Mass Effect is a great franchise, with tons of fun and memorable missions in its games. But like all game series with massive worlds to explore and tons of content, there will inevitably be some quests that don't quite hold up. Some from the first game suffered from clunky mechanics, while others simply lack the strength in the story to keep players engaged.

While fan favorite quests have been discussed and even emulated in other titles, these quests are instead infamous among the player base. They are best skipped if possible, or if not, suffered through as quickly as possible, since they are by far the worst in the Mass Effect series.

10 Finding Metals In Mass Effect 1

Just About The Most Boring Part Of These Exciting Games

Mass Effect is a thrilling saga about space travel and fighting intergalactic threats, and no player wants to spend their time collecting samples of various rocks and metals. Yet that is exactly what this quest asks of them, as it involves finding and catag over sixty different mineral and gas samples. They can be found both by scanning planets and exploring in the Mako, neither of which are particularly enjoyable.

The first Mass Effect game included many more planets that could be landed upon than later entries, though most of them were all but empty, save for a few collectibles like these metals.

This quest exists solely for the sake of padding the exploration section of the game, and serves no real purpose in of story or reward. The best thing about it is that it pretty much happens ively as Shepard explores the galaxy, stumbling upon random bits of Beryllium or pockets of Nitrogen. But if the best thing one can say about a quest is that it's easy to ignore, it's probably not a good quest.

9 Pinnacle Station's Final Simulation

A Pointlessly Hard Final Fight In This Forgotten DLC

Contrary to the ive, boring nature of finding valuable minerals, Pinnacle Station's final simulation is an exercise in frustration and pointless difficulty. It comes at the end of this already lackluster DLC that follows Shepard and crew training in a VR battle station. All the training simulations are a bit tedious, requiring an excessive amount of Mass Effect 1's janky combat, but this last fight amps the difficulty up to eleven.

It supposedly reenacts a deadly battle between humans and Turians during Mass Effect's First War, but it's hard to see how anyone made it out of this alive. It will likely take players multiple replays to get right, since there are so many snipers and engineers that constantly shut their squad down. It's obnoxious, and the planetside vacation home Shepard gets as a reward is not worth the effort.

8 Cleaning Up The Geth Hivemind In Mass Effect 3

Neat Story With Awful Mechanics

Entering the Geth Consensus is an interesting quest in Mass Effect 3. It gives players a new insight into this synthetic species and its history, and includes video flashbacks of the war between the Geth and Quarians for control of Rannoch. It undoubtedly includes some fascinating lore, as well as needed characterization for Legion.

On the other hand, from a gameplay perspective, it is objectively terrible. Walking around an abstract VR landscape and zapping bits of orange code is not most players' idea of a fun time, and it really drags down the excitement of the war over Rannoch. It essentially just feels like Shepard has to do some chores between getting bits of Geth lore, and certainly could have been done in a more interesting way.

7 Anything In The Hammerhead In Mass Effect 2

The Reason Players Hate Vehicle Fights In These Games

Vehicles have a bad track record in Mass Effect games. The remastered Legendary Edition trilogy improved them somewhat, but the janky controls and fragility of vehicles like the Hammerhead left a bad taste in player's mouths. Pretty much any mission that requires the use of this metal monstrosity is annoying to get through, since the vehicle can be destroyed in just a few hits from the enemy, and platforming using its controls is frustrating on its own.

The Overlord DLC would be fantastic were it not for how much the Hammerhead comes up during the course of its story, and the side missions on random planets using the vehicle could probably be skipped in most playthroughs. Yet for all of that, the Hammerhead is still only the second-most hated vehicle in the franchise.

6 Repetitive Scanning Side Missions On Andromeda's Nexus

Extra Content That Exists For The Sake Of Padding

Mass Effect Andromeda introduced a new mechanic to the series in the form of the scanner, which lets Pathfinder Ryder examine parts of the environment in greater detail. It's a cool idea in theory for a device to give to a protagonist focused on exploration of a new galaxy, but its implementation leaves much to be desired.

Andromeda came years after the original trilogy and includes many new and revamped mechanics. Some of them, like the increased character mobility, work; others, like the scanner, do not.

Put simply, the scanner is boring, as the player goes from objective to objective and holds down a button to look at some part of the environment. The original trilogy definitely had its boring fetch quests, but the overuse of the scanner in side missions in Andromeda takes this to a new level.

