In battle, Kasumi's Shadow Strike ability means she's one of the game's more visually interesting party members, too, vanishing and then popping up behind an enemy to damage them. You're rewarded with a total gut punch of an ending that perfectly completes her arc. It becomes clear to Shepard how badly she's been wounded by his death, and you get to help her exact revenge on Donovan Hock, his killer. Her back story with Keiji, her former partner in crime, is explored in a powerful, heartfelt way in her Stealing Memory loyalty mission. Kasumi's Stolen Memory is probably my favourite DLC across the Mass Effect trilogy-it lets Shepard play at being James Bond by infiltrating a party at a mansion, and Kasumi's introduction as a slick, invisible thief (as well as something of a loner) makes her seem very different to the rest of the Normandy's crew.
It has been updated for the release of Mass Effect Legendary Edition.
Note: This article was originally published in 2016.
The PC Gamer team voted on the companions, ranking them from 1-20 to create this: the truly definitive list of the best Mass Effect sidekicks to have kinky alien sex go space adventuring with. I knew publishing my list would be a bloodbath, so we decided on a compromise: let democracy decide (but seriously Jack is the worst, no matter what this list may say). In Mass Effect 2, those character arcs essentially become the story instead of secondary concerns, and wrapping up those trilogy-long arcs in Mass Effect 3 after five years is something we'd never really experienced before in gaming. Then they become romance partners, and your interactions with them influence how they grow and change and even affect the world around them. First the characters are fun diversions, filling out the world with lore. BioWare built on the template it established with Knights of the Old Republic throughout the Mass Effect series.