Mass Effect

- Get Rich quick. No, really, get the "Rich" achievement as soon as possible, don't save anything as far as gear or drops, just sell it all, and sell it all to the doctor on the Citadel for max profit. There are exploits for infinite money, you don't have to use them, but the game is criminally easy as soon as you can get your hands on Spectre gear.

- Dont worry about getting the Rich achievement, it will come with time. AS you level up, the equipment that enemies carry gets better and you can sell it and be swimming with money. Just keep playing. Besides, that stuff makes the game really easier.

- As well, Wrex and Garrus are generally thought to have the best shore party dialogue lines.

- Getting ally achievements gets you good stuff. Get your people early and keep them. Use a guide for Asari ally.

- Complete Wrex's armor quest before going to Virmire. You will not regret it.

- Always keeping your Charm/Intimidate at its max is a good idea. Using Charm/Intimidate is the best way to get Paragon/Renegade points (opening up more ranks). However, if you're going to playthrough with a character a second time, don't waste the skillpoints, as you get Charm/Intimidate just by becoming more Paragon/Renegade.

- If you plan on playing a non-combat character, first create a soldier, equip him with an assault rifle, and get the Assault Rifle achievement as quickly as possible. Then give your non-combat person the Assault Rifle ability. It's far better than a pistol.

- The pistol is a fucking stellar weapon. Using marksman you can fire almost as rapidly as an Assault rifle with none of the spread and, if it's maxed with achievements and upgrades to your character you can use it constantly.

- You need to have a biotic on your team. Life, and other disabling abilities, can save your team and turn long fights into 20 second excusions by using it right in the beginning of a fight before any enemies can do anything.

- If you plan on playing through your game multiple times, say three or more times, then don't invest any points in either Persuade or Intimidate. You can gain up to 4 points in each skill per playthrough, reaching the max 12 on your third time through.

- All classes are not created equal. The hardest difficulty is a joke as a soldier, but you will have to work hard for it if you play something like a pure engineer.

- Same goes for your party members, though I guess it makes sense that a hardened mercenary like Wrex would be more skilled than most of your crew. They don't all work with the same class structure as PCs either. Wrex is a "Krogan Battlemaster" and Liara is an "Asari Scientist" (or something like that) which allows them different bonuses / skill combinations.

- The ally achievements are weird. The hardest one to get will be Liara's since you get her last (don't do any citadel side quests before leaving) but the other characters seemingly have uneven requirements and you may not get them at the times you'd expect.

- When you first set off in your ship to tackle some planets, do them in this order. Dig Site, Feros and Noveria. The reason is Noveria is ridiculously difficult if you leap into it right away, especially the final boss who will massacre you if you didn't grind beforehand. Completing Dig Site and Feros first will level you up enough to tackle Noveria easy. Keep in mind once you play a planet to a certain point, you cannot leave until you complete the planet.

- Grind some sidequests in between those planets, by the way. Even if you do some medium-level grinding, that's enough XP for you to plow over the rest of the game. I completed a handful of side-quests on my play-through and I really just steamrolled over the rest of the bosses in the game. Mass Effect is kinda easy like that.

- Its your choice whether you go paragon, renegage, or a mixture of both. It doesn't matter which way you go and the game is made for that. You do get charm or intimidate points based off of how many paragon and renegade points you have though. Also, I would keep a adept in your party. You get one soon enough. Also, you should keep someone in your party that can either decrypt or knows electronics so you can open stuff.

- Be a Soldier or Vanguard. Soldiers can become invincible with the armor-buffing abilities they are given. Vanguards, in combination with Liara, create a paradox enemies cannot solve called the infinite-lift. This paradox is created by your character using lift on the enemies, shooting them while in the air, and then as soon as they drop having Liara cast lift. This cycle can, and will, go on indefinitely.

- Max Wrex's melee damage and 'invincibility' skill. Kill.

- The achievements that aren't story progression give you awesome in-game bonuses. Make sure to get them. All achievements like "use skill X 75 times" or "kill 150 enemies with X weapon" have to be done by Shepard. The "ally" achievements will require you to use the desired party members for almost the whole game; don't do any side quests ("assignments") until you have the two you want. Then keep them both in your active group at all times.

- 99% of the things you can buy in stores are useless. You get so many items just by exploring that you will never need to buy normal things. The exceptions are (1) the permanent upgrades to your healing item and grenade capacity; and (2) "Spectre" class weapons, which you can begin buying once you've amassed one million credits.

- A corollary to the above is that you will always have tons of stuff to sell. Don't be shy pawning off your inventory--you'll get many, many more items to make up for it. Also, selling things helps you reach the one million credit mark more quickly.

- The "Spectre" weapons you can buy once you've hit one million credits are the best weapons in the game. Save up for them and then splurge. (They come in two versions, VII and X. Version X weapons are better but won't be available until you're very high level.)

- The experience and credits you get for doing things scale with your level, so even if you skip side quests for a long time they'll still be worth doing.

- Have targets in mind when you allocate skill points. Your targets should always be ranks that unlock new skills or improve the skill's active ability.

- When you're on an uncharted planet, there are always more things to be found than your map lets on. Explore areas of the map that are far away from the marked locations--you'll find hidden stuff. This is critical for completing a few annoying item collection sidequests.

- Let your allies do whatever they want, they're either generally smart enough to do what you want them to do anyway, or too dumb to not immediately die no matter what you tell them. Use your cooldowns basically whenever they're up, there's no downside to using them other than that you won't be able to use that one for the next 45 seconds or whatever and they make things much easier.

- The options menu lets you choose how you want your squad to use their powers. You can tell them to not use anything unless you say so, or to go nuts and use everything they've got. It's usually better to just let them use their powers on their own unless you like crazy micromanagement.

- There's one power, stasis, that squad members won't use unless you tell them to. It's theoretically really useful but since I either forget about it or don't care to micromanage that much it doesn't give me any value.

- Once you leave the Citadel, you'll be given the choice of three planets to visit. You can do them in any order, but since Noveria is closest you might be tempted to do that one first. Do not do that that is a bad thing to do. The first thing you should do is go to search for Liara T'Soni. After that, it'd probably be better to do Feros. When you do get to Noveria, there's a very awkward section beginning with driving across the cliffs in the Mako, and ending with reaching the tram inside the station. This part is annoying because you won't get any autosaves, so make sure to save whenever you can to avoid having to go all the way back to the beginning.

- You'll find that the universe essentially "updates" every time you complete one of the main storyline missions. After completing one, you'll have new conversations to have with your squad members on the Normandy, and there'll be a few side quests or happenings on the Citadel. If you want to get the romance subplot for a certain character, you'll need to talk to them after completing each mission. Obviously there are only certain characters you can get involved with (There are no opportunities for Krogan love).

- If you want to get the achievement for having Liara in your party, don't do any side quests before you pick her up. And never let her leave the party.

- Most of the achievements that you can get in the game give you bonuses of some kind. The skill use and weapon kill achievements let you take those skills or weapon skills on a later playthrough. The partner achievements give you minor bonuses to your character. The big one is getting the rich achievement. It unlocks a high level weapon manufacturer that will provide some of the best weapons in the game.

- Pick your partners and keep them with you throughout the entire game. Its best to hold off on any quests at all until you have the members you want.

- As long as one character in your party has the hacking skill, you can hack devices. So there is no point in spending points on the hacking skill on multiple people.