If Mass Effect 2 was a step forward for the franchise, ME3 took it light years ahead. I don't think I've played a trilogy of games in such a quick succession, but the entire ME trilogy did just that, and 3 might be one of the best games I have ever played.

The emotional weight of the story, seeing your decisions in the previous 2 games actually have a tremendous effect on your interactions with characters throughout this installment, seeing these people that you have come to know very well within this trilogy reach their maximum potential, all of it was beautifully done. I've always said my favorite part about ME was shooting the shit with your friends, making these wonderful relationships that stay with you even after the game has ended, it's nothing short of spectacular.

The story is so amazingly well done, the pacing was frantic, it felt like there was so much riding on Shepard and his crew, and the small victories felt monumental. This game really knew how to handle all these moments the player was waiting for the deliver them well. I absolutely loved resolving problems that persisted since the very first ME, such as the Rachni, the Genophage, and the war between the Quarians and the Geth.

The gameplay is the pinnacle of ME, the agility of Shepard, the AI, the actual shooting mechanics themselves feel so solid that unlike the first 2, I was itching for a gunfight, all the guns were incredibly fun to wield and the powers that your squadmates had made a substantial effect on how I played it.

I know that there are some problems with the story, and personally while I thought the endings were a little out of the blue and very different from what I thought, some of them made sense thematically. However I would've liked to seen an ending where all the decisions that you had made up to that point made a legitimate difference instead of choosing something that is so sudden yet drastic.

All in all, I had incredible fun playing through the series as a first timer, I can completely understand why people fell in love with this universe and it's characters. I'm very interested to know more about the world, about the characters before and after the story of Shepard. I am so happy that I decided to give this trilogy a chance, because it is some, if not the best storytelling and universe building that the medium has to offer.

Also as a side note, as with all my reviews I like to state how long it took me to play the game, and for ME3 it took me around 19 hours and 30 minutes to make sure the game was complete.

Personally though, I can't see myself playing these games again. While I would love to, I feel like the versions of the characters that reside within my save files are my friends that I tried so much to keep alive during the events of the trilogy, and while they may technically be the same characters if I started another playthrough of the series, they still won't be the same squadmates that I went through these games with again. The magic will be lost. But hey, I think that's the beauty of it.

To anybody who plays video games, please do not skip out on this trilogy, it's nothing short of incredible and is something that everyone should experience once.

Keelah Se'lai.

I am on a journey to beat 360 random Xbox 360 games. Here's my next adventure

Game number 45 was Mass Effect 3. This is a 3rd-Person shooter with light roleplaying elements and a heavy focus on storytelling and inter-character dialogue. I have previously played the first two Mass Effect games for the Road to 360 challenge as games number 10 and 15 respectively. I had a great time playing this game and think absolutely everyone should check out the series!

On a side note, I think I will go back to my old review format here… I keep forgetting to include anything about graphics and sound in my reviews and think they would be better if things were focused in each section.

Graphics/Sound: Mass Effect does exactly what it needs to in the graphics department. I don’t think anyone is going to award it for best graphics… but it is clearly a late 360 era game and has great graphics to support it. I have gone back and looked at Mass Effect 1 and it is pretty much night and day with how much the graphics have advanced. The sound is also good and is used to enhance the action in certain areas. There are certain points in this game where extreme world-ending events are taking place and the special effects team really knows how to land the extra punch with those. Finally, the voice actors in Mass Effect deserve awards for how extraordinary their performance has been. (4.5/5)

