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[ClivePwned]

I'm not a major replayer of games in general but since I loved the Mass Effect games on my original playthrough as Male Shepard, I've slowly been replaying the trilogy. It started a few years ago when I replayed the first game on PC as FemShep but didn't continue on PC because I hated playing K+M and couldn't be assed dicking around with hacks to get controllers working. When ME2 and 3 went BC on Xbox late last year, I decided to finish the replay as Fem Shep. ME 2 was a great and weirdly streamlined and occasionally empty as I remembered and I finished this just before Xmas.

My memories of the first playthrough, before the DLC retconning where that i enjoyed the game and didn't have an issue with the 'can't have it end nicely wrapped up with a neat bow/ need to sacrifice something ending.' I didn't love it or hate, I just accepted that's the story Bioware wanted to tell. I understood the venom from some, but I didn't agree with it. I did feel annoyed that EA/Bioware wouldn't stand behind their work and ended up changing the ending (I still don't know what they went with).

I started ME3 about 10 days ago and finished this morning. Just basic on-disc content without the new ending or any DLC. What the hell went wrong with this game. Everyone died (well, enough did), every level is basically Horde Mode peppered with annoying Mini-Boss like the Banshees (god, I hate the fucking Banshees), and it was littered with cheap deaths. The more they tried to make the game like a third person shooter, the more the clunkiness and poor response of the controls rankled. I died way more on this than the previous games.

We didn't get all those cool moments on the ship like we did on ME2, nor did we see anything too interesting in terms of side missions. We didn't have the Mako or the hovercraft thing or strip mining the galaxy via the planet scanner. The levels had a few more things for you to interact with compared to 2 but it just feels the lesser game out of the three so far.

Comparing Male and Female sheperds, the Male actor sounded like he should be playing a gangster in a prohibition drama (he had that slightly nasal voice). Jennifer Hale's FemShep was perfect.

So, yeah, I guess I really didn't enjoy it as much. Maybe playing only a few weeks after ME2 was the problem, or maybe ME3 is just not anywhere as good. Maybe Bioware is only capable of great games by making a shitty one next to balance things out.

And fuck that sound on the galaxy map when the reapers show up. So the main reason for replaying now was to get hyped for the new game, which, doesn't look that great so far. Now, I think I will wait for bomba pricing. Even if its not a flop, EA games have a habit of dropping in price relatively quickly.

tl;dr I replayed ME3 and now I may not bother with Andromeda until a few price drops

 

[BigTnaples]

I'm not replaying the whole game, but playing the DLC now and enjoying the hell out of it.



Also, why would you okay the game with the ending not fixed on purpise, and then complain about it?

 

[Linkark07]

Yep, besides the awful ending, ME3 is disappointing in many aspects. I recall one of the reasons is because EA rushed Bioware to release this game, and sadly, the quality dropped just like DA2.

If you still want to try (and have the money because Fuck Bioware Points) then get Leviathan and Citadel. The former is a good DLC which add some new planets and the former is a great send off to all your crew members. And for me, Citadel is the perfect way for end Shepard story.

 

[John Kowalski]

WOOOOOOOOMMMP

 

[Bornstellar]

Citadel makes ME3 worth it.

Stuff like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKEJx1ap7Cc

 

[Coffee Dog]

I'm not replaying the whole game, but playing the DLC now and enjoying the hell out of it.



Also, why would you okay the game with the ending not fixed on purpise, and then complain about it?

The ending is never fixed, lol. Leviathan and Extended Cut make it not rushed to shit and attempt to set it up, but the ending is still the ending.

 

[gow3isben]

Unbelievable the hate ME3 gets. Best in franchise and all games of last generation. Far better visuals, far more mobile, varied, and better gameplay than ME2. Far more epic story in scope (which I often prefer, but that is a subjective thing). And I really thought gathering the whole world's resources to fight the final battle is a really neat concept. Phenomenal emotions and story (Grunt near death and Thane scenes in particular as well as that Garrus moment in the Citadel). Just a beautiful emotional rollercoaster throughout from start until 99% of the game. It was actually a thrilling climax right before that little ghost child thing appeared.

 

[Nielm]

It's a good game, but it wasn't just the ending that was bad.

