Gachapon Effect 3

A drell mercenary hobbles into the mess hall of an Alliance base. He had just returned from a harrowing mission with his squad to take back a firebase which was overrun by Cerberus agents. Tired and injured, he inserts credits into a the base's gachapon machine. Eager to see the results of his work from the previous mission come to fruition, he receives a large crate. Inside, he receives several packages of ammunition, another pistol (for the fourth time), and a full-sized krogan soldier. Finally! It took him 60,000 credits but he had finally earned himself a krogan!

Many people thought multiplayer in Mass Effect 3 was unnecessary. Others thought it wouldn't detract from the experience and could only add. In all likelihood, it probably wasn't going to amaze anyone. But there's one thing that surprises at least one person in this world: the multiplayer progression.

Or rather, the lack of clear progression. To take a step back, players don't earn incremental unlocks to their characters in Mass Effect 3's multiplayer. You can play as any class from the start as a human with a basic selection of weapons but to unlock more weapons, upgrades, and species, you must basically play the equivalent of a gachapon machine.

Except instead of inserting a quarter and turning the handle to receive a plastic capsule with a random prize, you choose between a regular or high-end gachapon machine, which dispenses a crate of five random items of varying rarity depending on which you chose. The regular machine is only 5,000 credits and only has a chance of carrying rare loot, while the high-end one costs 20,000 and guarantees at least one rare loot drop.

It's this luck based progression, along with fact that you're never actually weak, that fuels me to play the demo for endless hours and only whets my appetite to jump into ME3's full multiplayer experience more.

The human classes are fairly effective on their own. In fact, you could theoretically play as a human the entire time and never feel the need to switch. However, the other races have widely different abilities which make trying them out a tempting offer. For example, all engineers normally carry the combat drone ability but the quarian engineer alone carries the gun turret ability instead.

Add to the fact that different class races are among the rarest among gachapon prizes and you have very sought after prizes that demand a lot of attention on the battlefield. After all, any human soldier can entrench himself in cover and unleash suppressive fire from the biggest assault rifle he can get his hands on. But only a krogan soldier can charge head first into enemy ranks, throwing enemies around like ragdolls, and only get more powerful and harder to put down after killing several enemies with his bare hands.

The same is true with new weapons, though they're uncommon rather than rare. Nothing beats the thrill of moving on from your bread and butter, full auto assault rifle to the semi-auto combat rifle. Though when you get duplicates of the same weapon from the gachapon, it only serves to upgrade that particular weapon.

So while fighting off hordes of enemies in select maps in the Mass Effect universe earns you experience points for that specific class, it doesn't actually unlock new things asides from the skills specific to your character.

And that's what makes the whole ME3 multiplayer experience so addicting. I can really get a handle on the human infiltrator fine but it's a different story altogether if I can play as quarian infiltrator, who can sabotage enemy synthetics and tech (outright countering those stupid turrets and Atlas mechs). And here's a thought: krogan are already tough bastards to kill. Imagine playing as a krogan with access to the sentinel's tech armor, which drastically increases defense and explodes outwards when destroyed?

Every mission isn't just a challenging ordeal to use your skills and powers cooperatively with others for experience points and money. It feeds an addiction to put more money into the gachapon machine, hoping you aren't going to get another pistol or SMG upgrade. Maybe this time, just this once, it'll actually give me the salarian engineer, complete with the new decoy ability. I'd love to see how that actually works. Or maybe even the Revenant assault rifle, one of the best weapons in the game, or at least one of the best weapons from Mass Effect 2.

Oh dammit, another freaking Predator pistol!