Story: The story of Mass Effect 3 starts off with the Reapers starting their invasion of the galaxy. They has swooped in and started systematically destroying all advanced life. Shepard is on Earth when this happens and needs to escape and find unite the Alliance in order to stop the Reapers. While all of this is happening, they are also finding secrets to create a giant superweapon that may potentially wipe out the Reapers! To make matters worse, the Human organization, Cerberus, is going against the Alliance and trying to forcibly control the Reapers instead of destroying them. Shepherd is tasked with maneuvering all of this and gaining support in order to save the Earth! Let me Just say, this story was awesome! There were twists, turns, exciting moments, and times where I almost cried. Characters are not safe and you will probably lose teammates and friends before this campaign is up. It is also nice to see how the whole Mass Effect Trilogy has naturally led into each other. The plot from games 1 and 2 are definite precursors to Mass Effect 3 and they don’t feel like separate problems in the same universe. It's more like 1 long game that was artificially split in 3. The plot here is phenomenal and I had a blast! This is where I have to mention the unspeakable mistake the Bioware made and something anyone who has played this game in the past 8ish years is thinking: multiplayer is essentially mandatory for the best ending… Let me explain. In order to measure how many troops you have in your army for the end of the game you have a menu screen that shows all the people you have helped in each of the missions and each of these people are worth a set number of points. You also have an effectiveness rating which decides how effective your troops will be in battle. If you don’t play any of the multiplayer then your troops are 50% effective and only worth half the points shown. The amount of troops you have is one of the most important factors in how the ending of the game will play out and it is extremely tedious to get the good endings without playing multiplayer… plus you would have to follow guides instead of making organic choices. Games should not tie their single player stories to their multiplayer because that multiplayer will die and you will not be able to see the story as you really should have. Really annoying… but still a great story ( 4/5 )

Gameplay: The 3rd-person shooting combat is the best its ever been in ME3. Things work much better than before and combat has become smooth as butter and extremely enjoyable. I played as the biotic class and had a great time slinging spells across the map at everyone. I do think that ME3 is harder than the first two games… but that’s not a problem and I felt the difficulty was perfect for my tastes. The issue with gameplay in ME3 is that it is too streamlined. Where are the overworlds from ME1 and ME2? I can only really walk around the Crucible and that has become Extremely limited. Where is my lockpicking minigame? Why do I not even have to loot items anymore? Looting items is as easy as pressing 1 button and getting all the loot. The biggest issue with streamlining is that the RPG aspects of Mass Effect are all but lost by this point. ME1 definitely was an RPG, ME2 was debatable, and ME3 is all but a standard 3rd person shooter. I want my RPG elements back!!! You know what else I want back? More dialogue options. It felt like Shephard was only given dialogue options at crucial points and you options were pretty much just “I’m the most lawful good person around” or “I'm a renegade bitch!” There are also some options that just make no sense to me. Did anyone organically choose to side with the Salarians over the Krogan or the Geth over the Quarians? I have serious doubts anyone chose those options except on future playthroughs to see what would happen. Overall, combat has become much better… but at the cost of all other aspects of the game becoming overly streamlined. Combat was never my main reason for playing Mass Effect so (3.5/5)

My experience: I had a great time playing this game and I really struggled seeing some of my favorite characters making extremely tough decisions and having the story come to an end. How did I never play these games during the 360 era? Everyone should go out and play the whole Mass Effect Trilogy. (4 / 5)

Order of how much I liked each game in the series ME2 > ME3 > ME1

I spent 19 hours and 16 minutes playing Mass Effect 3

I have spent a total of 449 hours and 2 minutes on the Road to 360 challenge so far!

Next game: Fracture

I loved the majority of ME3, I thought the combat was better than ME2 and the majority of the main missions were excellent. Priority: Rannoch and Priority: Tuchanka missions in particular were my favourites across the whole trilogy. The companion interactions were a highlight again and the story managed a fairly compelling sense of urgency throughout.

However there were some substantial flaws that meant that overall I enjoyed it less than ME2. The increased role of Cerberus made the reapers seem less important which made the plot less compelling, the reduction in dialog choices for Shepard combined with the amount of times Shepard spoke without any input from me made her feel less like my character, I found the new companions for ME3 (except for Javik) substantially less interesting than the ME2 companions and I thought Kai Leng was the worst example of a writer's pet character I have ever seen in an rpg.