 

[Makoto Yuki]

It's a good game, but it wasn't just the ending that was bad

Yup, the ending wasn't even the worst part. The missions, dialogue, story, side-quests just didn't feel compelling. I really did enjoy the gameplay especially the multiplayer, everything else around it was bland. Also, reusing multiplayer maps for one off missions? So bad.

A ton of the best stuff was DLC, From Ashes should have been part of the game, you can't just hide the best new character behind a pay wall. He was integrated so well into the game he feels rippes out.

Citadel's quality is the high bar set in ME3, but it's DLC.

 

[eot]

Unbelievable the hate ME3 gets. Best in franchise and all games of last generation. Far better visuals, far more mobile, varied, and better gameplay than ME2. Far more epic story in scope (which I often prefer, but that is a subjective thing). And I really thought gathering the whole world's resources to fight the final battle is a really neat concept. Phenomenal emotions and story (Grunt near death and Thane scenes in particular as well as that Garrus moment in the Citadel). Just a beautiful emotional rollercoaster throughout from start until 99% of the game. It was actually a thrilling climax right before that little ghost child thing appeared.

I disagree with several of those points. For example I don't think it's more varied at all, it clearly has way less enemy variety and the side quests are shit. Even if you count the nostalgia missions where you bump into ME2 characters. They're shit compared to the loyalty missions.

Gathering resources might be an okay premise on paper, but it falls apart when it doesn't pay off in the final act. Also, the game starts with the fucking vent kid dying, hardly a great opening, then goes to Mars where you meet now shit tier villain Illusive Man (good job ruining him in the most predictable way possible). Then you have the flashbacks to vent kid throughout the entire game. Hardly the height of emotional resonance.

Then there's the annoying reaper chase stuff, the lack of neutral conversation options, the fact that you can't holster your weapon, no hub outside the citadel (which isn't great at least pre-dlc).

It still has a lot of stuff I love, like Javik, but I think it's easily the weakest game in the series even if you ignore everything about the ending.

 

[GGNKovalski]

I enjoyed ME3 more than most but I do think it's the weakest in the trilogy. I like to think that EA made Bioware rush the hell out of it. It felt REALLY rushed and, in some instances, half-baked. It's a real shame that the best parts were in the DLC.

 

[EatChildren]

I recently did a final playthrough too, but with all DLC and finishing everything so I could finally pack the game away for good.

I don't agree with the criticisms against the enemies. I agree that many of the encounters do indeed regress to horde mode style arena waves, but I honestly feel even with its somewhat cumbersome animations and rigid control systems the actual combat is tremendous fun. There's a very satisfying gameplay loop in skill and weaponry mastery where there's a constant encouragement to play faster, more accurately, and smarter to speed up your DPS. And when everything goes right the sensation of setting off biotic and tech explosions, chaining headshots, ripping through armour, barriers, and shields, and clearing out massive high difficulty encounter waves with precision murder just feels so, so satisfying. That's keyboard and mouse though; aiming and controlling is easy and I definitely had no trouble nailing headshots on my insanity run.

For this reason I just adored playing through the game, even with its basic level design, because the combat is so on point.

I think narratively I've just conceded that it is what it is and that last playthrough was far less disappointing than usual. I've still got a number of huge grievances all across the board in the story being told and how, but generally I'm okay with a majority of it even if it means making some concessions to plausibility and logic. I actually really like the aspect of playing space negotiator, and even though it's shlocky I like that the narrative arc allowed for some solid planet hopping to staple locations that hadn't been visited yet (like Rannoch) while fully wrapping up more or less every single plot thread.

The reality is it's built somewhat similarly to Mass Effect 2 in that it's an action RPG with light narrative roleplaying, emphasis on the action. It really pushes the point, heavier than Mass Effect 2, that your presence in any mission is one of great hostility, so you end up with very little downtime outside of the Citadel and Normandy. And while it's not what I prefer, I'm happy with it in the context of the game's setting and themes.

You missed out by not playing the DLC though. The free Extended Cut adds some much needed exposition and simple sequences that tie events together far better, and all of the paid DLC is really quite good. Leviathan is a nice companion piece for the lore, as is From Ashes. And Omega has some of the best encounters in the series.

 

[Theslammer]

We didn't get all those cool moments on the ship like we did on ME2

Eh?

