Ranking Every Mass Effect Squadmate Ever

Breaking the streak of Andromeda characters near the bottom (though only briefly), Zaeed is a tough one to rank. For one, he’s just a DLC character and adds nothing to the interconnected narratives, plus is a waste in the field if players use Shep’s most popular class: Soldier. On the other hand though, while his loyalty mission is nothing special from a gameplay perspective, the moral ambiguity of the whole thing adds some quality.

All in all though, the loyalty mission is still one of the worse ones in ME2’s amazing catalogue, so it doesn’t help him all that much. Zaeed feels like in a different game he’d actually make a great protagonist. But, perhaps because he’s DLC, the game belabours telling you his backstory and he just doesn’t mesh well with the rest of the crew.

Even in the Citadel DLC pack in ME3, Zaeed could let his hair down in the style of say, Grunt. But instead he mostly keeps to himself, only really interacting with Samara; who herself is a slightly better version of the stoic, distant warrior trope.

All in all, Zaeed’s a decent character. He’s just not much of a squadmate.