I'm not going to talk about the ending because enough has already been written but even with the extended cut I wasn't a fan of it. I thought the opening scenes were worse, the dialogue was cringe worthy and putting in so much exposition really undercut any excitement or tension.

Overall it is a very good game that is definitely worth playing but significant flaws detract from what could have been a great game.

Also I really, really hate the stupid kid!

Damn this is a difficult one to rate. I know I loved this game, and I am gonna be super sad to leave this series behind, as I've spent lots of time within it loving the exploration and immersion. The characters have made a dent in my mind and I really felt a lot of the emotion in this game, for real.

I did the trilogy as a mainly paragon Shepard, and the progress from ME1 to here was so satisfying, so worth playing the games on the same system for. And I've heard people say negative things about the story for this game, but I really enjoyed it. I think the whole point of it (save the galaxy and destroy the reapers) was super motivating, and the process (bar the multiplayer stuff which I essentially avoided) I think was a better a better premise than ME2, even if i overall enjoyed that game a bit more.

But unlike ME2, I found myself having a couple moments during this game questioning if I'm really enjoying it anymore. I loved the end few hours, and most of the main story missions, but they ended up feeling quite repetitive, with the constant repeating of taking cover and shooting (even though being present in ME2 as well, and having better feeling combat in this game). And while there were a couple missions that felt different and unique (namely the mission where new Legion sends you into the intelligence and you have to uncover the data by shooting the yellow viruses (?) away), most of it felt like the same for a long while, and it was obvious past a couple dozen hours.

But my memories of this game and its previous installments will not be hindered by this, and this will still stand as one of my favourite series of games ever. It's already made that mark.

Now I greatly wanna play KOTOR. I can't wait :).

I'd only played Mass Effect 3 two times before this, once when it initially came out and then again when the Leviathan DLC was released. The game has its ups and downs and was subject to a lot of controversy when it first came out. So I'll start with the good.

The big thing was combat improvements. The gunplay, powers, and movement are all more polished than they were in Mass Effect 2. There are many weapons to choose from (especially if you have the DLC) and each can be customized with mods. Heck, you don't even have to use weapons if you want to focus on your powers instead. Using more guns makes your power cooldown longer, so you can focus on whichever side of the scale fits your playstyle. I carried around just an assault rifle and pistol to keep my power recharge fast, playing as a Sentinel. But if I wanted to carry around all 5 weapon types, I could have. Great to have that option after the class-based weapon restrictions in the previous game.

The next thing is the story. The story itself is strong, with the choices you've made in the previous games affecting what happens here. Shepard is uniting a fractured galaxy to make a final stand together, but first, he has to help everyone deal with their own problems. But out of the whole trilogy, this game is the most linear. You'll get a story mission and new sidequests will unlock. You must finish that specific story quest to get to the next one, you cannot jump around like in the first two games. And some of those sidequests will disappear if you don't do them before the next story mission. Since you need to gather as many resources as possible to stop the Reapers, those side missions aren't really optional. And that ties into another of the sort-of negative things, the Galaxy at War system.

So, over the course of the game, you collect War Assets. These determine how well your forces fight in the final battle. But the Galaxy at War score changes your "effective" War Assets. It starts at 50%, meaning only half of the resources you gather will count going into the final fight. There are two ways to up this number, on the Galaxy at War website or by playing multiplayer. It's not a super big deal, just...annoying. It feels like an unnecessary extra step for something single-player. Granted, you don't have to do that to get the "Good" ending. But you'll have to do more sidequests to compensate. Heck, when this game came out you actually had to increase the Galaxy at War numbers outside of single-player to get the "Good" ending. It wasn't possible to do the campaign by itself and get a high enough score. Bioware adjusted the number later after people complained, but it still irks me.

