- Battles were the best of all trilogy. Most of the time, the difficulty was much better than the older games. I really enjoyed it. Everything was epic in every sense. The battles on Tuchanka and Thessia were particularly epic!
- Creature designs were great. The banshees, harvested Turians etc were all awesome. I remember saying "fffffuuuu" more than once especially when I was surrounded by several brutes.
- Level design was much better than the previous two.
- The feeling of desperation was awesomely delivered. At every turn it was like "WTF, we all gonna die"
- Sentimental moments were AWESOME. The death of Mordin, Thane, Cortez, Anderson etc were great. The "dream" sequences added a flavour to the actual thing.
- Weapon options and modifications, as well as the usage of Atlas was fun.
- The major scale battles etc were awesome. Palaven, Earth orbit etc cutscenes were awesome. The feeling of being a small part of a huge battle was delivered nice. Actually, it may be one of those few games that managed to deliver that feeling. The devastation feelin was also great. I really enjoyed it. Citadel being turned into a refugee camp etc. were great.
- Cause and consequence were fun and made me want to play ME 1 - 2 - 3 cycle again.
- The Stargazer thingy was actually good in a sense. I am one of those nerds who believe that humans are not originated from Earth (like Battlestar Galactica's ending. So the storyteller referencing to that idea in a sense, talking of myth and ancient lore was quite fun. BUT the game sending you to a pre-save of the Cerberus final assault was kinda lame. Good to see the love cutscenes, bad for anything else.
- The story kinda delivered the flaws in human nature and it was applaudable if not delivered with the finesse we all demand.
- I adored Cerberus' role in all of the game, hindering it at every turn. It was quite frusturating (in a good sense), creating an emotional response from the player. Especially in Thessia, I openly cursed at KL.
BAD
- Ending. Really. Ending. But then, the ending of ME 2 was also quite bleh, I don't think this was any worse than that. Actually, almost all the games I played in 2011 / 12 season - even if they were great - had rather bleh endings. Deus Ex 3, Mass Effect 3, Skyrim (kinda), LA Noire, Gears 3... I only liked Witcher 2's ending and it was a passage to Witcher 3.
- The graphics were somewhat worse than ME2. Since I played ME 2 3 days before I started playing ME3, it was quite obvious to my eyes at first. Still, I adored it after my eyes got used to it (happen in roughly 20 mins)
- I missed Ilium like wandering. Of course, it would be quite unfitting to have that kinda levels in a war oriented game.
- Music was the worst of all ME series. Actually, Mass Effect 1 has the best soundtrack. I even own the CD of that one. It put a big smile on my face when we visited Noveria, when the old track started to play from ME 1. Same goes for the occassional title track punching in from ME 1.
- The death of Legion was uber lame and pointless. Mordin's and Thane's deaths were great, fitting. Legion? I was like "wtf, just for the sake of killing him, they killed him".
- The whole dialogue of Geth and Quarians were a complete rip off from Animatrix. It blended in quite fine, but it was still a rip off. Well, having EDI becoming a team member was also a rip off from Ghost in the Shell, particularly part 2.
- It was excused as "to focus more on char. development" but I for one, am not happy about reducing the team size back to 6. Also, where the f. was Kasumi? I didn't see anything about her.
- Controls sometime went weird. More than once, I died because the mapping was not done in precission and my char went to cover instead of jumping, ending up dead.
- It ended =).
Voice acting, dialogues etc were all great as they were in the old games. I adored those.
Overall, does this game worth paying? Absolutely yes for any sci-fi / epic action fan out there or any player who wants to have a game with space settings.
Does it deserve the 9/10 points it got from websites etc? Yes. I am telling this as an ex-gaming journalist. It deserves all the penny.
Does it deserve to get a 9.5? No, because of the reasons stated above. But especially because of the ending.
Do I have any hope of any future BioWare / EA game? No, as usual.
I am glad to see the end of Shepard's story. It was a great sci-fi / action / epic ride of 4.5 years. Considering that I was following Mass Effect about one year prior to the first installement (I even bought my Xbox at the time with ME in mind - great decision on my end), I am quite satisfied with the result.
However, I don't see Mass Effect 1-2-3 as seperate games. They are a whole, like a trilogy of books. You can see that a game like ME 3 couldn't be done without prior planning of the earlier games. So, it is not like "hmm, we did these in ME 2 so let us have these things altered in 3 as possible affected things". So, it is satisfactory.
EDIT: That is probably the reason why EA couldn't **** ME3 much as well.
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