Mass Effect

Commander Shepard's war against the Reapers powers one of gaming's great space sagas: an original trilogy running 2007 to 2012, a deep bench of DLC, the 2017 follow-up Andromeda, and the 2021 Legendary Edition remaster. It reaches past games too, with the novel Mass Effect Retribution, the film Mass Effect: Paragon Lost, and the original game's soundtrack all part of the franchise.

Mass Effect 2 (2010) towers over the rest at 9.3, sharpening the first game's ideas into a recruit-the-galaxy's-elite campaign, and the Citadel add-on (9.1) is the strongest of the DLC. New players should simply take the Legendary Edition, which collects the whole trilogy in one place. Andromeda sits apart at a decent 7.9, but the Shepard arc is the heart of the series, and the ratings say so plainly.

The Mass Effect franchise spans 1 books, 6 games, 1 movies, 1 music in the CrossBinge catalog.