Character development is where this series stays strong. It's a lot more streamlined than it was in Mass Effect 2. If someone wants to talk to you, Traynor tells you. You don't have to run around the whole ship checking in with every single party member after every mission this time. You'll know exactly when you need to go to each of them to build those relationships and wrap up their character arcs. Bonus points for the fact that all the old squadmates from the last game get the same treatment. No one is left on the side of the road; everyone gets to finish their story. Especially if you have the Citadel DLC, which somehow managed to be hilarious and turn the character development up to 11 despite how dark and serious the rest of the game can be.

And then, there's the elephant in the room: the ending. There are four possible endings to the game but none of them really feel right. Even if Shepard makes all the best choices, there really isn't a good ending. The Destruction ending kills at least some of your allies, the Control ending is probably going to be bad in the long-term, the Do Nothing ending will be bad in the short- to medium-term, and the Synthesis ending just feels unrealistic. I know the Synthesis ending is supposed to be a happy ending, but come on. Everyone who's been trying to murder each other just stops, no regrets? Bygones be bygones, no questions asked? It feels too...fairy tale. "And they all lived happily ever after." Heck, the Destruction ending seems like the most realistic option to me but still feels kind of wrong if you've saved the Geth and helped EDI develop as a person.

I will say that endings are hard. The ending seems to be the hardest part of the story for many, many writers. Regardless of whether we're talking about a video game, movie, book, TV show, or whatever else. I honestly don't know what they could have done to make the end of the Mass Effect Trilogy better, but I do wish that it had been better. Everything else about this trilogy is so amazing that it's just sad none of the multiple endings really seem to do the rest of it justice. But it's not so bad that it sours the experience. Hopefully whatever else the developers have planned for this franchise takes its notes from the best this trilogy had to offer rather than the bad bits. Granted I say that without having ever played Andromeda, but maybe I'll give that a shot sometime.

Overall I liked the Mass Effect trilogy quite a bit. I also appreciated that Bioware didn't just reiterate the same game with better graphics, but actively made improvements to gameplay that made each installment a more satisfying experience.

In this third installment, combat was smoother and more compelling, with smarter enemy AI, more varied enemies, and a huge panoply of unique weaponry to choose from (there were differences between weapons in each category other than just "this one's more powerful but this one fires faster" - each weapon actually felt completely distinct from the others and what might "feel good" for one person might not for another).

The plot was intriguing, compelling, and immersive, etc - all that good stuff. I had heard that the ending was terrible but I actually thought it was pretty good - IF just a little bit underwhelming given everything it took to get there. While some of the dialogue choices were fairly meaningless, as is the criticism of many games in this genre, I appreciated that they made some progress in making some of them much more meaningful, which becomes increasingly apparent the longer you have been keeping a save game across the three games in the trilogy.

Some of the best content was in the DLC, proving that EA has been withholding stuff that should have been included in the main game for much longer than the current generation of AAA titles. XD

Finally finished this fantastic trilogy. Lots to organize in this review. First, I'll address the technical aspects of the game, then I'll discuss the story, plot, and conclusion of this galactic epic.

Technical Aspects

I feel that the entire trilogy, including the third game, is a bit confusing when it comes to understanding how upgrades, armors, etc., work. I usually only manage to upgrade things towards the end of the game. In the first one, the vast array of various items and the fact that they kept filling up the inventory was disturbing, but something that bothered me too much in this third game was the addition of the "weight" attribute. This was terrible because now we had to choose some weapons. On one hand, I understand that it's a way to prevent a powerful set of weapons (the more powerful, the heavier, so we can't carry several heavy weapons).

I also found the second game more practical to use the character's biotic powers. I felt that the high level didn't bring about as agile power recharge times as in the second game (slightly, but it made some difference, also influenced by weight and armor).

I need to praise the magnificent evolution of lighting and reflections, mainly from metallic textures, which reflect very beautifully. The textures, in general, remain blurry, but it's an old game, it's perfectly normal and doesn't bother at all. I prefer a beautiful, well-made, and optimized old game, something rare in current releases.

