1966 réponses à ce sujet

[Terror_K]

Going to repost something I wrote in another (now closed) topic since it covers a lot of my issues:-

The ending(s) aren't ME3's only flaws, they're just one of the biggest, most detracting and the ones everybody is going on about.

For one thing, there's the character face import, which has gone beyond a fiasco. Given the promises from BioWare and intent of the trilogy, the fact that it was broken at launch was unforgivable as it is, but to make matters worse we've since been given a patch that claims to fix the issue but just outright doesn't, and not only that, people have discovered that some Shepard faces are literally impossible to create or recreate in ME3 because the facial options are simply not there. That is beyond ludicrous and to state how mind-boggingly bad that is can't be put into words. You've got a series based entirely around carrying a completely customisable character through a trilogy, and not only do you guys not have this working at launch, but whoever designed the CC cut out options entirely? Seriously?! The term "WTF?!!" does not even come close to covering how poorly planned, programmed and designed this major fubar is. So right out of the box, before the player is even into the game, if they're importing in the manner the series was designed for, they're already screwed over. It's the equivalent of trying to build a world class soccer team to take on the best in the world, but not even picking a goalie and leaving it completely undefended for the entire game. That's how bad the planning was here and how outright stupid whoever was in charge of the CC design was. What's the point of wasting time making a brand new default Femshep and adding more hair options if a quarter of the options from the previous titles aren't even there.

And that's before we even get into the gameplay. ME3 nailed the shooter mechanics and combat, I'll give it that, but at the cost of pretty much everything that made the original games what they were. I'd even go so far to say it was the core gameplay that suffered and was greatly reduced in ME3, which is NOT the combat, but the roleplaying, dialogue and choices.

For starters, only two dialogue options 90% of the time, even with "Full Decisions" on. Why "Full decisions" is so damn simplified and watered down compared to just the default way things were in ME1 and ME2 that "Full Decisions" is supposed to represent is beyond me. The third neutral option barely makes a showing at all, not to mention that the amount of Charm/Indimidate options in the entire game equates to such a pitiful amount I could probably count them on both hands and not run out of finers. As I've said before, there were more Charm/Intimidate opportunities on Noveria in ME1 alone than in ALL of ME3.

Then there's the autodialogue, with Shepard running his/her mouth off without me, the player, doing a damn thing. This happens far too often, so much so I wonder why there's any dialogue choices at all. I'm never going to touch "Action Mode" but I get the strong feeling that given how much Shepard yammers on without me picking a damn thing and the amount of times I'm just given two options that are either not that different or simply "Jesus or Hitler" that I'd barely be missing out on anything. Why you guys wasted your time programming the different game styles (Narrative, RPG, Action, etc.) is beyond me given how little effort seemed to be put into the dialogue itself.

Then there's the fact that 80% of the time you talk with your crew, they're Zaeed and Kasumi all over again. Here's a test for you Stanley (or any other BioWare employee who may be reading) to see how much BioWare supposedly "listens" to its fans: while Zaeed and Kasumi were generally enjoyed by fans as DLC companions for ME2, what was the most commonly griped about aspect about them? Here's a clue... it's something you did to the entire Mass Effect 3 crew whenever you talk with them more often than not! I go to talk with my L.I. after a long absense for the first time, and do I get a proper cutscene with a dialogue wheel and choices? No... I just get her standing there saying something I have no control over as I click on her, pressing her like a button. I finally get Ashley back after her accident and onto the Normandy again, and does she have anything to say and do I get a dialogue wheel and a cinematic scene? No, I just get, "Hey, Shepard" and that's it. With the rare exceptions here and there, my crew have become less like squadmates, friends and companions and more like talking plush toys I can go around and squeeze or yank the pull string on every so often. I enjoyed that they moved around a little more, there was inter-party banter and we got the odd moment on The Citadel with them, but it wasn't worth it to get "Tickle Me Garrus" and "Speak and Say Liara."

On top of it all, the ship ended up becoming boring in the end, as you had to run all around it every visit from top to bottom and back again, just to make sure you'd found everything. The Citadel had the same issue. For example, if you speak to everybody else aboard the Normandy before coming across drunk Tali at the bar and you have to go back and revisit them all just to see if it unlocks some drunk Tali banter, because it won't happen if you don't see her first. And then you slog all the way back just to find that all that happens is James say, "hey" again. *sigh*

The Citadel and the Normandy were highlights in the other games, but the execution of them in ME3 made them into a chore I was sick of dealing with. Not to mention all the samey fetch-quests that took up 90% of the sidequests (with the rest pretty much just cheap rehashes of MP maps as you just kill guys). It was the most tedious and hamfisted, lazy-ass pieces of DA2 all over again, as you hunted down every race's lost artifacts from random scans and brought them back. What's this? An interesting quest to the elcor homeworld to rescue some elcor? Wow! That actually sounds like... oh wait, it's just another fetch-quest where you click on the planet and it's all done for you. Oh, and half of them are just found sitting in the Spectre terminal. All in all, ME3 sidequests were the worst of the trilogy.

Not that the main quests were much better. The writing was fairly solid, they had some great epic and emotional moments and the level-design was definitely better than ME2's. But damn... were they linear as all hell. Not only were there barely any choices during them so they ended up almost all playing out the same, but the entire structure was linear throughout the entire game. No freedom for the player to go where they want when they want... it has to be Mars, Palaven's Moon, Sur'Kesh, etc. in that order without fail in every playthrough. As much as some people may moan about the BioWare pattern of, "Tutorial Place, Forced Secondary Place and then 3 to 5 Locations You Can Do In Any Order" at least that pattern gave the player some freedom. That's non-existent in ME3. Yes... players said they wan't a more focused story than ME2's was, but that doesn't mean completely on the rails from A to B to C to D, etc. ME1, KotOR and DAO all proved you can have a focused story that unfolds without forcing the players where to go. BioWare said this was supposed to be the most diverse of the trilogy and give players the most freedom since it was the last part, but were' restricted far more than in ME1 or ME2 in ME3.

Which leads to another promise that was broken: our choices mattering. They just outright didn't. ME2 was already guilty of BioWare's lazy way of dealing with variations: either trivialise it, sweep it under the rug or offer a weak substitution. ME3 suffered this even worse, and it was, again, supposed to be the part where all our choices were shown to matter and had real diversity. Save the Rachni Queen or kill her? Doesn't matter, same result. How about those people who lived or died in ME1 and ME2? Doesn't matter, somebody will just step in and take their place and dialogue on the exact same mission. This goes for the likes of The Council, Wrex, Mordin, Grunt, etc. It doesn't matter what you did in ME1 or ME2, it's still exactly the same game with the same missions done in the same order and the same outcome and same ending. Even the Virmire Survivor was cut out of half the game so the devs didn't have to put any effort into their return it seems. No wonder the endings didn't reflect our choices, because they never matter in any of the rest of the game either, so why should they at the end. All they countered towards was a stupid, arbitrary number called "Galactic Readiness" that has no real bearing on anything and is just a counter to indicate whether once the end comes you're "Kind of Screwed," "Really Screwed" or "Totally Screwed." Again, this was the final part where BioWare said they could "go nuts" and that our choices would be really diverse. Another lie.

