(Sorry if the images are broken. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong.)
I've finished Mass Effect 3. I think
ME1 had a better story, and
ME2 had some features I miss, but ME3 is the best overall game in the series. I'll comment on various aspects of it without revealing major spoilers.
Combat: Some missions are more fun than others, but none of them are duds or filler. I had a pretty good time with most of it.
As an Infiltrator, I didn't get as many satisfying one-shot kills as I did in ME2. But I was able to get some extreme-range kills thanks to the bigger battlefields. I even got to kill a few enemies before they showed up on radar. The various guns are fun and cool, though I wish it were easier to experiment with them and change loadouts. And I miss heavy weapons.
Combat is much harder now that enemies can throw grenades. This was such a big problem that early on, during one of the tram car battles in the Priority: Mars mission, I got frustrated and put the game away for four months. When I came back to it, I changed the difficulty from Insanity to Medium and was able to finish the mission. Then I wondered whether ME3 is tougher than the early games. I checked online and was surprised that the consensus was no, ME3 is much easier than ME2 and about as easy as ME1. This motivated me to reload a save and try the mission on Insanity again. This time, I spent my stash of 30 level-up points (I should have done that earlier, duh) and after a few more tries, succeeded in completing the mission on Insanity. ME3 had a few more very tough battles in store but I kept the difficulty on Insanity till the end.
I like how your power cooldown time lessens if you carry fewer, lighter guns. I carried only a sniper rifle and enjoyed being able to cast Incinerate and Tactical Cloak pretty frequently. I never missed having a backup gun since ammo is more plentiful in ME3; even though my sniper rifle usually held fewer than 15 rounds, I was rarely out of ammo.
Story: although some of the decisions I made in past games ended up not mattering much, I could feel the past events really coming to a head. The stakes couldn't be higher, and the dialogue and voice acting rose to the challenge.
This game shows the emotional cost of war more than most games. You don't just have the charred war zones that were once communities; you also have the crowd of refugees, growing in number, desperately searching for loved ones, weeping in each other's arms. There's a lot of "I'm so sorry" going around.
I really liked how every War Asset is not just a number, but also a brief blurb on what each War Asset is contributing. The blurbs add a lot of flavor and context to the story.
I'll have to remember this line that was said at a particularly harrowing time: "It can be rebuilt. Just worry about the next 20 meters." That's good life advice in general.
Looting: In ME1, you trundle around in the Mako. In ME2, you spend hours scanning planets while listening to audiobooks and podcasts. In ME3, you have the much more streamlined system of scanning a big chunk of a solar system. You see a percentage of how much loot you've collected and even have to watch out for danger. It's still not a
great looting system but it's the best one and by far the least time-consuming.
The DLC
From Ashes (Eden Prime): I've read this was originally going to be part of the main game, but was then repackaged as a DLC. That's a shame, as this is essential. It not only has great house-to-house fighting, it adds a huge amount of lore and personality.
Leviathan: Not much fun, but another must-play for the lore it adds.
Omega: a long slog of battles in dark rooms and dank corridors. Not very engaging, but you might as well endure it for the war assets and the bonus power.
Citadel: This was a mountain of combat, which I got a little tired of but it ended in one of the toughest fights in the series. After about 15 attempts, I tried a new strategy: constantly running away and letting my squadmates do the work. This made the fight take more than an hour, but it worked. This DLC was a mountain of hilarious banter, too. I'm glad so much attention was paid to the concept of spending peaceful, enjoyable time with others. After all the hardship, tragedy, and violence over the course of three games, this was important. It gave meaning to it all.
That Ending
(Note: since I played the Legendary Edition, my impressions I played are based on the Extended Cut endings, not the original ones.)
Up to now, the games had done a good job of not drowning the player in exposition. But the ending is a wall of technobabble. It's intriguing but very confusing. I didn't understand my choices or how to pick one. I ultimately picked what I thought my renegade would choose. But this turned out to be the ending they added in the Extended Cut. It was brief and abrupt. Even the game doesn't consider this a proper ending; it doesn't give you the achievements for finishing the story.
Nonplussed, I went to YouTube to view the other, "real" endings. The red one was the one I really wanted, the one most consistent with my approach throughout the three games. But the green one is the most emotionally satisfying, bringing genuine tears to my eyes.
Overall, I think the endings are good. Underwhelming, but cool. That's actually how I feel about the Game of Thrones TV show ending, too. A lot of people say they hate it, that it ruined the whole show. I don't think it's that bad; it's just not the spectacular finale we deserved.
I wish I had the chance to try even half of all the great games out there, but I'm glad I finally experienced Mass Effect. It's epic from beginning to end. This star trek isn't over, though: I'm going through the rest of the transmedia tie-ins. When I'm done with that, I'll make another post with transmedia recommendations.