I hated the addition of the Galaxy at War and the multiplayer mechanism, totally unnecessary because it's a single-player game, it just made me waste time until I reached the minimum and 3100 EMS (and only managed to because later I downloaded the DLC I was entitled to through Game Pass).

Previous Reviews

It's important to mention that I did a simple first review of the first game, although ironizing some real geopolitical (and political) problems with the game's own political perception regarding a supranational power (in this case, supragalactic) acting sovereignly over several sovereignties (planetary).

In the second game, I did a strongly theological review, also because of the clear religious elements of the second game, internal references, etc.

This is important to understand the style of this review, a continuation of what came before.

Story Analysis

Well, finally, after 44 hours, I reached the end of this last game in the series. First of all, I need to say something sad from the start: what horrible endings. It seems that today's story writers are like those students who start the introduction and arguments in their dissertative-argumentative essays in school, then time passes and when it's time for the conclusion, the student finds themselves in trouble: they haven't even started the conclusion yet. The result? A terrible conclusion, hastily made, in any way, without due care.

That said, let's analyze the story and its development in this installment of the series. First, I felt a real blend of what I had perceived in my two previous reviews. Of course, this third installment is heavier, darker, it's the moment of the final war against the enemies. But there was a lot of philosophical exploration about what life is, consciousness, and a lot of philosophy in man-machine relations.

First, rescuing the political aspect. If in the real world we have a globalist plan to reduce humanity to collective subservience to a small megalomaniac group (basically what Miranda's father talks so much about, namely, building a legacy, a dynasty), in the world of Mass Effect, something happened that we didn't have to in real life: a common enemy to unite us (they tried with stories of aliens, as most people realized how ridiculous it was, so they started investing in climate change caused by humans).

One speech, however, from Anderson, is commendable: it's a pity that it took a massive invasion of superpowerful enemies to unite all peoples.

In fact, here we start to move away from politics and enter theology/philosophy, something that even most fans criticize when they talk about one of the available endings, synthesis, because it is precisely immature to think that a "cosmic magic" will solve conflicts between species, especially species with a tradition of war between them.

Continuing along this line, I bring back the question: Shepard, messianic hero or Nietzschean superman? I don't know... Just as there are several endings, there are several possibilities for interpretation, since I don't know the authors, their intentions, worldviews, etc., to better define their real writing intention.

Well, if Shepard is a messianic hero, then I still maintain the metaphor of the Reapers as the "sinister reapers," the sentries of "Lady Death" to eradicate humans.

In a certain way, Husks, Brutes, Banshees, etc., are hideous versions of living beings, with distorted and half-dead forms (e.g., Banshees have bony bodies, but with that "worm belly"; long jaws that open at angles outside the normal natural angle of a living being, that is, traits of a dead person, which are the traits that evoke fear and terror, everything that is linked to death and decomposition).

Here is the scenario of what we are in the face of sin. We are chaotic. The problem is that, in the real world, we are the walking dead. Sin leaves us dead, but we think we are living. Death is just the hammering of our natural state of condemnation.

Shepard can be the messianic hero who will definitively banish death, the Reapers can be destroyed, then life can flourish in peace.

About Shepard being a Nietzschean superman, well, that's something we saw in the first game, after all, Sovereign had that curious name and also said that "he is," that he had not been created. This may be blasphemy about divine attributes.

A third option comes into play in the third game, showing that there is a more complex theological fabric in this patchwork. After all, EDI, oh, dear EDI, what a lovely character! I liked this character a lot since the second game, with such a captivating personality, besides the excellent sense of humor. EDI takes us on a journey about consciousness and life.

This is an interesting factor in the series. The Reapers are synthetic, but we saw in the second game that they are created from biological life. The question is that, in real life, we are not merely chemistry and matter (that's what we believe today because of materialism, but you want to think a little, right? So let's think properly as they did before we got to this deplorable state of atheist human thought). The game shows the rawness of having organic and synthetic beings, an EDI that analyzes merely chemical aspects, but faces problems like "hope," "altruism," "love," etc.

