Mass Effort... er, Effect

I've never played the Mass Effect games before. (I know. Gamers everywhere are turning the evil eye on me, unless they didn't like it or haven't played it themselves. They are probably just raising an eyebrow, which is far less threatening and deadly.) But they have been on my list of games to play for ages. In fact, I bought both from Steam during a sale of some kind during the last year, but with all my other hobbies and games on said list, they kind of got shoved toward the bottom.

Then my other half had a go at the demo for Mass Effect 3 while I was with him. Being curious, I watched him play it. I was sucked in. I immediately wanted it - but there was a tiny little problem. I still had not played the first two in the series. Since I'm a bit of a numerical-order kind of person, that left me with one conclusion. I'm going to have to play the first two games, fast. This could be very, very interesting.

So I've started playing Mass Effect. I've already been pre-warned that the combat system is clunky at best, but so far it's not bothering me too much. It probably helps that I've set every combat option there is on the easiest setting available. I'm very much going against the idea of wanting a challenging play, because truth be told, right now I just want the story with some easy gameplay to just sit back and enjoy. When I get to the second one, I will probably pull the difficulty back up, but for now I'm having fun with the easy ride through the game. We'll see how that turns out as I keep playing and get deeper into it.

The question is, how long will it take for me to feel like I've finished both games enough to play the third one? Let's find out. I started Mass Effect yesterday - that is, Wednesday 8 March. I'm not ignoring any extra assignments, but I'm also not searching for them. If I stumble across them, I will finish them; otherwise it will be a straight shot through the main story.

If you guys have played Mass Effect, how long did it take you to play it? What was the best bit, and the worst (without spoilers, if possible!)? Anything I should be looking out for in particular?