 

[Tony Redgrave]

I think it's clear that EA rushed BioWare in order to release it before current gen hit the market. It's not exactly a DAII situation (that was ridiculous) but it is still noticeable, especially in the lack of hub worlds and the awful final mission/rushed ending.

Still, game's pretty good with all the DLC, more so if you're invested in the characters/races and want resolution. Not as good as ME2 but still up there if you also count the fantastic multiplayer.

Also, I think that given the current negative attitude towards Andromeda people are going to be surprised, IMO it's going to be pretty solid and probably around ME2 levels of quality.

 

[Zakalwe]

I recently did a final playthrough too, but with all DLC and finishing everything so I could finally pack the game away for good.

I don't agree with the criticisms against the enemies. I agree that many of the encounters do indeed regress to horde mode style arena waves, but I honestly feel even with its somewhat cumbersome animations and rigid control systems the actual combat is tremendous fun. There's a very satisfying gameplay loop in skill and weaponry mastery where there's a constant encouragement to play faster, more accurately, and smarter to speed up your DPS. And when everything goes right the sensation of setting off biotic and tech explosions, chaining headshots, ripping through armour, barriers, and shields, and clearing out massive high difficulty encounter waves with precision murder just feels so, so satisfying. That's keyboard and mouse though; aiming and controlling is easy and I definitely had no trouble nailing headshots on my insanity run.

For this reason I just adored playing through the game, even with its basic level design, because the combat is so on point.

I think narratively I've just conceded that it is what it is and that last playthrough was far less disappointing than usual. I've still got a number of huge grievances all across the board in the story being told and how, but generally I'm okay with a majority of it even if it means making some concessions to plausibility and logic. I actually really like the aspect of playing space negotiator, and even though it's shlocky I like that the narrative arc allowed for some solid planet hopping to staple locations that hadn't been visited yet (like Rannoch) while fully wrapping up more or less every single plot thread.

The reality is it's built somewhat similarly to Mass Effect 2 in that it's an action RPG with light narrative roleplaying, emphasis on the action. It really pushes the point, heavier than Mass Effect 2, that your presence in any mission is one of great hostility, so you end up with very little downtime outside of the Citadel and Normandy. And while it's not what I prefer, I'm happy with it in the context of the game's setting and themes.

You missed out by not playing the DLC though. The free Extended Cut adds some much needed exposition and simple sequences that tie events together far better, and all of the paid DLC is really quite good. Leviathan is a nice companion piece for the lore, as is From Ashes. And Omega has some of the best encounters in the series.

This is everything I wanted to say.

Also Male Shep VA is good in 3.

 

[Nabbis]

I think it's clear that EA rushed BioWare in order to release it before current gen hit the market. It's not exactly a DAII situation (that was ridiculous) but it is still noticeable, especially in the lack of hub worlds and the awful final mission/rushed ending.

It's every game since ME2 that's been rushed and feels half-assed. Even Andromeda feels like it, for now.

 

[EGM1966]

Ah Mass Effect. Always had promise and had some great elements but always squandered it in the end with poor narrative choices and ineffectual resolutions.

TBH the main issue in terms of "what happened" is they created a problem "how to three foot soldiers with minor weapon weaponry defeat a galaxy wide attack by huge sentient machines" they couldn't resolve. The entire plot in hindsight was ridiculous, particularly the idea in ME3 that all these worlds under devastating simultaneous attack would hold out for a fraction of the time required by the plot. They painted themselves into the usual Deus Ex Machina is the only way out then failed to produce even a vauguely acceptable Deus Ex Machina to resolve it.

The series should focus on smaller scale encounters more suited to a small ground team combined with exploration/RPG.

 

[Raysoul]

THIS CYBORG NINJA IS THE WORST CYBORG NINJA IN ANY MEDIUM.

Ugly mask, Bullet Sponge, Plot Armor, Not really a Ninja, and a Cereal Killer.

 

[Tony Redgrave]

It's every game since ME2 that's been rushed and feels half-assed. Even Andromeda feels like it, for now.

I don't know about that, game's been in development for five years.

 

[spekkeh]

It was a good game, but practically all of the good bits were in the DLC, which is indefensible. Scummy practice by EA. From Ashes, Leviathan and Citadel are a good deal better than most of the main game, which only really shined in Priority Tuchanka and Priority Rannoch (but what missions they were, easily the best of the series) and the brotime with some of the cast members like shooting cans with Garrus.

