Parokki is right. The combat controls aren't quite to Gears of War standards, but they're better than pretty much any RPG that has ever had any sort of shooting in it.
Likewise, the game has as much RPG in it as you want. You can pretty much auto-level everyone, and never, ever touch the equipment, squad, journal, or codex in the game and beat it like a really long story-drive TPS game
Or, you can make almost everything turn based, and use the tactical combat screens for 80% of the battles, and only issue biotic/squad commands, and almost never really engage in much real-time combat, sans the Mako areas.
And finally, you can do both, and get the most of the game. For about 10hrs, I never used much biotic and techs in battle. Once I started getting tired of getting my rear handed to me, I started really using the biotic/tech "wheel" for menu-based playing...After that, I started wrecking everything in my path.
Mass Effect is what you want to make of it. It's probably the first game that actually incorporates 2 genres so flawlessly that you can play it how you want. Bioshock isn't that way. It's still a FPS, but you get an inventory, and such.
Mass Effect is to Third Person Shooters, as Oblivion is to First Person Shooters.
The DLC for this game can't come soon enough.
Back from the dead, I'm afraid.
