I bought them for the atmosphere, the characters, the action, the whole galaxy trip. I enjoyed the gameplay, i got sucked by it's world, i adored or hated many of it's characters, i daydreamed while i was aboard the Citadel. And what a wonderful ride it was until Mass Effect 3 came with Origin client as a mandatory DRM measure.. i've never played the third game.. don't know how the story progressed and ended, after i had spend 60+ hours in the first two games.. thanks EA for that! :\

I don't understand the hatred for Origin. it is very functional program, much better than Galaxy is right now and more friendly than steam is, yet lacks all the "bonuses" of steam.

I have ME1 and ME2 on steam so I wanted ME3 there as well for complete collection. Fortunately you can get steam copies on origin for free so I have full collection in one place now.

the last time i bought a game because of the graphics was... never. But this is coming from somebody who plays text based games.
I bought mass effect because it was a space-rpg, which is an awesome sub genre that always needs more games.

I don't remember much of ME1 but between the dumb AI (yay for useless/suicidal squadmates), uninspired level design, and absurdly long abilities cooldowns, for me combat was definitely one of its weakest points. An annoiance between a cutscene and another. ME2 was a bit better (even if they discarded the ammo regen mechanic which was kind of interesting), but still not quite enjoyable.

It wasn't until ME3 that I found combat fun. It has better pace, more mobility, more things to do, and it's even better in multiplayer where there are a lot more weapons and classes available. If there's ever going to be a ME HD remake I seriously hope they'll use ME3 combat as baseline.

Graphics had zip to do with it. I grew up with games like Starflight, Star Control, Hard Nova, Sentinel Worlds 1 & 2, etc.
Prior to Mass Effect getting announced, I sort of thought that hard sci-fi RPGs/adventures were a dead genre, and all the PR pointed at the series being a sort of paean to a bygone era of PC games that STILL don't get much love from ANY devs, AAA or otherwise, aside from generic or space games in general.

It touted the fact it was going to be a trilogy with carryover info/decisions/characters from each installment, with deep dialogues and story, a diverse amount of worlds and characters and alien species. I sort of liked Drew Karpyshyn's writing anyway, so it was a plus that he worked on the first one, then part of the second before Mac "The Hack" Hudson took over.

First game didn't strike EVERY note in the song for me, but it offered very promising things...which would mostly be taken away by the second game. *sigh*

But yeah, the graphics were nice, but it had literally nothing to do with my decision to purchase.
I don't. They promised us an RPG, not an FPS. An FPS is what we ended up with, not an RPG. Not the same thing, is it?

Uhm... no. I bought it because I love sci-fi, space opera and RPGs. And because it was as close to KOTOR 3 as we were going to get.

I don't hate it, i just don't want it. I have already one client since '13 (Steam) for 8 games that i really wanted to play but i can't see myself buying anything else on Steam (because i really don't want to further support it), save installing & using another client...

Not really.

I bought Mass Effect because of the positive reaction from other gamers and because it's a science fiction RPG. I had no idea what the graphics are like before playing it.

I bought it because it was bioware, an RPG and you could fly around and space blowing people up.

That was way back when I cared about what other people thought of me. I still think its a great game, but i never really started the 3rd one. Just to spite people, maybe I should play the 3rd one, and actually LIKE the end game.

I didn't buy/get/play any of the ME games, I think it was DRM issues

that sounds like "I'll like it even if it kills me!" IMHO

Never played or bought any of the ME series, soon after I discovered GOG I stopped buying boxed games and from Steam. Should the full series make it to GOG I'll consider it.

Nope, I bought Mass Effect because it was Bioware's new KotOR-like game with an original IP.

ME series is no more actiony than Witcher. Is it not RPG either but hack and slash game?

I disagree that implementing heavy action combat mechanics stops the game from being rpg. maybe we should call them action-rpgs like we call turn-based rpgs?

still they are roleplaying games with questing, character progression, side missions (which i admit ME3 lacked in sufficient quantity) loot and story progression which is impacted by players decisions.