Whatever people say I cannot hate a game that gave me those moments. But the fact that they gave the series to the team that was responsible for all the weak missions does give me some concern.

 

[ClivePwned]

Eh?

I felt there was more reason to go around and talk to people on the ship in 2 compared to 3. When I replayed 3, I just had the reporter come up to Shep's quarters (one other person who offered to come up to Shep's quarters died before we had the chance. The new Yeoman suggested I see the Doctor and that's it. On ME2 there was "go see Jack, go see Zaeed, go see Than, etc. " I feel 2 did a better job of getting you to where you need to be.

I recently did a final playthrough too, but with all DLC and finishing everything so I could finally pack the game away for good.

I don't agree with the criticisms against the enemies. I agree that many of the encounters do indeed regress to horde mode style arena waves, but I honestly feel even with its somewhat cumbersome animations and rigid control systems the actual combat is tremendous fun. There's a very satisfying gameplay loop in skill and weaponry mastery where there's a constant encouragement to play faster, more accurately, and smarter to speed up your DPS. And when everything goes right the sensation of setting off biotic and tech explosions, chaining headshots, ripping through armour, barriers, and shields, and clearing out massive high difficulty encounter waves with precision murder just feels so, so satisfying. That's keyboard and mouse though; aiming and controlling is easy and I definitely had no trouble nailing headshots on my insanity run.

For this reason I just adored playing through the game, even with its basic level design, because the combat is so on point.

I think narratively I've just conceded that it is what it is and that last playthrough was far less disappointing than usual. I've still got a number of huge grievances all across the board in the story being told and how, but generally I'm okay with a majority of it even if it means making some concessions to plausibility and logic. I actually really like the aspect of playing space negotiator, and even though it's shlocky I like that the narrative arc allowed for some solid planet hopping to staple locations that hadn't been visited yet (like Rannoch) while fully wrapping up more or less every single plot thread.

The reality is it's built somewhat similarly to Mass Effect 2 in that it's an action RPG with light narrative roleplaying, emphasis on the action. It really pushes the point, heavier than Mass Effect 2, that your presence in any mission is one of great hostility, so you end up with very little downtime outside of the Citadel and Normandy. And while it's not what I prefer, I'm happy with it in the context of the game's setting and themes.

You missed out by not playing the DLC though. The free Extended Cut adds some much needed exposition and simple sequences that tie events together far better, and all of the paid DLC is really quite good. Leviathan is a nice companion piece for the lore, as is From Ashes. And Omega has some of the best encounters in the series.

Yeah, but I was just wanting to finish. I don't dislike the series or even this game, I stand by my feeling its not as good as the other two, not unusual in series with some insanely good installments (like how Uncharted 3 was disappointed coming after 2).

It's a good game, but it wasn't just the ending that was bad.

Fuck him

also, saying good stuff was in the DLC doesn't mean much if most people who buy the game probably aren't going to get the DLC. That's really EA being EA.

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

Outside of the ending, which is obviously terrible, the game has a lot of missteps.

1. Kai Leng is built up to be a menacing antagonist, but never truly earns it. He's kind of lame and the game thinks he's amazingly cool.
2. The game is built around an ancient superweapon never before mentioned in the series whose mechanism of operation is not revealed until the final moments of the game. This makes it feel like you're building towards a complete unknown, instead of working towards something coherent that you can really imagine. What's the plan for defeating the Reapers? No idea, let's just throw everything behind something random. All 3 games have suffered from this to some extent, but the third suffers the most by far.
3. The crew is smaller and less interesting than the second game.
4. Connecting single player score to multiplayer. Bad.
5. The marshaling of resources and allies in the game leads up to an unsatisfying final battle. I don't mean the ending-ending, but the process of putting everybody into action. They serve as nothing but a meatshield for the final commando-raid on Earth, everyone is sort of interchangeable and don't bring anything unique to the table.
6. EDI getting a robot body was a mistake not just in execution, but in principle. Her character was weakened dramatically by funneling her down the "Pinocchio/Data wants to become more human" storyline and the romance with Joker was abysmal. EDI went from being one of the best written characters in ME2 to being just another cliche.
7. The Geth are dramatically less interesting than in ME2. Their Quarian-Geth war was highly contrived and seems to exist only because they realized they needed to wrap it up in a bow before the end of ME3. It was contrived not just in its setup, but in how it played out - the Geth being devastated instantly, Reapers in charge again because fuck your past game choices, the Geth and Quarians having a final showdown where neither side is capable of retreat for no particular reason, the guarantee of total genocide in the event of one species getting the upper hand without the player character there to mediate...
8. Why is there a Prothean squadmate as day-one DLC? Shouldn't he be a far more important character than he is?
9. Rachni are back in everybody's game because fuck your choices.
10. Illusive Man is indoctrinated because of course he is.
11. Cerberus is suddenly this massive force with massive fleets and massive armies for no reason. They're like fucking SPECTRE multiplied by Cobra from GI Joe.
12. The decision to have a recurring motif of a boy in the playground was poor. And unskippable for some reason *shakes fist*