5 Priority: Earth, The Last Part Of The Original Trilogy

An Ending That Let Many Players Down

Perhaps the most controversial inclusion on this list, "Priority: Earth" is the mission that has shaped the Mass Effect trilogy's perception for the past decade or more. It's the final mission of Mass Effect 3, and sees Shepard's crew finally return to Earth to finish the fight against the Reapers. As every fan of the franchise knows, it ends with the Mass Effect series' biggest anticlimax, as Shepard picks one of three colored beams to shoot across the galaxy and end the Reaper threat.

But even before this contentious ending, the quest has its problems. The desaturated and bland environs of the destroyed landscape certainly sell the Reaper's destruction, but it's a dull end for a series that so often included such interesting environments. The lack of player choice throughout the rest of the mission shows on repeat playthroughs, and combat starts feeling repetitive by the time players reach the final stretch. Mass Effect 3 is certainly underrated for its role in the franchise, but this mission is rightfully looked down upon.

4 Pyjak Hunting On Eletania

A Frustrating Mini Quest With Very Little Payoff

Going back to Mass Effect 1 and perhaps the most annoying mission in the game, it's the side quest on planet Eletania that involves chasing down monkey-like aliens called Pyjaks. These primates steal a piece of technology that Shepard needs, and there are so, so many of them across the map of this planet. Shepard must go up to each Pyjak individually and interact with it to see if it has the tech until they find the right monkey.

Alternatively, you can just shoot the Pyjaks with the Mako's cannons, which will kill and automatically check them for the tech.

This quest is the definition of tedious, and feels like a prank the developers are playing on their audience. There's nothing enjoyable about driving around a desolate planet and clicking monkeys until you find the right one. The only upside is that it is always on the same Pyjak, so players don't need to search for each of their hives on repeat playthroughs. The only silver lining is that Eletania also contains a Prothean artifact with interesting information on how aliens influenced human evolution in Mass Effect.

3 Contagion In Mass Effect Andromeda

A Stupidly Long Fetch Quest With Hardly Any Action

Speaking of tedium, Andromeda includes a mission that has so much back and forth that it also begins to feel like a cruel joke. "Contagion" deals with Ryder tracking down a specific colonist that carries a deadly pathogen, trying to keep them from spreading it across the galaxy. It's a good premise, but its execution is just dreadful.

The majority of it involves running back and forth from location to location on the Nexus, scanning one thing, talking to someone, scanning another. There are close to a dozen different steps players must go through before tracking the infected colonist to the planet Kadara. There, things improve slightly, and the quest's ending is a bit more exciting, with a decision to be made about letting the colonist die or returning her to stasis. But the prior steps create one of the most boring and annoying parts of a game already littered with fetch quests.

2 Avoid The Scientists In Mass Effect 1

A Mission That Will Drive Perfectionists Crazy

For many players, "Besieged Base" will not be that bad of a quest. It introduces a hostage situation in which Shepard must try to defeat biotic terrorists while avoiding the scientists they are using as human shields. The quest ends once the biotics are eliminated, but the optional objective is to save as many of the scientists as possible. This is something Renegade player characters may not care about, but Paragons are more likely to obsess over.

This quest is actually only available to players with a high number of paragon points, meaning that the majority who encounter this mission will be concerned about the scientists' safety.

To make matters worse, all six hostages are running back and forth across the battlefield with no regard for safety, and can die if hit by the player, their squates, or the biotics. Mass Effect 1's combat system can already get pretty chaotic if powers are in use, making this a nightmare situation. Keeping every scientist alive is an exercise in futility, and will likely take many tries to get right. And top it all off, there isn't really any reward or payoff worth mentioning for players that save every scientist.

1 All The Mako Collection Quests In Mass Effect 1

The Worst Villain In This Series Is This Rover's Controls

The Hammerhead's awful controls are nothing compared to the first game's floaty hunk of junk, the Mako. This piece of garbage can barely drive up a hill without slipping down or flipping back over itself. While the Legendary Edition sees a bit more weight and drive given to the Mako, it's still a horrible experience to get behind the driver's seat of this thing.

It's used for almost every aspect of planetary exploration outside main quests, meaning players have plenty of time to learn to hate this vehicle. It has a gun, but it's so hard to aim consistently that it may as well just fire at random angles, and despite its armored exterior, the Mako has the durability of a sheet of paper. Every mission requiring the operation of this abomination, from finding the Matriarch's writings, to reaching the research base on Noveria, is a stain on the great experience of the Mass Effect series.