most interesting character to have in your group for decision scenes, though Liara and Ashley had some fantastic background talks as well. Wrex and his elevator comments were priceless, and I really grew to like the guy.

EDIT: For the curious, capped Paragon Ending with a saved Council, Anderson as the final choice, Liara as the romance, Kaidan as the dead crewmember, and Wrex stayed alive. Was also level capped since I felt the need to do every single sidequest and planet.