IMO the gravest sin of the above is the fact that ME3 didn't want to substantively invest in player agency on any level. I'd been doing apologetics for bioware on the internet up to this point based on the idea that, ultimately, they were not going to be able to have meaningful choices until the final game, because otherwise they'd always need to set up sequels. I was convinced that as the final chapter, they'd go all out, they'd let the story run off in crazy directions and have major consequences depending on your decisions. I was so fucking wrong. ME3 goes out of its way to trivialize player choice, right up to the final insult where the ending cut-scenes are 95% the same, with swapped colours. If the company isn't even going to invest in different cutscenes for the final act of its third game in the multmillion seller series, they certainly weren't going to invest in having entire levels just for certain people.

I can't say much bad about the core mechanics. The weight and cooldown stuff was a stroke of genius, the shooting is as tight as the series ever got and they actually reintroduced more player customization options by reintroducing weapon mods. There's quite a lot of enemies and they're usually pretty good to fight. And it's not all totally doom and gloom for the story beats - some of it's quite good, like in Tuchanka. And as crappy as I think some parts of the Geth-Quarian situation were, it always warms the cockles of my heart to see the quarians burn.

 

[EatChildren]

I find it interesting that twice now BioWare has attempted to craft a secondary experience economy alongside the player avatar with a presented intent to be woven into the narrative and game progression, but in both cases have fallen drastically short of its influence being genuinely meaningful.

In Mass Effect 3 we have the war assets, which in theory is a fine idea; accruing military forces, influence, equipment, and scientific support to strengthen galactic resolve against the Reapers. But the significance of this value is so insultingly trivial that its actual influence is borderline negligible, left to marginally different pre rendered cutscenes and availability of the three incoherent ending choices.

And with Dragon Age: Inquisition you have points and influence, intended to communicate how well represented the Inquisition is throughout the nations and their hold over regions. Yet again the meaningfulness of these attributes are poorly implemented. Stronger than Mass Effect 3, points can at the very least be spent on permanent advisory buffs to increase carry weight, combat strength, store discounts, etc. And the idea of requiring X points to unlock new regions and missions on the global map makes sense, but the grindy implementation is unrewarding and more frustrating than intended.

It's interesting to see with Andromeda they seem to be again adding in a secondary levelling economy, this time with the Nexus, but have stated that the game does not have mission gateways or point requirements of any sort. Going by the premise, I'm guessing that by levelling up the Nexus we're in turn just growing it, developing it further until it's fully complete. And it seems like it'll mostly exist as just a side feature.

 

[Patryn]

I find it interesting that twice now BioWare has attempted to craft a secondary experience economy alongside the player avatar with a presented intent to be woven into the narrative and game progression, but in both cases have fallen drastically short of its influence being genuinely meaningful.

In Mass Effect 3 we have the war assets, which in theory is a fine idea; accruing military forces, influence, equipment, and scientific support to strengthen galactic resolve against the Reapers. But the significance of this value is so insultingly trivial that its actual influence is borderline negligible, left to marginally different pre rendered cutscenes and availability of the three incoherent ending choices.

And with Dragon Age: Inquisition you have points and influence, intended to communicate how well represented the Inquisition is throughout the nations and their hold over regions. Yet again the meaningfulness of these attributes are poorly implemented. Stronger than Mass Effect 3, points can at the very least be spent on permanent advisory buffs to increase carry weight, combat strength, store discounts, etc. And the idea of requiring X points to unlock new regions and missions on the global map makes sense, but the grindy implementation is unrewarding and more frustrating than intended.