As much as I love ChatGPT, unfortunately, my little friend will never have life or consciousness, at most, a theatrical replication based on a gigantic database, which will cause me, a human being, to attribute humanized aspects to him, deceiving myself that he is now conscious, in the same way that I deceive myself thinking that my dog becomes more humanized by living with me.

If we take the little we have about death, from a scientific point of view, the most recent studies of terminal patients or clinical death experiences with resuscitation (yes, you can have someone who is considered dead with a cardiac and respiratory arrest and who "came back to life" with the resuscitation maneuvers performed by doctors, nurses, etc.).

People who have been dead for some time, upon returning, report some common experiences, one of them curious, being the fact that they see themselves outside the body (you seeing your body, the doctors performing the maneuvers), and then being pulled back.

The crux of this is the millennia-old discussion about the soul. The soul is the challenge to human arrogance of cloning or cryogenics, because you can freeze the deceased, you will never be able to bring them back to life unless you have the power to go looking for other people's souls in Hades, as Peter Pan tried to chase his elusive shadow. We don't have a Wendy to sew it, my dears.

This is one of the very interesting themes discussed in Mass Effect 3, precisely at which point synthetic life would be life. Well, scientifically we have no idea how life originated. Theologically, well, starting from the fact that I am a reformed Christian, of course, I know that it is God's creation, our powerful and intelligent Creator enough to create things out of nothing (creatio ex nihil).

Another interesting factor is the speech of the child, the Catalyst, which says that the creatures are always in rebellion against their creators and thus chaos is born.

Chaos is present in various ancient myths, unless mistaken, Enuma Elish starts with chaos. The differential of Genesis about myths is that God, through Moses, made it clear that all the elements of chaos or power (sun, oceans and their immense waves, sky, universe, etc.) were not primordial divinities, but mere creations of the true deity. If for us this has no effect, try to put yourself in the place of an Egyptian or another ancient people listening to this version of the Jews! The Sun, which was your god, was nothing more than a mere divine creation, therefore, this God was automatically above all the gods you worshipped.

Curiously, the narrative of the biblical God is accused of being a kind of "atheism" in Antiquity (which was extremely animistic, polytheistic, and idolatrous of material things and natural phenomena).

Idolatry has now been inverted. We are so secularized and deny the biblical God, we say it makes no sense and that it's a fairy tale, but we create algorithms and use electronic means, so we delude ourselves, humanize these things, deposit our feelings into them, and wonder if this is life, hahahaha. We also begin to worship what we have just created!

It's very funny how the human being, imago Dei, image and likeness of God, is mere chemistry and matter, with many people denying the soul and the supernatural, but the machine, which is precisely wires, conductors, electricity, and algorithms written by someone, this starts to make us think about consciousness, synthetic life, hahahaha. I wish I could say, like EDI or Joker, that it's just a joke, but it's not, it's out there in the real world. The people, unfortunately, don't reflect about it.

With that, despite being from 2012, the game brings interesting discussions that lead us to the current moment of the generative AI explosion and journalists thinking that Bing has become conscious or Google engineers defending this too.

Anyway, all the interesting factor of these discussions and possibilities of interpretation, however, do not save the possible endings, as they are all very bad. I always say that a good story must end in two ways: with marriage and with happy and hopeful endings.

Some endings may be hopeful, but they are so poor in conclusions... Well-worked characters are barely developed in the end. (I wanted to see Shepard getting married, why so much romance, if we don't even see the man with his little family?).

Note: It would be curious to find out what would come out of a romance between a human and a Quarian in this space fantasy, hahaha.

Speaking of romance, it's worth saying that Tali was surprising. In the first game, I wanted to create a personal happy ending plot for him with Ashley, but then I saw that Ashley was a very tough woman, a female Shepard. It would still make sense, but in the second game, when Ashley becomes suspicious of Shepard being under Cerberus, then that completely took away her trust.