And then there's the endings. 'Nuff said there. It's all been covered more than enough times.

The point is, ME3 has major issues even without the endings, and it seems largely because the focus has shifted away from what really mattered and when to other things that were less important. Kinect Support, Multiplayer, Different Game modes, etc. and even the combat all seemed to be far more crucial than the factor that to me (and thus I'm sure many other Mass Effect fans) was supposed to be the most crucial, key and core of the series: the dialogue, the roleplaying, the choices and satisfying consequences that should come from those things.

And yes, I was calling for more statistical RPG elements, such as power evolutions and diversity, weapon modification and more customisation as a whole. But that was because despite my concerns about the direction ME3 was going, I didn't really think for one second that the dialogue, choices and other roleplaying elements were going to take as much of a hit and be watered down as much as they were. I suspected after ME2 that the choices and consequences weren't going to be as fulfulling as I'd hoped and we were promised, but I still expected a far better job than this. I didn't expect things like the Rachni Queen choice to be so utterly pointless as they turned out to be. But I certainly didn't expect as much autodialogue as we got, the ME2 DLC Squaddie treatment we got for the whole crew and the complete lack of dialogue choices, not to mention so few Charm/Intimidate opportunities.

ME3 took all the things I loved most about the other two games and watered them down, and as much as I complained about ME2's lack of hardcore, statistical RPG mechanics, it at least didn't skimp on the roleplaying and dialogue choices. ME3 just felt so half-assed and dumbed down in this regard. And that's why I think it's the worst of the trilogy, even if it did nail the combat, have better designed levels, bring back modding, diversify skills more, get rid of Mission Complete screens, arbitrary XP gains and other annoying aspects of ME2.

[omikron199]

Quick review - game was good, ending ruined all game, series, and made me depressed.

mass effect 3 = 0,5/10

[ShepardTheHopeful]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA         
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
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HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA               HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
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Modifié par ShepardTheHopeful, 15 avril 2012 - 09:16 .

[xichus]

A review? The last ten minutes of the game took away my character's autonomy; rendered every choice I made in the entire saga moot; offered no chance at meaningful victory, and no satisfying closure whatsoever.

I was prepared to have my good-guy Shep die to save the galaxy, if need be, but this?

The great pity is, prior to that odious end-sequence, I loved Mass Effect 3 as much as I loved the previous two games. For the record, Mass Effect as a whole was my favorite game since I started gaming back in the days of amber-colored monochrome monitors. Notice that I said "was"

Yes, I saw Dr. Ray's letter promising "clarification" DLC. I don't care about further rationalization of the heavy-handed "diabolus ex machina" non sequitur ending we got. I wanted another option. I wanted my character and my choices to mean something.

A review? A nearly perfect game snatched away from the players at the last with an incredulous end sequence which retroactively nullified all of what we did throughout the series.

I'm not angry. I'm colossally disappointed. It astonishes me that this act of developer fiat even made it into the game without someone pointing out its contentious nature.

Depressing to see something I loved so much become so strange to me now. Sad. Truly sad.

[ioannisdenton]

Terror_K wrote...

Going to repost something I wrote in another (now closed) topic since it covers a lot of my issues:-

The ending(s) aren't ME3's only flaws, they're just one of the biggest, most detracting and the ones everybody is going on about.

For one thing, there's the character face import, which has gone beyond a fiasco. Given the promises from BioWare and intent of the trilogy, the fact that it was broken at launch was unforgivable as it is, but to make matters worse we've since been given a patch that claims to fix the issue but just outright doesn't, and not only that, people have discovered that some Shepard faces are literally impossible to create or recreate in ME3 because the facial options are simply not there. That is beyond ludicrous and to state how mind-boggingly bad that is can't be put into words. You've got a series based entirely around carrying a completely customisable character through a trilogy, and not only do you guys not have this working at launch, but whoever designed the CC cut out options entirely? Seriously?! The term "WTF?!!" does not even come close to covering how poorly planned, programmed and designed this major fubar is. So right out of the box, before the player is even into the game, if they're importing in the manner the series was designed for, they're already screwed over. It's the equivalent of trying to build a world class soccer team to take on the best in the world, but not even picking a goalie and leaving it completely undefended for the entire game. That's how bad the planning was here and how outright stupid whoever was in charge of the CC design was. What's the point of wasting time making a brand new default Femshep and adding more hair options if a quarter of the options from the previous titles aren't even there.

And that's before we even get into the gameplay. ME3 nailed the shooter mechanics and combat, I'll give it that, but at the cost of pretty much everything that made the original games what they were. I'd even go so far to say it was the core gameplay that suffered and was greatly reduced in ME3, which is NOT the combat, but the roleplaying, dialogue and choices.

For starters, only two dialogue options 90% of the time, even with "Full Decisions" on. Why "Full decisions" is so damn simplified and watered down compared to just the default way things were in ME1 and ME2 that "Full Decisions" is supposed to represent is beyond me. The third neutral option barely makes a showing at all, not to mention that the amount of Charm/Indimidate options in the entire game equates to such a pitiful amount I could probably count them on both hands and not run out of finers. As I've said before, there were more Charm/Intimidate opportunities on Noveria in ME1 alone than in ALL of ME3.

Then there's the autodialogue, with Shepard running his/her mouth off without me, the player, doing a damn thing. This happens far too often, so much so I wonder why there's any dialogue choices at all. I'm never going to touch "Action Mode" but I get the strong feeling that given how much Shepard yammers on without me picking a damn thing and the amount of times I'm just given two options that are either not that different or simply "Jesus or Hitler" that I'd barely be missing out on anything. Why you guys wasted your time programming the different game styles (Narrative, RPG, Action, etc.) is beyond me given how little effort seemed to be put into the dialogue itself.

Then there's the fact that 80% of the time you talk with your crew, they're Zaeed and Kasumi all over again. Here's a test for you Stanley (or any other BioWare employee who may be reading) to see how much BioWare supposedly "listens" to its fans: while Zaeed and Kasumi were generally enjoyed by fans as DLC companions for ME2, what was the most commonly griped about aspect about them? Here's a clue... it's something you did to the entire Mass Effect 3 crew whenever you talk with them more often than not! I go to talk with my L.I. after a long absense for the first time, and do I get a proper cutscene with a dialogue wheel and choices? No... I just get her standing there saying something I have no control over as I click on her, pressing her like a button. I finally get Ashley back after her accident and onto the Normandy again, and does she have anything to say and do I get a dialogue wheel and a cinematic scene? No, I just get, "Hey, Shepard" and that's it. With the rare exceptions here and there, my crew have become less like squadmates, friends and companions and more like talking plush toys I can go around and squeeze or yank the pull string on every so often. I enjoyed that they moved around a little more, there was inter-party banter and we got the odd moment on The Citadel with them, but it wasn't worth it to get "Tickle Me Garrus" and "Speak and Say Liara."

