[Luvian]

It's really great, I'm on my second play through already.

I liked the storytelling, the ingame cinematics were greats, I liked the dialogs and the choices they gave me, I liked how great the characters looked, the game was made so well at time it felt like I was in an interactive movie. Once I got strong enough I also had lots of fun with the combats.

But one of the weakness of the game is the uncharted planets part. Not because it wasn't fun, but because it wasn't more like the main storyline missions. It's like you're playing two games. This really really great and epic 10-15 hours long game, then the rest, that I'm not too sure how to qualify. Basically all you do when you want to get off the main storyline is visit these random systems in your buggy, survey a mineral source, salvage a crashed probe, then visit a really small station or building for a side quest. No real dialogs, no cinematic storytelling, no intense action. I understand that uncharted planets should be pretty desert, I have nothing against that gameplay and I wouldn't want to see it go. It's just that the main game is so much better and there were not enough optional content that were like it.

Honestly I'm not too surprised by that, I played Kotor and that was pretty short too. Visit an handful of planets and you're done. You could probably do the whole thing in a couple of hours if you wanted. It's exactly the same way with Mass Effect.

So really I'd say the game was too short. It's really more a 15 hours long game with an extra 20-25 hours of random exploration. It's one of my favorite games. I really recommend it and plan to replay it much, but it was way too short.

Edit: While it's easy to compare to Kotor since both games follow the formula of having you visit different planets to learn what's going on and stop the evil guys, I'd say the two games are different enough when it come to the plot and gameplay. Personally I liked Mass Effect better than Kotor. As for the fighting, it does take a while getting used to, but it's not really like a real shooter. If you're not too good at shooters you can pause the game to targets enemies and start skills. You can't actually shoot in that mode, but you can put your target over the enemy, unpause and start shooting so you don't have to keep up with the enemies in real time.