It's interesting to see with Andromeda they seem to be again adding in a secondary levelling economy, this time with the Nexus, but have stated that the game does not have mission gateways or point requirements of any sort. Going by the premise, I'm guessing that by levelling up the Nexus we're in turn just growing it, developing it further until it's fully complete. And it seems like it'll mostly exist as just a side feature.

At least for Dragon Age Inquisition, the whole Power and Influence systems got fucking GUTTED by the need to run on last gen consoles. There are presentations out of there of what Inquisition was intended to be, and instead of it being solely used to get some small perks and gate content, you were supposed to use it to help defend positions and make actual changes in the world. For instance, I believe in at least one example they showed that there was supposed to be a sequence where you would be forced to choose between either the village of Crestwood or your Keep there, unless you had either enough power or influence to be able to save both.

I suspect that, if anything, Andromeda will take queues from the Inquisition that almost was, and not the crippled final product we actually got.

As for the ME3 multiplayer thing, the two things I hated were the blatant lying about how you didn't need to do MP to get the "best" ending (I believe they justified that by how I think you could make up the same points from the mobile tie-in game), and how fast your readiness rating would drop if you didn't keep playing multiplayer.

 

[Theslammer]

I felt there was more reason to go around and talk to people on the ship in 2 compared to 3. When I replayed 3, I just had the reporter come up to Shep's quarters (one other person who offered to come up to Shep's quarters died before we had the chance. The new Yeoman suggested I see the Doctor and that's it. On ME2 there was "go see Jack, go see Zaeed, go see Than, etc. " I feel 2 did a better job of getting you to where you need to be.

But the best moments on the ship were in 3. All the crew members mingled with each other, Tali became drunk, Liara and Javik straight up tore up a room, etc. etc. The ship felt its liveliest in 3, and different members being on the ship would trigger different interactions.

 

[BrassDragon]

It's interesting to see with Andromeda they seem to be again adding in a secondary levelling economy, this time with the Nexus, but have stated that the game does not have mission gateways or point requirements of any sort. Going by the premise, I'm guessing that by levelling up the Nexus we're in turn just growing it, developing it further until it's fully complete. And it seems like it'll mostly exist as just a side feature.

This is a good point and it's something that has bugged me in both ME3 and DA:I. These systems take away from the biggest draw and joy of these games, the narrative.

When you save the Rachni queen, you should see that choice reflected in the game's story, in the things people say, in the cut scenes or the things you see when you look out the window of your space ship. Instead you get a flat 'Military Strength: +100' and a codex entry - there is hardly any narrative payoff.

Inquisition promised to do better but it amounted to little more than power-ups and gated content. And even then, I don't understand why it had to be abstracted into flat points - why can't the game just acknowledge that I have achieved 'An Alliance with the Lioness Empress of Orlais' instead of throwing 'Power +1' at me?

It doesn't feel rewarding, it feels like a shortcut that the developers took to avoid dealing with the consequences of your choices.

 

[Vanadium]

Never finished. Whatever problems it had, and there were problems, I must have played through ME:2 maybe five times or so. ME:3 really felt like they leaned more on the action/shooter angle and less on the story. This is what bothers me about all the trailers for Andromeda, it just looks like another third person cover shooter. I don't really care about the combat or graphics, I care more about the character plot lines.

In the end Miranda hated me. No matter what I did. That's why I kept going back to ME:2.

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

I find it interesting that twice now BioWare has attempted to craft a secondary experience economy alongside the player avatar with a presented intent to be woven into the narrative and game progression, but in both cases have fallen drastically short of its influence being genuinely meaningful.

In Mass Effect 3 we have the war assets, which in theory is a fine idea; accruing military forces, influence, equipment, and scientific support to strengthen galactic resolve against the Reapers. But the significance of this value is so insultingly trivial that its actual influence is borderline negligible, left to marginally different pre rendered cutscenes and availability of the three incoherent ending choices.