On top of it all, the ship ended up becoming boring in the end, as you had to run all around it every visit from top to bottom and back again, just to make sure you'd found everything. The Citadel had the same issue. For example, if you speak to everybody else aboard the Normandy before coming across drunk Tali at the bar and you have to go back and revisit them all just to see if it unlocks some drunk Tali banter, because it won't happen if you don't see her first. And then you slog all the way back just to find that all that happens is James say, "hey" again. *sigh*

The Citadel and the Normandy were highlights in the other games, but the execution of them in ME3 made them into a chore I was sick of dealing with. Not to mention all the samey fetch-quests that took up 90% of the sidequests (with the rest pretty much just cheap rehashes of MP maps as you just kill guys). It was the most tedious and hamfisted, lazy-ass pieces of DA2 all over again, as you hunted down every race's lost artifacts from random scans and brought them back. What's this? An interesting quest to the elcor homeworld to rescue some elcor? Wow! That actually sounds like... oh wait, it's just another fetch-quest where you click on the planet and it's all done for you. Oh, and half of them are just found sitting in the Spectre terminal. All in all, ME3 sidequests were the worst of the trilogy.

Not that the main quests were much better. The writing was fairly solid, they had some great epic and emotional moments and the level-design was definitely better than ME2's. But damn... were they linear as all hell. Not only were there barely any choices during them so they ended up almost all playing out the same, but the entire structure was linear throughout the entire game. No freedom for the player to go where they want when they want... it has to be Mars, Palaven's Moon, Sur'Kesh, etc. in that order without fail in every playthrough. As much as some people may moan about the BioWare pattern of, "Tutorial Place, Forced Secondary Place and then 3 to 5 Locations You Can Do In Any Order" at least that pattern gave the player some freedom. That's non-existent in ME3. Yes... players said they wan't a more focused story than ME2's was, but that doesn't mean completely on the rails from A to B to C to D, etc. ME1, KotOR and DAO all proved you can have a focused story that unfolds without forcing the players where to go. BioWare said this was supposed to be the most diverse of the trilogy and give players the most freedom since it was the last part, but were' restricted far more than in ME1 or ME2 in ME3.

Which leads to another promise that was broken: our choices mattering. They just outright didn't. ME2 was already guilty of BioWare's lazy way of dealing with variations: either trivialise it, sweep it under the rug or offer a weak substitution. ME3 suffered this even worse, and it was, again, supposed to be the part where all our choices were shown to matter and had real diversity. Save the Rachni Queen or kill her? Doesn't matter, same result. How about those people who lived or died in ME1 and ME2? Doesn't matter, somebody will just step in and take their place and dialogue on the exact same mission. This goes for the likes of The Council, Wrex, Mordin, Grunt, etc. It doesn't matter what you did in ME1 or ME2, it's still exactly the same game with the same missions done in the same order and the same outcome and same ending. Even the Virmire Survivor was cut out of half the game so the devs didn't have to put any effort into their return it seems. No wonder the endings didn't reflect our choices, because they never matter in any of the rest of the game either, so why should they at the end. All they countered towards was a stupid, arbitrary number called "Galactic Readiness" that has no real bearing on anything and is just a counter to indicate whether once the end comes you're "Kind of Screwed," "Really Screwed" or "Totally Screwed." Again, this was the final part where BioWare said they could "go nuts" and that our choices would be really diverse. Another lie.

And then there's the endings. 'Nuff said there. It's all been covered more than enough times.

The point is, ME3 has major issues even without the endings, and it seems largely because the focus has shifted away from what really mattered and when to other things that were less important. Kinect Support, Multiplayer, Different Game modes, etc. and even the combat all seemed to be far more crucial than the factor that to me (and thus I'm sure many other Mass Effect fans) was supposed to be the most crucial, key and core of the series: the dialogue, the roleplaying, the choices and satisfying consequences that should come from those things.

And yes, I was calling for more statistical RPG elements, such as power evolutions and diversity, weapon modification and more customisation as a whole. But that was because despite my concerns about the direction ME3 was going, I didn't really think for one second that the dialogue, choices and other roleplaying elements were going to take as much of a hit and be watered down as much as they were. I suspected after ME2 that the choices and consequences weren't going to be as fulfulling as I'd hoped and we were promised, but I still expected a far better job than this. I didn't expect things like the Rachni Queen choice to be so utterly pointless as they turned out to be. But I certainly didn't expect as much autodialogue as we got, the ME2 DLC Squaddie treatment we got for the whole crew and the complete lack of dialogue choices, not to mention so few Charm/Intimidate opportunities.

ME3 took all the things I loved most about the other two games and watered them down, and as much as I complained about ME2's lack of hardcore, statistical RPG mechanics, it at least didn't skimp on the roleplaying and dialogue choices. ME3 just felt so half-assed and dumbed down in this regard. And that's why I think it's the worst of the trilogy, even if it did nail the combat, have better designed levels, bring back modding, diversify skills more, get rid of Mission Complete screens, arbitrary XP gains and other annoying aspects of ME2.

you NAILED it. Bioware performed the same circumsise it did in dragon age 2.
hence i will copy your review as mine.

[Salarious]

"We are Bioware and we're here to make you think about death and get sad and stuff!!!"
Seriously I would rate this game 10/10 until the ending, I know this has been said a thousand times but its true and I wanted to throw my opinion out into the void. Seriously, WHAT HAPPENED? everything was cool then bam, I had no Idea where I was. Honestly the endings are fine, just not if they are the only options. For this game to be truly satisfying to everyone who plays it(isn't that the ultimate goal) it needs to have a much larger variety of possible outcomes, doesn't seem like that is asking too much. ok, done.

[michaelkdaw]

I finished the game last night. I really really enjoyed the whole thing. Yes, that includes the ending.

Most striking was that the gameplay was much more responsive than the previous two. It seemed more realistic and all in all more fun to play.

The visual appearance was also a vast improvement. Particularily with regard to lighting. I loved the blue highlights on Shepard's face when speaking to someone over the holographic comm.

I experienced a few of the known bugs, like getting stuck on the bridge of the Normandy, and Liara not responding to the fact that she had more recently been on the Normandy. I used the save game editor to become "friends" with Ashley so that Gabby and Ken would properly engage in their banter.

And speaking of banter, I really appreiciate the time taken to include all the random conversations between secondary characters. I made a point to speak to everyone after every mission, and was rewarded for this. It was great that characters moved around the ship, and interacted with each other so much, and not just with Shepard.

I enjoyed that the plot took the time to wrap up a lot of loose ends from the previous games as you went along. You could tell that you were coming to some kind of culmination.

One thing that I was a little put off by was the absence of music during the beginning of the Priority: Earth mission. In many instances, music during the combat really helped maintain an intensity. I thought this was missing. Also, it was unnessary to have to pause when walking through that cursed scanner between the war room and the CIC. I'm not sure why that would have been included. Was it a mechanism for loading the CIC area without a interrupting the game? That would make sense.

The ending was perfect. It did exactly what an ending is supposed to do: end the series. I was wholly satisfied, and also appreciate the opportunity for imagination. This was well, well done.

If 100 is a perfect game, then I give Mass Effect 3 95/100. Congratulations to Bioware on a technical and creative materpiece. What's next?

[JonasPeti]

JonasPeti wrote...

I think the ME3 is a 80/100 game.

