10 Best Games Like Mass Effect Legendary Edition | Screen Rant
BioWare has released several classic role-playing games that have found critical and commercial success, but few have endured in the public consciousness as strongly as the first three Mass Effect games. While each of these space-opera RPGs has its strengths and weaknesses, they all deliver memorable narrative moments and exciting third-person action gameplay.
In mid-2021, these three Mass Effect games (all of them, excluding the more recent and narratively detached Mass Effect: Andromeda) were re-released as the Mass Effect Legendary Edition with improved visuals across the board. While there are hundreds of hours of fun in this collection, some players may be looking for more. Whether it's class-based third-person action, serious sci-fi narratives, or a sprawling game world to explore, there are plenty of games to hold people over until Mass Effect 4.
It makes sense that fans of Mass Effect Legendary Edition should make sure to check out the other modern games by BioWare. While Dragon Age 2 didn't enjoy as much critical or commercial success as the other two games in the series, Origins and Inquisition offer a lot to love.
Dragon Age: Origins is a more tactical experience, but Inquisition more closely matches the fast-paced action-RPG feel of the Mass Effect games. Though it has reportedly undergone several changes during development, the hitherto unnamed Dragon Age 4 is expected to release sometime in 2023.
Though it offers some level of customization and narrative choice, The Witcher 3 is a much more linear narrative experience than the Mass Effect games. Despite this, the two franchises have plenty in common to keep fans wanting to play more.
The Witcher is one of the best game series' based on books, and its literary origins are reflected in its memorable characters and high-quality dialogue. Fans of the well-developed crewmates in Mass Effect will likely enjoy the vast array of primary and side characters inhabiting the Continent.
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic has several major game elements in common with the Mass Effect franchise. This game, also developed by BioWare, sets players loose in a galaxy full of friends, enemies, and grand mysteries.
Like all three Mass Effect games, fans and critics alike celebrated Knights of the Old Republic (and its sequel) for having numerous memorable characters and high-quality writing that added gravitas to the narrative. A remake of Knights of the Old Republic is currently in development and is rumored to be targeting a 2023 release.
The Mass Effect franchise may be best known for its well-written content, narratively relevant choices, and diverse combat, but many players also enjoy simply exploring the galaxy. Whether it be the controversial mining mini-game or exploring planet surfaces in the Mako, Mass Effect occasionally allows the player to discover the undiscovered.
No other game does as good of a job instilling a sense of discovery and openness as Elite Dangerous. There are many great free-roaming games available to play, but Elite Dangerous' 20,000 solar systems and 66,000 space stations mean that there's more content to see than anyone could experience in an entire lifetime.
On paper, Outriders seems to bear a striking narrative resemblance to the fourth Mass Effect game, Andromeda (not included in the Legendary Edition). In Outriders, humanity has sent a few waves of humans to explore and prepare a new planet, Enoch, for habitation.
However, this third-person action game actually has a lot more in common with the Mass Effect game's beloved multiplayer mode. In both, players can select from various weapons and power sets to take on waves of enemies in arena-style combat areas. Outriders may lean a bit more into the fantastical than Mass Effect, but both offer plenty of human and alien enemies to take down.
Cyberpunk 2077 was met with a fair share of controversy upon its initial release due to its significant performance issues and missing content, but the recent "Next-Gen Upgrade" and various performance fixes have turned CD Projekt Red's newest RPG into a much better experience.
Based on one of the best sci-fi RPGs on the market, Cyberpunk 2077 resent presents players with a very different kind of science fiction than Mass Effect. Despite this, both offer significant build customization and major choices that affect the plot.
In The Outer Worlds, players step into the shoes of a customizable character that travels from planet to planet, encountering strange settlements, people, and aliens. Much like they can in Mass Effect Legendary Edition, the player character can step into several different class roles that significantly change how combat and conversations play out.
The big narrative difference between the two games/series is that The Outer Worlds is much more comical. The entire experience is a half parody, half loving homage to 1950s-60s sci-fi pulp with a healthy dose of dystopian dark humor.
Gamers that haven't played an Assassin's Creed game in a while may be surprised with how far the series has pushed itself away from stealth and towards full-fledged action-RPG elements. While some players may miss the smaller-scale stealth-oriented gameplay, others consider Valhalla the best Assassin's Creed game yet.
Players in Assassin's Creed Valhalla may not travel from planet to planet across a galaxy as they do in Mass Effect, but the virtual representation of the 9th-century British Isles is large and diverse enough that exploration is a must.
In Deus Ex: Human Revolution, players control Adam Jensen, a megacorp employee with several artificial "augmentations" that boost his mental and physical capacities and grant him special abilities. Players can take these augmentations in several directions to leverage stealth, gunplay, melee fighting, and more.
Though the narrative specifics are wildly different, both Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Mass Effect Legendary Edition deal with questions of how humanity will react to emerging technology and whether we will be able to unite under the threats presented therein or be torn apart and defeated.
Though both Prey and the Mass Effect games occur in outer space, the former isn't concerned with galaxy-spanning stints of exploration. Instead, Prey is set on a space station between Earth and the Moon that has fallen victim to a strange catastrophe.
Throughout the game, players must survive encounters with strange aliens known as Typhon. While these creatures don't have much in common with the Reapers, both games deal with how humanity reacts to aliens that operate on a completely different level of thought and purpose.