The Mass Effect trilogy is pretty great, and so it stands to reason that the Mass Effect Legendary Edition would be great too. For the most part, it is, although not without caveats, including occasional reports of performance issues: We noted a couple of weeks ago that it ran "like an absolute dog" on some laptops because of the way it autodetects graphics hardware. Some Steam users also reported lower-than-expected framerates.
Hopefully the worst of those issues are now a thing of the past. A new patch released today promises "improved PC performance across various hardware configurations, including on Virmire," and also addresses a presumably-more-rare issue that prevented the game from starting for people who had "non-standard characters in the operating system’s username."
Along with boosted PC performance, a number of game-specific fixes are in as well. Mass Effect 1 players will be able to reach maximum level now, the amount of credits that can be brought from ME1 to Mass Effect 2 has been reduced "for more balance early-game progression," and English dialog for German and Italian localizations will now play properly during Mass Effect 3's Citadel DLC.
One other potentially noteworthy fix dials back the volume of the Mass Relay screens in Mass Effect 1, which some players apparently found to be too loud. I don't recall it ever being an issue, but it's possible that my parents were right when they said that all that loud music would destroy my hearing.
Here's a comparison of Mass Relay screens from all three games, just for fun:
That's from 2012, by the way, and not related to the patch.
The new Mass Effect Legendary Edition patch is live now, and the full patch notes are below.
General:
- English spoken dialogue can now be selected separately from subtitle language
- Resolved issues with unlocking some achievements/trophies, such as the Paramours or kill count trackers
- Corrected pre-rendered cutscenes that were darker than intended after the previous update
- Wireless headsets/devices no longer cause issues with the Xbox launcher
- Improved PC performance across various hardware configurations, including on Virmire
- Fixed an issue on PC where non-standard characters in the operating system’s username would prevent the game from launching
- Removed the dependency on the AVX instruction set in the launcher
- Other minor calibrations and fixes, including some instances of crashing
Mass Effect:
- Fixed an issue that prevented players from reaching the max level
- Fixed an issue where tier VII Spectre - Master Gear was inaccessible
- Various collision improvements
- Fixed an issue that would prevent the ability to interact with objects
- Lowered audio volume on Mass Relay load screens
- Improved eye animations for male characters in some scenes
Mass Effect 2:
- Toned down the intensity of fog on Illium
- Fixed an issue where a character’s eyes at the end of the Overlord DLC were unintentionally red
- Reduced the max credits that can be carried from Mass Effect to Mass Effect 2 down to 100k for more balanced early-game progression
- Credit carryover maximum now matches carryover from the original release
- Posthumous banking fees are a lot! It’s a great way to dodge taxes.
Mass Effect 3:
- Resolved an issue where English dialogue no longer played during the Citadel DLC for German and Italian localizations
- Fixed an issue where some key characters weren’t appearing as intended during the Citadel DLC
