I must say, after hearing about Lost Odyseey being a flop in Japan, I was pissed off at the RPG genre. Seeing the one game I thought would be was guranteed to bring RPGs back to the way they should be flopping, I was ready to call it quits. But then I bought Mass Effect. And I must say, aside from glitches and AI being a bit stupid, it's a great RPG. The combat is simple but figuring out hte best way to take otu an enemy instead of button mashing makes it so much better. In every action RPG, you either button mashed(KHII) or you just targeted and enemy, put down the controller, and returned in a half hour to see a crappy version of victory fanfare playing (FFXII). So yeah, the action RPG has sucked up until about ten minutes ago when I played Mass Effect. Cover system, completely choosing the story, randomly punching people out, unexpected deaths, a bit of a cliche'd story, randomly punching people out. ohh hellz yeah! Thank you bioware, thank you for giving me hope for the genre.
I recently started playing it as well. My favorite thing about it so far has to be Saren, god that guy is awesome. >_>