Should I buy this before the Legendary edition "replaces" it?

[Tmansdc]

Because usually when a new/remaster comes out the old version gets delisted. I was just wondering if there was anything the pc versions of the first three have that might not work in the remaster (mods mainly) and if it's worth it for that.


Would the refund still work if I were to get these, play less than two hours and if it is delisted tomorrow could I still get a refund if I read up on the legendary edition and it turns out to be better than I'm thinking it's going to be?


Thank you for all your help.

[Jonathan Hunt]

In the remaster ME1 there will be no DLC Pinnacle Station.
And there will be no multiplayer in the ME3 remaster.

Therefore, it is better to buy original games now.

[Mysti_Fogg]

Depends on how much you want to play the original versions.

As jon above mentions, there won't be multiplayer in ME3. As someone who has never played the multiplayer because I never wanted multiplayer grafted onto my single player experience, and resented having it as a required component for the best endings before they fixed it, I wouldn't consider this a loss. However, maybe you like multiplayer games.

Also, Pinnacle Station DLC would be missing. This DLC was available for free through Bioware with the purchase of ME1, It is also the only "story" DLC I passed on because it's not actually that much story. It involves a lot of "simulation" runs where you fight off wave after wave of enemies. I didn't personally find this appealing, but maybe it's your thing to try to achieve high score in such a situation.

I don't know you, so I can only tell you what you'd be missing and why I passed on it.

Personally, if I didn't already own the entire trilogy, I'd just go for legendary edition because ME1 involves a lot of roaming around being tank girl. There's only so much of that I want to do since I'm into the series for the story and choices, followed by squad tactics and shooting. Having to be in the tank for 75% of that game sucked and I only replay it because the other two games in the series are so good.

I am going to buy legendary edition, and suffer through the whole tank thing again because I like everything else. But I can't recommend anyone start with original version ME and play through the whole series and then move to legendary edition when they don't have to. Also I'm told the squad control has been tweaked, and the lack of control is the cause of many many deaths (Kaidan is made of tissue paper so far as I can tell). If that's better, why do things the hard way?

Also, why do you want to spend all that money on DLC which will be included in legendary edition? Or miss out on some excellent DLC?

But if you want the original experience, go ahead and I wish you joy in it.

[Tmansdc]

Any good mods? And yeah I might just buy the original ME1 but skip 2 and 3 and wait for the legendary versions of those since 1 apparently has the most changes.

[kripcision]

Originally posted by Tmansdc:

Any good mods? And yeah I might just buy the original ME1 but skip 2 and 3 and wait for the legendary versions of those since 1 apparently has the most changes.

i just started playing this game again, installed some texture mods and some gameplay tweaks and its alot better than usual. i personally like how me1 plays but some claim they cant stand it and prefer me2-3's style of combat.

have you played me1 before? if i didnt already own 1 2, and 4 i would probably get the legendary edition but i cant justify the $79 CAD price tag as it stands.

[IrationalFear]

ME1's mods are mostly quality of life or graphics, and re-enabling access to the Geth plasma shotgun. Unless you wanted the same-gender romance mod for ME1 (Ash & Kaiden at start), Legendary Edition just does ME1 better across the board.

ME2 got minimal polish and a performance and load time boost (personally I'm getting better results with ALOT+ALOV+MEUITM graphic mods than ME2 Legendary, unlike ME1 where legendary looks much better than mods, but this could easily change on a better rig than mine), but ME2 has a decent mod selection.

Early Recruitment / Project Variety and formerly ME2Recalibrated, though the author has pulled the mod from the public this week
-Various fixes to vanilla bugs (including Conrad Verner)
-Allows early access to hubs and recruitment, instead of having 3/4 being gated behind Horizon due to console limitations. This allows very different combinations for the suicide mission if you don't feel obligated to do a completionist run, and opens up a larger casualty roster. For example, in vanilla, The Ship Armor Upgrade is simply a pass/fail check for Jack's survival, while the other two ship upgrades have a list of vulnerable squadmates and another factor. This is because Jack is a mandatory recruit in vanilla, without any justified reason in the story. These mods change that and provide both more player freedom in recruitment and in handling the suicide mission.

Casual Hubs
-Wear casual clothes on hubs
-Applies to squadmates as well
-Resembles ME3's casual citadel rather than ME1's armor+weapons everywhere. ME1 justified this with impromptu combat on hubs, but there's only cutscenes instead of combat in ME2 and ME3, so no need.

Same-Gender Romance (There is a version for ME3 to continue)
-Allows importing Ash or Kaiden, and allows selecting them in the Genesis comic
-Enables Tali and Thane
-Separate mods for Jack or Miranda
-Mind compatibility issues with ME2Recalibrated, use the other two listed in that line instead if this is of interest

Modern Weapons Pack
-Imports some of the weapons from ME3 into ME2.
-Adds some variants of vanilla ME2 weapons (i.e. shotgun pistol) to balance out the poor weapon options for Adept/Engineer/Sentinel.
-Greater variety allows better risk/reward assessment, with even stronger weapons putting a strain on your ammo pool.