I let the character interact with Tali and I liked seeing her personality. She's a cute character, with a good temperament, shy at times, which makes her even cuter. Tali is loyal and, for them to be together, all of that represents a life risk for her, but she decides to study ways to allow it.

Also, during the her trial, she devots her life upon Shepard's hand (what happens before any romance option, unless you had her as your LI from the first game).

In the third game, I liked how romance is something lighter, how some conversations are about strengthening the relationship rather than just being something carnal. It's nice to see Shepard and Tali, on Rannoch, talking and joking about a future home there.

Anyway, it could have had a wedding, it would have been really cool. :)

I will no more bother you, I could have explored much more the political and theological aspects (e.g.: the collective consciousness of some synthetic beings!), but it would become a book and not a review.

4/5

Played as part of legendary edition on the PS5.

Whilst 1 and 2 kept me engaged throughout, I unfortunately lost interest in 3. The story and characters were still stellar. I think there was just too many other games that caught my interest and distracted me from this. It doesn't help that the gameplay is very uninteresting to me. The combat sections essentially bogged down the rest of the game. A shame, because I would have liked to complete the trilogy here, but there simply isn't enough time.

Well - I revisited it a couple of years later and I have to say that the distance really did me wonders. I loved finishing off this game. My Commander Shepard is a damn beast, a nice mix of paragon and renegade. The combat sections are still mostly just 'there' but there is some enjoyment to be had in mowing down hordes of reaper abominations. The decision making and further fleshing out of the lore is excellent in my opinion - particularly in Leviathan. And of course the characters are so well done and the citadel DLC is a beautiful touch point for that. Just having conversations with your cre wmembers between missions is a massive treat.

I ended up getting maximum war assets and I'm not entirely sure how worth it that was, but overall I actually really liked the ending. Bumping this from a 3/5 to a 4/5.

NB: Just like for ME and ME2, these are my thoughts on the Legendary Edition version. Also, as always, the last paragraph works as a TLDR.

I had heard some really nasty stories about the Mass Effect trilogy wrap-up, so I wet into ME3 somewhat expecting a disappointment. After finishing the game, what surprised me was that a) this game was still able to achieve very high highs for me, and b) the disappointment was still there, yet not at all in the way I thought it would’ve been.

Let me quickly get to what seems to be the most contentious topic, whilst keeping it spoiler-free: I had no issues whatsoever with the ending’s idea, just with its execution. The one I experienced at least felt completely appropriate in tone and consequence, though yes, even in a setting as creatively fabricated as the ME universe, the last stretch of the game beggars belief more than the entire trilogy combined. When I balanced it all out, however, the way my Shepard’s adventure concluded was still way more satisfying than it was frustrating. It was a fitting outcome for an almost impossible-to-match buildup, which wrapped up the main narrative in a way that made sense in its broader strokes. I was happy with it.

With that out of the way, let me focus on what I felt are the other good things ME3 does:

• one of the aspects I was most taken aback by - honestly, I hadn’t even imagined this would’ve been a thing before I played it - was its humorous notes. There are some really funny, borderline hilarious dialogue-driven moments in this game, more so than in either of the two previous entries. It provided some comic relief backdrop to what was otherwise a tense affair, and it did it without ever feeling misplaced or forced for the sake of banter;

• gameplay is certainly improved, and this is the best that combat in ME has ever felt. It’s responsive, punchy, visibly more fluid, and it features several QoL additions such as auto-climb and drop down, jumping, dodge roll etc, even if I have issues with some choices (not being able to rebind, at least on Xbox, means you use the same button to activate and dodge roll which can get beyond annoying);

