Topic: Who was your favourite squad mates and why in mass effect

Having played through the greatest game ever again I realised 2 squad mates just isnt enough such is the quality of cast. I can make an argument for all of them so im interested in others opinion PS no tali hating shes mine lol

Personality/Story-wise, certainly Tali. She's awesome. In combat though, she's nowhere near the top of the list. I'd probably go with Biotic characters since I play a pure gun style as Shepherd.

I think it depends on your play style, sensibilities and background.
I like grounded and playing as a sniper. I like to be in control so squad mates need to ‘behave’ and not go too crazy.

From the symbolic point of view (galactic proportion vs mates) Shepard is trying to be the impossibly perfect leader who always makes the right choice and becomes a guide and saviour, trying to bring the best in everyone.

Kasumi is the rebel but intelligent teenager. Her personality and story is touching and you want to protect her like a big brother. Her ability is fun and disruptive in combat while not too intrusive. Really like that character.
Tali is somewhat similar in 1 and 3.
The trilogy is a love story with Ashley, with ups and downs, twists and ordeals.
Her military background and loyalty to a fault to her duty is just right for the story.
She does the job in combat as a co sniper.
Favourite quote:
‘Why is it when anyone says with all due respect, all they really mean is kiss my @ss?’

My point of view.

Ashley’s a massive racist. Ashley goes in the bin. Anyone but Ashley.

@nessisonett - To add on to what @amenohi said, from what I've seen, it seems pretty clear (to me at least) that while she could've gone down that route, interactions in ME1 prove she never fully committed to that idea (The Terra Firma scene in particular shows where she draws the line), and later games gradually have her lose that aspect of her character altogether. The problem is that the character isn't the most tightly written character (much like Jakob), and as a result it can be easily to misunderstand what the writers were going for.

Also, @amenohi - "she was proven right that they would use earth as fodder for the Reapers" to be fair, they weren't so much 'using earth as fodder' so much as they were unable to divert any of their forces from their own sectors, due to insufficient numbers. You'll notice that it's only with the Genophage cured that the Krogan could actually enter the war proper, and it was that injection of troops that allowed the Turians (and later Asari and Salarians) to safely divert their forces to the other fronts, like Earth (not that it was much more than a delaying action in the end, but still).

As for the topic question, currently my top three favourite squad members are Garrus, Mordin and Wrex, with Legion, Tali and Thane as runners-up, for fairly common reasons (Garrus and Wrex for their charisma and suite of one-liners, Mordin for his eccentricity and sense of humour).

My ranking of all squadmates, kinda off the top of my head but also not really...

1) Kaidan
2) Garrus
3) Legion
4) Mordin
5) Grunt
6) Tali
7) Vetra
8) Liara
9) Liam
10) James
11) Jaal
12) Jacob
13) Wrex
14) Samara
15) Kasumi
16) Javik
17) EDI
18) Drack
19) Peebee
20) Thane
21) Nyreen
22) Jack
23) Zaeed
24) Cora
25) Aria
26) Miranda

Ashley doesn't chart because corpses don't count.

Ash isn't racist, she's xenophobic and she explains why she is that way.

Tali and Garrus were my favourites and it was sweet that they got together in the end. I also really liked Peebee and Jaal from ME Andromeda.

I'm definitely too lazy to rank them all, but now that I'm about to wrap up Mass Effect 2, I can at least comment on the crew through that game so far.... Tali would be my favorite. She's basically the heart and soul of the series to me so far and it was great to see her mature from the first game to the second one, but still is a "dork" at times. I picked Liara to be my romance partner for my FemShep character series playthrough, but I'd still pick Tali.

I doubt I'd put her 2nd, but Kasumi is somebody I highly enjoyed in 2. When I played it back when it first came out, I don't think I ever got her DLC, so this was likely my first time ever having her as part of the squad. Some of her lines when you go to talk to her are pretty good, and obviously her powers are pretty cool. I ended up taking her along on missions more than I expected to.

We'll see who stands out in 3 whenever I end up playing that. It's been so long since I played it I don't remember any of the Mass Effect 3 specific characters off the top of my head. I've never played Andromeda.

@KilloWertz Props for the Kasumi support. It pained me to rank her so low, but she's brilliant, and her DLC is probably my favourite Mass Effect mission of all time.

@RogerRoger That's a testament to the characters they managed to create over the series. Not all of them were home runs and obviously they made some bad choices with romance restrictions (really not being able to romance most of them from start to finish), but there are a ton of memorable characters regardless.

Yeah, her loyalty mission was pretty damn good. Not that I had much of a problem with missions being overly repetitive, but that was probably the most different one of the whole series (at least off the top of my head).

This is a big question.

I tend to only care about the characters personality-wise and not about how useful they are in combat, especially these days since I've played the entire series through like twelve times and so I just play the whole thing on Easy. Even when I wasn't, I'd pick a squad I liked rather than a useful one, and then just persevere with the difficulty - I'm not taking EDI no matter how much her skills line-up with the mission.

Anyway...

Tali, Garrus, Mordin, Kasumi - These are my go-to favourites. These are the ones I'll generally use in missions when given free reign to do as I please. Tali because I find the Quarian perspective super interesting and she's funny. Garrus is like the renegade cop who plays by his own rules half of the buddy cop movie with my paragon Shepard. Mordin is a complicated, dark, amusing, and sometimes sad character. Kasumi is just a cool thief.

After that there's some characters I might throw into a mission for a bit of a change - I like Liara, Legion, Wrex, Javik, Jack, Thane.

There's some middling characters that I generally don't use but have no real issues with - Grunt, Kaiden, James, Zaeed etc.

The only characters that I actively dislike are Miranda, Ashley, Samara, EDI. Miranda I find super annoying. Ashley because if she were alive today she'd be making "All lives matter" Tweets and asking to see the manager. I've never jived with Samara and I don't know why - possibly because she was one of the last squad mates I recruited on my first play and so I barely spent any time with her, and I don't like her loyalty mission because it's irritating. EDI sucks. I like EDI as the ships voice, but I really didn't like anything they did with her in ME3.

Honestly until I started reading other people's lists I forgot about Andromeda. I liked Peebee and Drack. The rest I barely remember.