Expanded Shepard Armory
-Lots of DLC Armor variants
-Helmetless versions of DLC armors

Advanced Enemy Factions
-Reworks spawns and enemy behavior to created a greater challenge
-Makes enemy protections like shields/armor more common but less of an obstacle to most power use that would make vanilla Insanity a chore
-Increases enemy weapon access and fixes shield recharging
-Makes each merc faction more distinct from each other, plus Geth and Collector updates

Combobulations
-Imports ME3's diverse combo system into ME2 (where only Warp could combo)

Remove Shared Cooldown
-Reverts independent power cooldown to ME1 style, for you and squadmates
-Helps to balance out the greater challenge in Advanced Enemy Factions
-Helps make those 12+ second cooldown power more viable, especially the longer bonus powers

Risky Suicide Mission
-Pairs well with Recalibrated / Early Recruit
-Replaces the old suicide mission loyalty check mechanic with a long-term "readiness score for each squadmate.
-All selectable squadmates (i.e. Jacob in vents OK, but Mordin can't try biotics) now have both a chance to succeed and a chance to fail an assigned task.
-Readiness rating is improved by:
--Completing loyalty mission
--Being present on a mission versus Collectors
--Matching your rough Paragon/Renegade alignment (note that Neutral is a wide margin)
--Being a specialist for the task (note that Zaeed was given a specialty)
--Surviving an assigned task, even if a failure
-It brings back the high stakes for the suicide mission that's just missing for long-time players, it provides some strategy for your decisions throughout your playthrough instead of just grinding everything before Reaper IFF, and it allows underdog characters to succeed in cinematics.
-Provides an in-game revive option after the suicide mission (no save editor required) in case you think the results were unfair or just not to your liking.

[IrationalFear]

As for ME3, there are two must-try mod categories, besides a decent-length list of others.

(1) EGM (Expanded Galaxy Mod). The closest thing to an overhaul that the ME trilogy is likely to ever see. There are too many features for me to list out, you need to see for yourself.
-Makes ME3 a war instead of a railroad, integrates both the (formerly) needless side planet exploration completionist stuff from ME1 & ME2 and actually rewards you for it with content and war assets, and adds new random encounters with snap decisions and over-time updates
-Evacuation of Thessia and integration of your ME2 ship upgrades besides a mere stat block for the Normandy's war asset value
-BRINGS BACK ME2 SQUADMATES for regular use after encountering them.
-Has several expansion mods, including a full-length new mission, expanded spectre terminal, and more
-Opens the entire galaxy map from the start, including ME1, ME2, and new systems not yet seen in-game but depicted in codex lore and books. Changes over time with war progress.
-New weapons, including some heavy weapons, and early access to the very expensive vanilla weapons
-Lots of new armors and mix-match fixed sets
-Reworked a few contingency plots to now allow a few more options
---(i.e. a way to get the Salarian fleet without sabotaging the Genophage cure involving a certain trio of idiots and a decent captain biting the dust in ME1)
---Or fixing old plot & war asset inconsistencies. Rannoch's vanilla war asset distribution doesn't align with the narrative being told in decisions or cutscenes, and it betrays the encouraged thought process behind one of the related decisions in ME2. Vanilla tries to set up a risk/reward scenario regarding rewriting/destroying the geth heretics. But ME3 botched the assets, so now destroying the heretics is the mechanically optimal choice; destroy makes peace easier to achieve, and destroy gives Quarians a higher max asset total than rewrite gives a max Geth total if you can't get peace. EGM restore this to what it should have been and what ME2 implied: Destroy is the safe bet for securing peace and a higher floor and good average for assets, rewriting has a higher asset maximum but requires jumping through hoops to get the peaceful max while risking failure .

(2) The Ending Rework Mods.
-Generally only one install for a run, with the exception of CEM
-Citadel Epilogue Mods (CEM), makes Citadel DLC activate after firing the Crucible, used as a celebration ending
-Indoctrination Theory Mod, if you were a fan of that
-Less Is More Ending (LIME), for an auto-refuse ending skipping the starchild, or for a non-choice victory skipping the starchild
-Mass Effect Happy Ending Mod (MEHEM), a clean version of Destroy without the collateral, everybody still alive makes it including Shepard, a proper goodbye scene, and some community-made cinematics to try to make it work
-JohnP's Alternate MEHEM (JAM), an abridged version of MEHEM that preserves victory & survival status and final scene for Shepard but cuts the spliced-in movies. My personal preference.

Seriously, DO NOT put yourself through ME3's vanilla ending again.

[Tmansdc]

Oh yeah I got the original versions on my ps3 but I didn't have a great computer at the time i got a ryzen 3600x, 2070 super, 32gb ddr4 3200mhz ram,

[Jhea]

Originally posted by jonathanhunt:

In the remaster ME1 there will be no DLC Pinnacle Station.
And there will be no multiplayer in the ME3 remaster.

Therefore, it is better to buy original games now.

as someone who played both of these in 2009 and 2012... when it came out

The multiplayer in ME3 is a bad joke - and only needs to be done in order to complete the game.

And the DLC pinnacle station is not worth anyones time...
That is just a combat simulator with no story to it.

[ModerNertum]

Personally I would buy the vanilla ones (with dropped prices, preferebly on discount). They have much more features (you can get all DLCs), system requirements are lower and you can use mods there to fix issues/improve gameplay and/or immersion. MELE does have improvements (mainly ME1 is improved here) but for me hardly justify the current price (so if you want it anyway wait for price to drop). Plus you have no multiplayer in MELE anyway and you cant experience what made people like that in the first place (and oh my, do we love play as Legion Geth in ME3 multiplayer).
Even a potato PC can run the trilogy at ultra high settings (meaning a non gaming PC). But as some people mentioned here try not to play the ME3 ending too many times (the vanilla or legendary edition ending because its one of the most depressing things in life). Ending destroys most of the lore and you dont have a clear happy ending (at most you can "survive", gasping for air and thats it).

[Meowser has not]

Originally posted by Tmansdc:

Because usually when a new/remaster comes out the old version gets delisted. I was just wondering if there was anything the pc versions of the first three have that might not work in the remaster (mods mainly) and if it's worth it for that.


Would the refund still work if I were to get these, play less than two hours and if it is delisted tomorrow could I still get a refund if I read up on the legendary edition and it turns out to be better than I'm thinking it's going to be?


Thank you for all your help.

Yes