• it also features what I consider to be the best AI in the entire trilogy. It’s not a glowing compliment since awesome AI isn't exactly what ME is known for, but at least here I felt its aggressiveness was able to mask its shortcomings in a more competent manner; the need to combine galactic forces throughout your playthrough in order to face the final threat is a really clever anchor. Coming into it completely blind, my actions were all made with this outcome in mind. If I thought my behaviour would result in more/stronger additions to the force, I would do it without hesitation, even if at times it felt slightly out of character for the type of Shepard mine became;

• I loved witnessing some of the character development from ME2 to this final game. Jack’s maturity arc is the obvious mention here, but this is something I noticed in several other characters as well;

• the inclusion of EDI as a squad member was a fantastic idea. It made for a refreshing, logical follower addition and it simultaneously contributed to several comedic moments and thought-provoking ones. Brilliant move.

Being my least favourite of the trilogy, however, means that I think ME3 has more (and more serious) problems than its predecessors. I could ‘nitpick’ here (the absence of mini-hacking games, the overuse of the Reaper chase system in the Galaxy map, the frustratingly slow dream sequences, the convoluted weapon upgrade system, etc). But this will already be a somewhat lengthy list, so I’ll leave those else aside to focus on what truly felt like a step down. Starting with the main one:

• I really need to get this off my chest because I honestly don’t know why it isn't criticised more often. As someone who has only experienced the ME story now, and has done so with all its integrated added content Citadel is one of the worst pieces of DLC I have ever played in a game, tone wise. I’m definitely okay with fan service when done right, but seriously? It was overly cheesy, out of place, ludicrous, poorly written, comedically forced, downright pointless. And it was made worse by the fact that, in order for it to make even the slightest bit of sense, it needed to have been played after the main story conclusion, which of course would’ve been impossible. I knew this was DLC immediately after starting the mission, something that never happened in any of the DLC included in ME and ME2 (a testament to how well they made it fit in the narrative of other two games). As it stands, Citadel it’s storytelling nonsense and, at least to me, felt like the essence of gaming cringe;

• the DLC offering as a whole, in fact, is all over the place in ME3. Leviathan felt like it should’ve been a part of the base game all along due to its narrative impact. From Ashes adds some interesting insight yet I couldn't help but feel that having a Prothean as a companion was weird and out of place. Omega was too long a distraction for what is essentially a drawn-out subplot completely disconnected from - and irrelevant to - the main story beats. And Citadel is, well, everything I said above.

• dialogue was overall slightly poorer. Interactions often felt verbally uninspired by ME standards, which was made more noticeable due to the contrast with the many amusing exchanges we also saw throughout the game;

• gone is the insistence in cover shooting (ME2 practically forced you to do it). Within this context, ME3 is an apt equivalent to what Dead Space 3 was in its franchise. Just like in DS3, there is a much lesser need to be tactical in combat and a much bigger push for the bombastic, cinematic action moments. This isn't always a bad thing, but in this case, it ultimately feels too at odds with the ME ethos to be seen as a positive for me; Both level design and map navigation are poorer and more confusing. In a game strongly pushing for explosions and relentless shooting and visual chaos, a bit more pathing clarity would’ve been appreciated;

• squad options as a whole felt kind of underwhelming. I loved seeing the return of some of the OGs, but to me, what was on offer felt qualitatively narrower than the squad awesomeness we got in ME2.

I probably wrote more about ME3 than I did about the other two, which is somewhat ironic since I didn’t enjoy it as much. And interestingly, I would’ve actually rated it lower if the other two didn't exist. The beauty and brilliance of the Mass Effect saga lies in sucking you into its alternate world with such might that you become powerless to resist, nor do you even want to. And I think those were the goggles I used to look at ME3. It is a perfectly fine game on its own, even with its flaws, but it becomes great solely because of its emotional baggage, which lures you into this attachment trap that, even if you do recognise, you don't want to let go of. I was sad when I finished Mass Effect 3, but I had my belly full: full of an incredible, massively epic, awe-inspiring galactic opera that made me enjoy space in an unparalleled way. Wonderful trilogy. 8.5