I'm loving it because:
- the game has a great fight system
- we can experience the results of our earlier decisions (one of my favourite moment was that when I accepted Legion to upload reaper codes, but couldn't stop quarian's fire on geth, so they died and Tali commited suicide.. because I wasn't enough "strong-minded" earlier, I haventt enough renegade or paragon points)
- we have cooperative multiplayer
- we can be "femshep" (in ME1, ME2 too), i love her voice, female characters have beautiful eyes
- there are some barely adult content in the game (romance, nude/gay/lesbian scenes), it's not "prudish", but it is unobtrusive. I think you found the balance and you have been given us more colour and tones in the ME universe.
- We can hear SENSATIONAL music in ME1/ME2/ME3

I don't like:
- Ending. My problem is that the ending is not in connection with the ME1/ME2/ME3 story - doesn't matter, how is about our influence in the galaxy, who saved and who killed, nor collectors destroyed or not. We can replace cdr Shepard with anybody else with any other personal history, the ending will be the same (except remembering scenes before his/her die). I think the ending doesn't need Shepard. Maybe your DLC will show that I'm wrong. Ending decreases 20 points from 100.

Sorry, I wasn't precise enough. I've forgotten something and I was hasty.
Shepard's crew have their own life, they wander over the Normandy and the Citadel, tell jokes, fall in love with each other, get drunk, etc. There are a lot of "easter eggs" too. Thoose things are awesome! 

ME franchise showed the real face of role playing games, it has broken through lots of limitations, especially in ME3. I've never seen like that before. Thank you guys!

I think ME3 is 95/100 (not 80/100 as I said earlier). 

[Shep1287]

   < Is my response to the majority of Mass Effect 3 and 2. I'll mention some parts of Mass Effect 2 and 3 that was very well done and got my best reactions (so that's a prior spoiler alert too). I hope this gives you some indication of the strengths. Plus some tweaks that would of made it beyond amazing.

The general combat is fantastic I don't see any fundamental issues with that. Perhaps while sprinting to be able to pan the screen around so it's not locked in place. Speech options give a good sense of normality to
the dynamic of communication. The sound is futuristic and silly good. 

Graphics/effects are good, I especially like the ships hologram pop up, as you near that area of the Normandy. What I thought from the very get go of mass effect 2 was great, was the ships overall look and sound. It made you truly feel as though you were commanding it (kind of subtle how you did that, nothing overly exeagerated about the ship). Perhaps more random people, hanging around the canteen and other parts of the Normandy, to equal the size of the ships exterior when you see it in the cut scenes. Seems like a huge ship in some of the cut scenes so some more random peeps having adiscuss, would be a good equivalent I think or even some more levels. ME2 what sticks in my mind isthe cut scene when they first enter the Omega 4 Relal
where the collector base is based. And they have to dodge and weave through the
wrecked ships; I near enough ducked myself, with the line said by, Joker: “These
must be all the ships that tried to make it through the Omega 4 Relay. Some
look… ancient.” Loved that! And it was similar reactions at the end of ME3 almost.

Multiplayer on ME3 if it's limited to only 4 players, please,
please more players, it would be brill, little more structure maybe, capture the
flag, strong hold etc.

Now for the dreaded ending that's got a lot of people riled
up of ME3. A better idea of what happened to the newly reformed Jack and the others is
my bug. It would have been nice to see Jack’s progress/outcome during the
battle or the others too. As before the battle, the subtle fear she showed,
when normally a constant bad ass type, was endearing. It leaves you wanting
more and preferring alternate endings, when at the final game, at the end of a
trilogy in the series, isn't the best manoeuvre or reaction. Sense of winning
the initial battle and conquering over the reapers is not so bad but it’s the
knowing who survived at the end of ME2 that made it really great for me, having
said that, the large significance of hope at the end didn’t go unnoticed.

I hope that helped. 88/100.

Modifié par Shep1287, 17 avril 2012 - 10:14 .

[Endplanets]

My Mass Effect 3 score: 97/100

ME3 is one of the best games I have ever played. The gameplay is better in all areas, the leveling up is cooler and more indepth than before and the multiplayer is great. I like how every class is even more different and have special little touches to make them stronger (like Infiltrators being able to slightly slow down time)

The story and writing is great(except for the ending). The mission on Tuchank was one of the best in gaming and Mordin's fate was great. Checking around youtube I saw a lot of very different vids on what could have happened if I had choosen differently. Some results were better, some were not, but it was great to see that my choices throughout all three games had an effect on the game (except for the ending, again).

I was kinda annoyed by the much smaller party size. It basially seams like a repeat of ME1 + EDI and Vega to replace Wrex and one of the dead A/K. Maybe that was the point, a return to ME1's smaller party size. But at least all the squadmates we made in ME2 had their own mission and arc which was very nice.

I did not like Kaiden in ME1, but here he was really cool and I actually liked him by the end. EDI is also really cool and very likable. Vega not so much. He had the same problem I had with Jacob and A/K, in that Vega just kinda shows up. Think back on how we are introduced to Garrus, Wrex, Jack and Miranda. We know things about them and have expectations as to why they are a badass. But Vega just.... kinda shows up and we are expected to buy that he is good enough to choose over Garrus in a fight.

I liked the war assets parts too, collecting pieces here and there to make my force stronger was really fun. And it made sense in the narrative as Hackett is handling the logistics of it, and we get to read cool files on how Krogan are fighitng on the Turian homeworld. Its just a shame that the ending is so bad we don't get to see it do anything worthwile.

It was also really fun to see all the major homeworlds. Granted that since we never saw them before it didn't really have that much of an impact to see it burning. Since I had never been to Thessia I didn't feel bad that it was burning, unlike if we saw Illium burning I would have felt sad. But why are we on the moon over the Turian homeworld, rathern than on the Turian homeword itself? Kinda wierd since we see it in the comics.

Originally I was going to go an replay all three games after beating ME3, but now I don't want to. I beat the game 5 weeks after it came out and on the internet I had not heard one single, solitary nice thing about it. I eventually rushed to beat the game just so that I could see the rant videos.
I was lucky in that I knew the ending was going to be bad because if I wasn't I would have been even more enraged. I can see why Angry Joe, Jeremy Jams and the legendary Pete Abrams had to create separate posts as to how offensivle terrible the ending was.
Fallout 3 had a kinda dumb ending, God of War 3 had a goofy ending, Animorphs had a kinda redundant ending, Monster Hunters had a cliffhanger but I can still go back to those and enjoy them since the endings don't ruin the entire franchise.

But with ME3s ending there is not such luck. The ME3 ending is so bad I don't really have a desire to go back and play the other two games. And it isn't that we don't find out what happens to the characters, I can get over not knowing what happens to them. But the fact that in the end everyone starves to death when the Relays are destroyed is really depressing.
And the Reaper's motivation, one of the biggest and most anticipated events in all of gaming, turns out to be something a 5 year old could have written on a napkin during detention is offensivly bad. You do realise that the ending bascially cancels out THE WHOLE PLOT of ME2. The plot of ME2 was "Reapers are harvesting humanity to build a human/reaper organic/machine monster for some sinister purpose". Only I guess not since the God Child says that Reapers are synthetics and thus have no organic components.
And they don't even explain why the Reapers created the cycles. What was the point of creating the cycles. One of the coolest concepts in all of fiction completely and utterly ruined.

