Mass Effect Legendary Edition: Classic or Legendary Mode?

ByAdam B Hours
Mass Effect Legendary Edition Photo used for Classic Or Legendary mode guide

Last Updated on: 12th June 2021, 01:31 pm

Mass Effect is a series known for choices, but you might not have been ready to choose from Classic or Legendary modes right away as you are asked to at the start of a new game on the remaster of Mass Effect 1.

Mass Effect Legendary or Classic; Does it matter?

By and large, you can get by on either mode just fine. There’s no huge difference between them and you won’t be massively handicapping yourself by selecting one or the other.

With that said, there is a slight benefit to taking Classic over Legendary which I’ll cover shortly.

What’s the difference?

As shown below, the difference between Classic mode and Legendary mode is that while Classic has 60 levels total, Legendary mode has only 30 levels in total. The XP and talent points you earn will be the same throughout both, but Legendary has more things compressed into each level

An image shown Mass Effect Legendary Editions Classic versus Legendary levelling modes
Mass Effect LE Classic or Legendary, Credit: EA

READ MORE: Is a Mass Effect TV series in development?

So with that in mind, how exactly is Classic better than Legendary in any way? They’re basically the same just with different numbers of levels, right?

This part is actually quite simple to explain. In effect, both Classic and Legendary modes in Mass Effect are the same progression system just distributed over different numbers of levels. The catch is that Classic accesses new points more frequently.

Now if that doesn’t make sense just yet, don’t worry. It can sound a bit confusing at first.

Garrus vastly prefers his calibrations to dealing with these ill-explained settings menus.

READ MORE: Mass Effect Legendary Edition Achievement Guide

The simplest way to explain this is as follows: If you use Legendary mode, you can be level 20, and someone in Classic mode with the same EXP would be level 40. But if that person in classic reaches the EXP for level 41, they will get a talent point to spend. You won’t have levelled up yet, as level 21 in Legendary mode occurs at level 42 in Classic mode.

When Legendary mode hits level 21, the number of points will be even again. But mid way through the level-up, Classic mode has an additional point to spend that you can’t access yet.

This is quite a minor difference most of the time. With that said, due to how the system works specifically, a single point can trigger an upgrade to an ability, or unlock a wholly new ability. Doing so might make the difference that prevents you dying in the next combat encounter you do.

Is that really it?

Yes, it is quite a small difference, realistically. It’s also noting that you can use Legendary mode if you don’t like allocating points frequently, as less frequent level-ups with more points to spend each time will lessen that bit of busy work for you.

If you’re interested in squeezing out any extra bit of power you can get as often as you can though, Classic mode does gain that tiny advantage over Legendary mode every other half level worth of Legendary mode EXP.

In any case, now that the difference has been explained that’ll be all for this piece on Mass Effect. If you’d be interested in more guides from The Click, you can find those here. If you’d like to read more by me, you can find my author page here.