Players have been returning the Normandy in droves to enjoy Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, which remastered the first three games in stunning 4k with new textures and tweaks to deliver the definitive experience of the original trilogy. Nearly two weeks later, however, many fans are finishing the adventure for a second time, and some are hungry for more.
Fans of Mass Effect: Legendary Edition are in luck, however. There are plenty of space-set indie games with similar themes and RPG elements for Mass Effect fans to experience that find experimental ways to tell their own stories. Here are five of the indie games fans can check out after finishing Mass Effect Legendary Edition.
FTL: Faster Than Light
Most sci-fi and indie fans will have heard of FTL: Faster Than Light, the roguelike that took indie gaming by storm when it released back n 2012. While the original Mass Effect trilogy has an immense story spanning three games, FTL manages to tell what feels like a full story every time the player boots it up. Viewing their ship from above, the player must complete their goals, gather scrap, and avoid the rebel armadas hunting them down.
Starpoint Gemini 2
Like FTL
,
Starpoint Gemini 2
is a space combat/trading sim and RPG. Developed by Little Green Men Games, the campaign throws the player into the role of Adrian Faulkner, the young son of a war hero who must uncover the mystery behind his father's death. The game's true star, however, is it's free-roam mode, which allows players to choose their own path and be anything from an assassin to a pirate-hunter as they fly through a universe filled with enemies, wormholes, and loot.
Mass Effect
never had any real spaceflight gameplay, with
the Normandy
acting as a home base rather than a vehicle from the player's perspective.
Startpoint Gemini 2
is the opposite, carving out its stakes and story around the foundations of a 3D space simulator. While
Starpoint Gemini 3
 has been met with more criticism, the second game is great for
Mass Effect
fans who always wanted to take control of their ship themselves and carve their own path through the galaxy.
Rebel Galaxy Outlaw
Rebel Galaxy Outlaw
is a space fight simulator with a beautiful painterly aesthetic resembling something between
Mass Effect
and the
Borderlands
games. The world is filled with original alien species, space-western dives, rock music, and a story that eclipses the ambition of most space combat sims. The player character is Juno Markev. Once a smuggler, Juno tried to go straight and settle down with her husband, but now finds herself perusing her husband's murderers across the cosmos with nothing left to lose.
Between flying, players can visit bars, get drinks, gamble, and get the kind of up close and personal roleplaying experience rarely seen in space sims, even those with some RPG aspects. Players who want a high-octane tongue-in-cheek space adventurer are sure to get a kick out of Rebel Galaxy Outlaw, especially if they love the world-building and roleplaying in Mass Effect and the fast-paced combat of 3D space sims.
Starsector
Starsector is a self-described "in-development open-world single-player space-combat, roleplaying, exploration, and economic game." The game's top-down 2D combat and the immense freedom it affords the player are both highly reminiscent of FTL. Players can fall in and out of the favor of various factions, strip wrecks and ruined worlds for salvage, or head straight to the galaxy's warzones for intense combat. They can disrupt supply lines to make ships easier to pick off for piracy, recovering ancient banned tech and exploring a huge in-game world in the form of Starsector's procedurally generated galaxy.
The story has many similarities to the original Mass Effect trilogy's "Destroy Ending," which it has been heavily hinted will provide the canonical backdrop to the next chapter in the Mass Effect series. While the Destroy Ending saw the destruction of the Mass Relays, Starsector takes place in a galaxy that was once connected by an interstellar "Gate System" which suddenly collapsed. This left dystopian pockets of an interstellar society to duke it out over the remaining resources in their isolated sectors. Fans of Mass Effect's setting, the Destroy Ending, and FTL will likely enjoy this game, even though it is still only available in development builds.
Everspace
Everspace is a 3D space shooter roguelike with a twist. Each death allows the play to spend some of the points they accumulated in their last run to gain new perks which can help them as they set out - and die - once again. As with recent roguelikes like Hades, Everspace's story only begins to full reveal itself as the player makes progress over multiple runs, pushing out to new and increasingly difficult frontiers and meeting characters who will give them new objectives.
Everspace is a particularly beautiful game, combining the roguelike elements of FTL with the huge 3D space of a game like Startpoint Gemini 2. Fans who enjoy Everspace are in luck as well, with the successful funding of Everspace 2, which is already available in early access.
Not all of these games will appeal to fans of Mass Effect Legendary Edition, and the financial constraints of the indie game market certainly errs more on the side of space sims and roguelikes rather than the third-person shooter aspects of Mass Effect. What these games show, however, is that one doesn't always need a BioWare-sized budget to bring an ambitious space-set story to life.
Mass Effect: Legendary Edition is out now for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