Again, I really liked ME3 and I will play it again with a different class, but once I get to Marauder Shields I am turning the Xbox off.
For some the ending was so bad that it ruined the whole game. Mass Effect 3 would have dozens of more perfect scores is if the ending was better. Me, I can overlook the ending and still enjoy the game.

I eagerly await the new ending DLC. Either myself and 98% of the fans are brain dead drooling simpletons for not understanding the ending, or it really does need to be far more deeply explained.

Fan request: don't try to fix the ending. Don't bother. Just release a new one. Take the indoctrination theory and have Shepard wake up, kill Harbinger (who only got a cameo in ME3) in a big boss fight (maybe with a Mako Tank, eh, think about it) go into the Citadel and run with the Dark Energy thoery.

[Feanor_II]

I would like to make my review, yesterday I finished the game and after the massive dissapointment DA2 was ME3 managed to clearly turn the tides, I'm very sattisfied with it but Bioware has lost my blind faith on them.....

By the way, after completing the series I'm more convinced than ever that plot wise ME2 is the most irrelevant of the 3 games.

I'll divide it in 3 bloocks, Light (good thigs), Twilight (Minor flaws), Dark (Bad things)

LIGHT ZONE:
- Combat System: Mix between the best of previous games. The smooth and precise control from ME2 (improving it) with more dinamic combats from ME1. ME2 had better control than 1 but it was too based in taking cover, once you took a good spot it was enough shooting from there until sweeping the enemy. ME1 had clumsier controls, but combat was more dinamic , even admiting out-of cover-combat. Yes, combat in ME3 is the funnist in the series.
- Weapons: Lots of weapons, all of them with their pros, cons and different features which made them unique. While on ME1 weapons were on a progressive improvement (although it offered a similar system with the differences between manufacturers it wasn't as developed than in ME3) through the game, and ME2 had 3 weapons per type (the crappy, the good and the best) ME3 offers more variety offering different posibilities.
- Weapon Modding
- Leveling Up: Good mixture between ME1 and ME2

TWILIGHT ZONE:
- Unbalanced Team: ME1 squad was perfectly balanced:

• 1 Biotic: Liara
• 1 Soldier: Ashley
• 1 Engineer: Tali
• 1 Sentinel: Kaidan
• 1 Vanguard: Wrex
• 1 Infiltrator: Garrus

ME2 was pretty well balanced too, with various squadmates with versatile combinations of biotics + tech + soldier, so:

• 1 + [1] Soldier: Grunt, [Zaeed]
• 3 Techs: Mordin, Tali, Legion
• 2 Biotics: Jack, Samara
• 2 Biotic + Soldiers: Jacbo, Thane, [Kasumi]
• 1 + [1] Tech + Soldier: Garrus
• 1 Biotic + Tech: Miranda

Now on ME 3 we have:

• 1 + [1] Soldier: James, [Ashley]
• 2 Techs: Tali, EDI
• 1 + [1] Biotic: Liara, [Javik]
• 1 Soldier + Tech: Garrus
• 0 Biotic + Soldier
• 0 + [1] Biotic + Tech: [Kaidan]

So we find a team with an "excess" of tech specialists, and depending on our choices excess of soldiers and lack of "sentinels", and the "vanguard" is gone. This conditioned a lot when eloborating and planning squads, playing as soldier I was almost forced to use Liara in every mission because of the lack of biotic powers, and Ashley and James were almost useless because there was no "sentinel" to compesate the lack of biotics and techs in a potential team with a soldier Sheppard and Ashley/James.
- Just One Hub World: Maybe in context of the soty it's fine as it is, but more variety would have been wellcome, with hub worlds disapearing as the invasion advances.
- Absence of Hacking/Bypassing Minigames: Not impotant but I liked them.

DARK ZONE:
- Simplification Of Conversation Mechanic: One of the demands that I read a bunch of times after ME2 was released was "No conversation witout imput". In ME2 there were some situation were Shepard would say a few phrases witout player interaction, ME3 pushed forwar (a lot) in that direction, player interaction is reduced a lot, this, combined with the fact that the neutral approach has been removed reduced significantly the capability to role play, after completing the game I thought that those autoconversations fit quite well my canon Shepard, John, a good boy, a Paragon from the heart..... but I fear that I won't be able to give the personality I've been working on the previous games in future playthroughs to the ruthless Virgine, the traumatized Sam or the Terminator-esque iron soldier Kate (Hell, I was specially satisfied with this las build). Also I don't really understand whats the use of reputation system, as i said in my sole playthrough to the day I played as full Paragon (my Renegade bar barely made to the first mark) and in the very limited situations were I was given the chance to use persuasion options both Renegade & Paragon were active.
- Simplification of Exploration: The new system doesnt appeal to invistagate every planet on a system and by extension reading their dossiers, just pingging was enough to find the resources in 1 or 2 planets per system and a fuel deposit, the rest were left to forget.... there was nothing that rewards players to take a few seconds looking planet by planet and reading yhe dossiers (no turian medals, no minerals, no salrian medals.....)


Well now I would like to make express briefly my opinion on the controversial ending. First of all let me say that I'm pretty satisfied with the plot, sure it could be better but it's not bad maybe a bit under the expectations I had and under what I expected from Bioware but I think it was very good anyway, also, thorough ME1 and ME2 we've seen many subplots so there was a lot of material to use..... Lots of those subplots could be used to make a more "colorfull" story ()retaking Omega, something with Sha'hira, Liara's "father", something more from Zuu's hope aside from an email, that conspiracy in Omega to overthrow Aria) but I'm aware that's not possible to put all that narrative weight in the final game... although I think there was room to add more "plot density". But yes, I liked the story, I felt a kind of clousure sensation through the game, quite touching..... Today when I retook my game in progress in ME2 couldn't help but fell somehow nostalgic, but not in the way, "this was a good game, not the last one" but "So that's it, end of journey".

