User blog comment:The Milkman/Mass Effect in Retrospect/@comment-4953843-20130420055623/@comment-24174486-20130420164040

In the first game, you can get free health regeneration on every single playthrough regardless of class simply by having Wrex tag along for the majority of a single playthrough. Even without that, it's easy to get substantial health regeneration on your entire squad, especially Soldiers and Wrex. Add that to the ridiculous amount of shields you could accumulate and/or the massive amounts of damage reduction you can amass, and medi-gel simply ends up being not very useful in the first game.