And with Dragon Age: Inquisition you have points and influence, intended to communicate how well represented the Inquisition is throughout the nations and their hold over regions. Yet again the meaningfulness of these attributes are poorly implemented. Stronger than Mass Effect 3, points can at the very least be spent on permanent advisory buffs to increase carry weight, combat strength, store discounts, etc. And the idea of requiring X points to unlock new regions and missions on the global map makes sense, but the grindy implementation is unrewarding and more frustrating than intended.

It's interesting to see with Andromeda they seem to be again adding in a secondary levelling economy, this time with the Nexus, but have stated that the game does not have mission gateways or point requirements of any sort. Going by the premise, I'm guessing that by levelling up the Nexus we're in turn just growing it, developing it further until it's fully complete. And it seems like it'll mostly exist as just a side feature.

They were obviously trying to keep War Assets as simple as possible. But they could have been good, great even, if it kept track of the different types of war assets. Fleets, ground troops, science/research, engineering. What if there's 3 different plans for how to defeat the Reapers and you need different types of assets to make that plan come to fruition? What if you have to make tough choices between something you want to do emotionally, and something you need pragmatically?

You should also have had opportunities to deploy war assets beyond just the final fight. Got the Turian fleet? Great, you can do a special mission that requires the support of a task force of large warships. Got the Krogan ground pounders? Awesome, now you can send the Krogans to fight alongside you in another mission, en masse. Maybe they only help you a little bit directly, but you can see them fighting in the distance and watch them in cutscenes launch massive ground asssaults. Shit, you only had to do 2-3 of these kinds of cool missions to really give the player a feel for the war as this epic thing.

 

[ClivePwned]

Never finished. Whatever problems it had, and there were problems, I must have played through ME:2 maybe five times or so. ME:3 really felt like they leaned more on the action/shooter angle and less on the story. This is what bothers me about all the trailers for Andromeda, it just looks like another third person cover shooter. I don't really care about the combat or graphics, I care more about the character plot lines.

In the end Miranda hated me. No matter what I did. That's why I kept going back to ME:2.

Did you keep doing Jack's loyalty mission? Miranda gets really snarky towards you if you do that mission (return to where Jack was a held as a child) and won't talk to you outside of mission stuff.

 

[Patryn]

They were obviously trying to keep War Assets as simple as possible. But they could have been good, great even, if it kept track of the different types of war assets. Fleets, ground troops, science/research, engineering. What if there's 3 different plans for how to defeat the Reapers and you need different types of assets to make that plan come to fruition? What if you have to make tough choices between something you want to do emotionally, and something you need pragmatically?

You should also have had opportunities to deploy war assets beyond just the final fight. Got the Turian fleet? Great, you can do a special mission that requires the support of a task force of large warships. Got the Krogan ground pounders? Awesome, now you can send the Krogans to fight alongside you in another mission, en masse. Maybe they only help you a little bit directly, but you can see them fighting in the distance and watch them in cutscenes launch massive ground asssaults. Shit, you only had to do 2-3 of these kinds of cool missions to really give the player a feel for the war as this epic thing.

They really needed the final mission of ME3 to be something resembling the Suicide Mission, but instead of just choosing squadmates for roles, you would assign your war assets.

 

[eot]

Outside of the ending, which is obviously terrible, the game has a lot of missteps.

1. Kai Leng is built up to be a menacing antagonist, but never truly earns it. He's kind of lame and the game thinks he's amazingly cool.
2. The game is built around an ancient superweapon never before mentioned in the series whose mechanism of operation is not revealed until the final moments of the game. This makes it feel like you're building towards a complete unknown, instead of working towards something coherent that you can really imagine. What's the plan for defeating the Reapers? No idea, let's just throw everything behind something random. All 3 games have suffered from this to some extent, but the third suffers the most by far.
3. The crew is smaller and less interesting than the second game.
4. Connecting single player score to multiplayer. Bad.
5. The marshaling of resources and allies in the game leads up to an unsatisfying final battle. I don't mean the ending-ending, but the process of putting everybody into action. They serve as nothing but a meatshield for the final commando-raid on Earth, everyone is sort of interchangeable and don't bring anything unique to the table.
6. EDI getting a robot body was a mistake not just in execution, but in principle. Her character was weakened dramatically by funneling her down the "Pinocchio/Data wants to become more human" storyline and the romance with Joker was abysmal. EDI went from being one of the best written characters in ME2 to being just another cliche.
7. The Geth are dramatically less interesting than in ME2. Their Quarian-Geth war was highly contrived and seems to exist only because they realized they needed to wrap it up in a bow before the end of ME3. It was contrived not just in its setup, but in how it played out - the Geth being devastated instantly, Reapers in charge again because fuck your past game choices, the Geth and Quarians having a final showdown where neither side is capable of retreat for no particular reason, the guarantee of total genocide in the event of one species getting the upper hand without the player character there to mediate...
8. Why is there a Prothean squadmate as day-one DLC? Shouldn't he be a far more important character than he is?
9. Rachni are back in everybody's game because fuck your choices.
   [*] Illusive Man is indoctrinated because of course he is.
10. Cerberus is suddenly this massive force with massive fleets and massive armies for no reason. They're like fucking SPECTRE multiplied by Cobra from GI Joe.
11. The decision to have a recurring motif of a boy in the playground was poor. And unskippable for some reason *shakes fist*