Anyway, about the ending it self.... I read so many bad things a bout it...... at first I thought that people was pissed off because it wasn't the sweety-happy-cheesy ending they wanted (or demanded!).... later I feared it was because the ending was pure crap..... Finally after beating the game I think that all that rage could be for both reason. Well, I must admit that I'M NOT UPSET AT ALL BY THE CONCEPT OF THE ENDING (or artistic vision as the people from Bioware like to say), more over, I feel more appealed by those endings that mix some parts of drama, tragedy and happiness (that must be influence of my passion for Greek Mithology), so tyes, I can say that I like the concept or idea for the ending. In fist place a lot of peoples complaints seemed to come by the fact that Shepard dies and can't live his love story with his/her LI or whatever, but what can I say, for me it was quite clear since the moment he/she died in ME2, really I couldn't consider any other scenario, after beating the Reapers if Shepard survived he/she would be considered a living god and no, doesn't fit in ME (IMO). second, people didn't like that "metaphysical" ending, well I preffer much more that than a Michael-Bayesque ending were the Reapers just blow up and rock and roll on the battlefield.

well i've been defending the ending in the previous lines.... and as I said I kinda liked master idea behind it..... but it's undeniable that it has some serious flaws from the narrative point of view:
- All 3 endings are very similar, we are offered with 3 options that seem to lead to 63 different conclusions, but even if it's clear that the conclusion is not the same it's presented in a way that it seems so, aestetically, narratively, there should be moredifferences between the "Blue", "Red" and "Green" endings.
- Unresolved questions: Still, when don' know who, when and where the Reapers were creater (although we finally learn why they were created), the nature an origin of the catalyst/Kid is totally unknown. Did Liara and Garrus finally die? The game hints so but more clarity would be appreciated.... and finally what happens with Earth and the rest of the Galaxy? No need to go into excesive details but some info at least...... What the synthesis really is wasn't clear to me.... does that fusion of synthetic and organic life mean? At the end of the game I see Ashley, Joker and EDI as individuals but with "green circuits printed on them" at fisrt thought that it consisted in all species and sythetics being "meelted" together to create a totally new species with new individuals..... Was necesary for Shepard to throw himself from a hole to activate the synthesis?
- Plotholes: After playing arrival I thought that destroying a relay meant the total annihilation of a system but it doesn't seem so in ME3. I think that Vendetta said in Thessia or in Cerberus base that the Crucible was the Prothean contribution to the Crucible, but the Catalyst/kid speaks as if it was there since the begining of the times ....... I know that here were a bunch more of them,yes I came to them..... but it's quite late here in my country, time to sleep......
I hope that the Extended Cut DLCs improves this problems, if not totally, yes in a big degree





All that brick of words above is just my opinion, not trying to convince anybody



P.S: Didn't like the final confrontation with the Illusive Man, I didn't had the chance to tell him how despicable he and his ideology were instead of trying to convince him to be a good boy, because at the bottom of his heart he is so. Didn't like also that this conversation is centered on humanity, humanity this, humanity that.... And what about all those races that were giving their blood down there on Earth?

Modifié par Feanor_II, 17 avril 2012 - 12:04 .

[Tommy6860]

Terror_K wrote...

Going to repost something I wrote in another (now closed) topic since it covers a lot of my issues:-

The ending(s) aren't ME3's only flaws, they're just one of the biggest, most detracting and the ones everybody is going on about.

<snipped>

To save forum space, I cut out thee quote of your reply. But I have to say you all but nailed it. I do think though, that RPG choices did matter a lot more than you think in ME3, but not in the overall scheme of the story, ending not included. There are choices I made that made differences, but mostly they were mostly moral choices, and they weighed in a bit on me. Like Killing Wrex after lying about really actuating the genophage cure. Making a choice to alow the Quarian fleet to be decimated, resulting in Tali committing suicide (I was totally bummed over that and didn't expect it), to name jsut a few.

But I really agree with much of what you said here. The combat (though some elements seemed copied from other games), inventory, power systems, weapons mods, were even improved upon more than what was in ME1. I didn't like the fact that being able to change outfit looks on my squaddies didn't allow for stat changes, that was totally cosmetic. ME1 allowed for that.

The one glaring thing you left out (and I don't care one iota how Bioware's devs and other players explain this away); how in the hell does Shepard even exist in ME3 if s/he doesn't survive the SM in ME2??? The end of ME2 showed Joker with Reaper data looking out at the stars, with the cutscene then showing the impending Reaper invasion. Do anything, remake Shepard again from soemthing else. Maybe from the many of Liara's mind melds she had with Shep in ME1 and ME2. Or EDI having kept a data set of Shep's personality and experiences to carry-over into a clone. As stupid as that sounds, it would have been much better than just having the same Shep show up. All the while, the for sure dead Shep gets reminded for doing the things s/he did from (the now) Admiral Anderson in the beginning sequence, though that Shep was dead at ME2's ending. I totally dismissed even playing that out since it was "retconn unacceptable".

[Koran13]

Ok, I'll give my review of ME3. Here goes.

Good:

I really enjoyed the combat in this game. ME1's combat was a little chaotic but enjoyable once you got the hang of it. ME2 had much better combat than ME1 and I enjoyed that a lot, though I sort of disliked that you couldn't use mods on your weapon. ME3 had the best combat in the series in my opinion, though I had a few troubles with the rolling into cover mechanic. But overall, it was incredibly enjoyable.

Most of the story was pretty good. I especially liked the Tuchanka bomb missions. There were a few hiccups here and there, but I'll get into that later.

Garrus. 'Nuff said.

Returning characters. I liked that Shepard met his old squadmates, though I felt that they could've been more involved in the story instead of merely becoming 'war assets.'

Killing Kai Leng. That was for Thane, who was my constant squad member in my party besides Garrus.

Companion talking to each other. I enjoyed that they interacted with each other on the Normandy and had some interesting conversations. It made me feel that they had their own lives and made the game more realistic.

Shepard's emotions. Shepard seemed much more human rather than an indestructible soldier who was the only hope for the galaxy. The child's death was one of the more moving parts of the game, especially as Shepard showed his grief right after. I very much enjoyed that he wasn't unfeeling.

Average:

The journal. The missions were very badly organized in the game. It took forever to scroll through all of the missions just to see which ones you still had left. They should have had 3 catagories for missions: Main Story, Side, and Scanning-Planets.

Talking to companions. In ME2 I hated the fact that at some points I'd ask Garrus if he had some time to talk, and he'd say "Sorry. I'm in the middle of some calibrations." And yet I still preferred that over talking to companions in ME3. Seriously, I'd actually like to select an option and be told they're busy instead of "Later" or "Hey." That's what most of the conversations in ME3 boiled down to: Listening to them say a sentence about the previous mission or such, and then going to "Hello, Shepard" and "Sir." I'd rather actually attempt to make a conversation with them and fail rather than just listen to them talk and not contribute my own opinion to them.

Armor. I liked the armor customization in ME2. It had a good selection to choose from, and although I found most of the armor I wore early in the game, I still enjoyed buying armor and comparing the benefits. In ME3, they had such a huge selection that I eventually just stopped changing armor because there was just too much variety (and I know, that sounds bad. But it just sort of overwhelmed me with all the options.)

Udina. I actually liked Udina in this game when I first met him. In the other 2 games he seemed like a bit of a jerk and didn't seem to care much for Shepard or his struggles. And he was power-hungry. But in ME3, it seemed like he got much more wearied and accepting of Shepard. Overall, he seemed to be much more down-to-earth (no pun intended) in this game, and I liked the change. Then he had be the one behind the Citadel attack. I mean, that was just like "...WHAT?!" for me. It was just completely out of the blue. I hadn't noticed any signs before that showing that he was planning to do this (although this may just be me; there may have been signs but I just didn't notice) and then it was suddenly "Udina's behind this!" And why would he go to Cerberus in the first place? Correct me if I'm wrong, but in ME2 he became suspicious of Shepard when he said he worked for Cerberus. Why would he suddenly make an alliance with Cerberus when he had been distrusting of them the game before? It just didn't make any sense to me.

Bad (Here we go):

Dialog wheel. I hated the dialog wheel in ME3. All it boiled down to were two options:
1. Be nice.
2. Be a jerk.
That's what it felt like to me, and I hated that. In the other 2 games you were given three choices instead of just two, and it felt like a step back from that in ME3. I was much more impressed with ME1 and ME2 dialog than ME3. It felt like I had to choose between good and jerk all the time, and I hated that.

Shepard Talking. I mean, honestly. Did anyone who played ME3 feel like Shepard just would not shut up? I hardly did any conversation choices. In some scenes I actually just put my controller down and watched Shepard just rattle on and on. I mean, come on! In ME1, we basically chose every word that came out of Shepard's mouth, which was fine by me. It was an RPG, I was used to choosing what the main character always said. In ME2, Shepard began talking a little more without our choice. I could've been angered by that, but usually it was just three or four words that he said, so I didn't mind that. But in ME3, it's like Shepard just shoves the player aside and suddenly makes his own mind about what he wants to say. *Minor SPOILERS ahead* For example, after the mission to Thessia, when Shepard is reporting to the asari councilor, I sort of expected an option to pop up where he was either guilty or completely proffessional when making the report to the councilor. But nope, he just goes on without any input from me. That just infuriated me. I was playing an RPG and I'm barely choosing what my character does.

Previous decisions. We were promised that our previous decisions were going to come back to reward (or haunt) us. I was excited, as I thought that I would finally manage to see which decisions I did right and which decisions I screwed up on. And yet...it felt like nothing I did mattered. Let's look on what came back. The rachin queen appeared. For one mission. Then rachni were listed as war assets. I told the quarians not to go to war with the geth. They did it anyway. I rewrote the heretics. Turns out that was the wrong thing to do. The only thing I felt that did make an impact on the story was Wrex, and Wrex is too awesome to not make an impact on the story. Honestly, it just felt...disconnected with ME1+2.

The Crucible...(Sigh) I mean, come on. A superweapon that can completely wipe out every Reaper in existence? Well that was...convenient. The storyline wasn't anything like I expected it to be. Not that that is as bad as it could be, but still. Reaper superweapon? I expected the story to be gathering all the galaxy's races and being forced to make monumental decisions that could affect the ending, and then launching our combined forces against the Reapers and having just a giant battle in the ending in which we might be either (A) completely dominated and the Reapers move back to dark space, waiting for the next galactic community to be wiped out, ( making an epic, glory-filled last stand in which we take the Reapers out with us, © barely managing to come out on top, defeating the Reapers but forever becoming crippled with catostrophic losses, both to society and to friends, (D) winning but taking heavy losses, including companions, (E) coming out on top and proving we're greater than the Reapers, or (F) completely owning the Reapers and having a drink after the final battle and have a good time (I prefer this ending). I didn't had the Crucible storyline, I was just disappointed that BioWare had use a superweapon to defeat the Reapers.

Replayability. I won't go too much into this, but from my point of view, the only difference replayability will make is that my Shepard will look different, I'll have a different class, and I'll have one difference in companions. Otherwise, nothing will be different. The story will be the same, and the choices I make will most likely still be the same as well.

The ending (you knew this was coming). I...words don't describe my emotional state when the ending happened - oh wait! Enraged, confused, and just plain ticked off describe my emotions perfectly when the game was over. All the endings did was just change color, a few cutscenes, and leave us with a gaping hole where closure should have been. I'm just so...so...so lost as to why BioWare would make such a horrible ending to such a great series. (ARTISTIC LICENSE!) Well, if it's artistic license, why did the artist make a giant brush stroke that just didn't fit the rest of the painting? I mean, really, I just can't put my emotions into words, so I won't even try. (Don't get me started on the God-child).

Overall:

While ME3 started off very strong, the ending took everything I loved about the series and dumped it down the toilet. And with low replayability, basically the same decisions, and no variety of stories, I feel like I won't play my copy of ME3 for a very long time. At least not until that new DLC comes out which 'explains' the ending, and if that doesn't satisfy me, I won't play it at all then.

Overall, I give ME3 a 6/10. Some bright spots, but dragged down by the Crucible and God-child.

[brickheart]

This game leaves me wanting more, but the game is great. As a concluding chapter it seems a bit rushed, but compared to most FPS it is still superior.

I would have enjoyed going back to ME1 style choice. Also, this game had a seemingly empty galaxy in comparison to its predecessors. I like exploring the galaxy. I also liked the RPGs elements of the first game.

In general, I believe Bioware changed the ME formula a bit too much. This happened from ME 1 to 2, but it was done well. It expanded upon the universe and seamlessly made changes to gameplay. They even made the hacking mini games more fun.

In Mass Effect 3 you are no longer playing anything that resembles a shooter RPG. Instead, it is more along the lines of FPS with small RPG type upgrades. They even took out mini games and proper quest dialogue.

Luckily everything except for the ending is written well. I am looking forward to possible future installments.

75/100

[Orumon]

Terror_K wrote...

Going to repost something I wrote in another (now closed) topic since it covers a lot of my issues:-

The ending(s) aren't ME3's only flaws, they're just one of the biggest, most detracting and the ones everybody is going on about.

For one thing, there's the character face import, which has gone beyond a fiasco. Given the promises from BioWare and intent of the trilogy, the fact that it was broken at launch was unforgivable as it is, but to make matters worse we've since been given a patch that claims to fix the issue but just outright doesn't, and not only that, people have discovered that some Shepard faces are literally impossible to create or recreate in ME3 because the facial options are simply not there. That is beyond ludicrous and to state how mind-boggingly bad that is can't be put into words. You've got a series based entirely around carrying a completely customisable character through a trilogy, and not only do you guys not have this working at launch, but whoever designed the CC cut out options entirely? Seriously?! The term "WTF?!!" does not even come close to covering how poorly planned, programmed and designed this major fubar is. So right out of the box, before the player is even into the game, if they're importing in the manner the series was designed for, they're already screwed over. It's the equivalent of trying to build a world class soccer team to take on the best in the world, but not even picking a goalie and leaving it completely undefended for the entire game. That's how bad the planning was here and how outright stupid whoever was in charge of the CC design was. What's the point of wasting time making a brand new default Femshep and adding more hair options if a quarter of the options from the previous titles aren't even there.

And that's before we even get into the gameplay. ME3 nailed the shooter mechanics and combat, I'll give it that, but at the cost of pretty much everything that made the original games what they were. I'd even go so far to say it was the core gameplay that suffered and was greatly reduced in ME3, which is NOT the combat, but the roleplaying, dialogue and choices.

For starters, only two dialogue options 90% of the time, even with "Full Decisions" on. Why "Full decisions" is so damn simplified and watered down compared to just the default way things were in ME1 and ME2 that "Full Decisions" is supposed to represent is beyond me. The third neutral option barely makes a showing at all, not to mention that the amount of Charm/Indimidate options in the entire game equates to such a pitiful amount I could probably count them on both hands and not run out of finers. As I've said before, there were more Charm/Intimidate opportunities on Noveria in ME1 alone than in ALL of ME3.