Great list. The bolded one bothered me a lot. Many people complained about the main plot in ME2, but The Illusive Man was the thing that made it work for me. It was never quite clear what his intentions were, or to which extent you could trust him. Coupled with the great performance by Martin Sheen he was one of the highlights of the game. In ME2 they turn him in to a cackling villain, gutting the one thing that made him interesting: his ambiguity, or elusiveness if you will.

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

Great list. The bolded one bothered me a lot. Many people complained about the main plot in ME2, but The Illusive Man was the thing that made it work for me. It was never quite clear what his intentions were, or to which extent you could trust him. Coupled with the great performance by Martin Sheen he was one of the highlights of the game. In ME2 they turn him in to a cackling villain, gutting the one thing that made him interesting: his ambiguity, or elusiveness if you will.

They tried to make a mirror of Saren with TIM, but they really started too late to make it work effectively. He was fully aware of the danger of reaper technology but took risks with it anyway. He was super careful, always operating through a series of proxies, which makes it kind of shit that he was apparently just going down this path the whole time.

There's like a double annoyance for me here. On the one hand, by making him indoctrinated they just get to sweep any moral ambiguity to the side. He's working with the reapers. Any previous ethical debate about what was and was not justified in the pursuit of securing humanity's future is conveniently sidelined. Previously, you could say "well he's a human supremacist, but it's in his best interest to stop the Reapers, which will also align with galactic interest". Now you can't, because he's just a bad guy and is working with them. Major downgrade. But on the other hand, his plan to control the Reapers gets shoehorned into the ending of the game anyway, and not via The Illusive Man. You can just magically do what his plan was the whole time but with no real negative side effects, the Control ending is handed to you on a silver platter by starchild.

If you were going to give The Illusive Man's plan as an option for the ending, wouldn't it have been a smarter idea to actually have one of the endings involving cooperating with TIM and Cerberus to that end? But of course, they needed to be 100% bad guys the whole time from the start of the game, so they try to have their cake and eat it to.

 

[EatChildren]

Cerberus in general was handled dreadfully in the final game entirely as a means to justify set pieces and narrative beats. I can kinda buy Tim being indoctrinated as he does have a rich history of fucking with Reaper tech (evident in the books and comics, too), which is always a bad idea. But it's such a boring and trite narrative arc that's already been done (agreed, purely to echo Saren) and undermines much of what Cerberus could be even with there existing ridiculousness.

Mass Effect 3 positions Cerberus as deus ex machina. They've a literally limitless resource of scientists and money, and thus can own any establishment and research program you can imagine all across the galaxy. They've enough military and weaponry to operate as an army, and thus can be involved in every single conflict in some capacity. They're impossible to find and expose, and thus literally anybody or anything can be Cerberus no matter their position and power. Their reach and knowledge is limitless and omnipotent, and thus can conveniently show up whenever exposition or drama is required no matter the planet or timeliness. And finally Tim is indoctrinated, thus Reapers are the ultimate influence justifying every horrific and nonsensical act they commit.

I like shooting Cerberus. They make for good gameplay. And I like engaging with Tim, mainly for the performance. But man, Cerberus fucking suck as a narrative tool. It's such a lazy idea by the time Mass Effect 3 rolls around. The ultimate Big Bad contrivance. Pencil them in when you need something because who gives a shit.