Then there's the autodialogue, with Shepard running his/her mouth off without me, the player, doing a damn thing. This happens far too often, so much so I wonder why there's any dialogue choices at all. I'm never going to touch "Action Mode" but I get the strong feeling that given how much Shepard yammers on without me picking a damn thing and the amount of times I'm just given two options that are either not that different or simply "Jesus or Hitler" that I'd barely be missing out on anything. Why you guys wasted your time programming the different game styles (Narrative, RPG, Action, etc.) is beyond me given how little effort seemed to be put into the dialogue itself.

Then there's the fact that 80% of the time you talk with your crew, they're Zaeed and Kasumi all over again. Here's a test for you Stanley (or any other BioWare employee who may be reading) to see how much BioWare supposedly "listens" to its fans: while Zaeed and Kasumi were generally enjoyed by fans as DLC companions for ME2, what was the most commonly griped about aspect about them? Here's a clue... it's something you did to the entire Mass Effect 3 crew whenever you talk with them more often than not! I go to talk with my L.I. after a long absense for the first time, and do I get a proper cutscene with a dialogue wheel and choices? No... I just get her standing there saying something I have no control over as I click on her, pressing her like a button. I finally get Ashley back after her accident and onto the Normandy again, and does she have anything to say and do I get a dialogue wheel and a cinematic scene? No, I just get, "Hey, Shepard" and that's it. With the rare exceptions here and there, my crew have become less like squadmates, friends and companions and more like talking plush toys I can go around and squeeze or yank the pull string on every so often. I enjoyed that they moved around a little more, there was inter-party banter and we got the odd moment on The Citadel with them, but it wasn't worth it to get "Tickle Me Garrus" and "Speak and Say Liara."

On top of it all, the ship ended up becoming boring in the end, as you had to run all around it every visit from top to bottom and back again, just to make sure you'd found everything. The Citadel had the same issue. For example, if you speak to everybody else aboard the Normandy before coming across drunk Tali at the bar and you have to go back and revisit them all just to see if it unlocks some drunk Tali banter, because it won't happen if you don't see her first. And then you slog all the way back just to find that all that happens is James say, "hey" again. *sigh*

The Citadel and the Normandy were highlights in the other games, but the execution of them in ME3 made them into a chore I was sick of dealing with. Not to mention all the samey fetch-quests that took up 90% of the sidequests (with the rest pretty much just cheap rehashes of MP maps as you just kill guys). It was the most tedious and hamfisted, lazy-ass pieces of DA2 all over again, as you hunted down every race's lost artifacts from random scans and brought them back. What's this? An interesting quest to the elcor homeworld to rescue some elcor? Wow! That actually sounds like... oh wait, it's just another fetch-quest where you click on the planet and it's all done for you. Oh, and half of them are just found sitting in the Spectre terminal. All in all, ME3 sidequests were the worst of the trilogy.

Not that the main quests were much better. The writing was fairly solid, they had some great epic and emotional moments and the level-design was definitely better than ME2's. But damn... were they linear as all hell. Not only were there barely any choices during them so they ended up almost all playing out the same, but the entire structure was linear throughout the entire game. No freedom for the player to go where they want when they want... it has to be Mars, Palaven's Moon, Sur'Kesh, etc. in that order without fail in every playthrough. As much as some people may moan about the BioWare pattern of, "Tutorial Place, Forced Secondary Place and then 3 to 5 Locations You Can Do In Any Order" at least that pattern gave the player some freedom. That's non-existent in ME3. Yes... players said they wan't a more focused story than ME2's was, but that doesn't mean completely on the rails from A to B to C to D, etc. ME1, KotOR and DAO all proved you can have a focused story that unfolds without forcing the players where to go. BioWare said this was supposed to be the most diverse of the trilogy and give players the most freedom since it was the last part, but were' restricted far more than in ME1 or ME2 in ME3.

Which leads to another promise that was broken: our choices mattering. They just outright didn't. ME2 was already guilty of BioWare's lazy way of dealing with variations: either trivialise it, sweep it under the rug or offer a weak substitution. ME3 suffered this even worse, and it was, again, supposed to be the part where all our choices were shown to matter and had real diversity. Save the Rachni Queen or kill her? Doesn't matter, same result. How about those people who lived or died in ME1 and ME2? Doesn't matter, somebody will just step in and take their place and dialogue on the exact same mission. This goes for the likes of The Council, Wrex, Mordin, Grunt, etc. It doesn't matter what you did in ME1 or ME2, it's still exactly the same game with the same missions done in the same order and the same outcome and same ending. Even the Virmire Survivor was cut out of half the game so the devs didn't have to put any effort into their return it seems. No wonder the endings didn't reflect our choices, because they never matter in any of the rest of the game either, so why should they at the end. All they countered towards was a stupid, arbitrary number called "Galactic Readiness" that has no real bearing on anything and is just a counter to indicate whether once the end comes you're "Kind of Screwed," "Really Screwed" or "Totally Screwed." Again, this was the final part where BioWare said they could "go nuts" and that our choices would be really diverse. Another lie.

And then there's the endings. 'Nuff said there. It's all been covered more than enough times.

The point is, ME3 has major issues even without the endings, and it seems largely because the focus has shifted away from what really mattered and when to other things that were less important. Kinect Support, Multiplayer, Different Game modes, etc. and even the combat all seemed to be far more crucial than the factor that to me (and thus I'm sure many other Mass Effect fans) was supposed to be the most crucial, key and core of the series: the dialogue, the roleplaying, the choices and satisfying consequences that should come from those things.

And yes, I was calling for more statistical RPG elements, such as power evolutions and diversity, weapon modification and more customisation as a whole. But that was because despite my concerns about the direction ME3 was going, I didn't really think for one second that the dialogue, choices and other roleplaying elements were going to take as much of a hit and be watered down as much as they were. I suspected after ME2 that the choices and consequences weren't going to be as fulfulling as I'd hoped and we were promised, but I still expected a far better job than this. I didn't expect things like the Rachni Queen choice to be so utterly pointless as they turned out to be. But I certainly didn't expect as much autodialogue as we got, the ME2 DLC Squaddie treatment we got for the whole crew and the complete lack of dialogue choices, not to mention so few Charm/Intimidate opportunities.

ME3 took all the things I loved most about the other two games and watered them down, and as much as I complained about ME2's lack of hardcore, statistical RPG mechanics, it at least didn't skimp on the roleplaying and dialogue choices. ME3 just felt so half-assed and dumbed down in this regard. And that's why I think it's the worst of the trilogy, even if it did nail the combat, have better designed levels, bring back modding, diversify skills more, get rid of Mission Complete screens, arbitrary XP gains and other annoying aspects of ME2.

This needs to be kept about and BW needs to see it.

[arc_gabriel_]

I'm a Mass Effect player and still have the enjoyment to play even after a terrible ending. Let me phrase that it's like watching a horrid movie when all evil just wins not cool should of had a bad and good ending at least made ... I don't know a 'CHOICE?' instead of here we narrowed three ways to go from 'Bad' Terrible' or 'Worse?' Bioware I love your games but this was a terrible ending plot. Help us fans out by giving a DLC worth to buy or have?

Okay story was good from ME-to-ME2 the story got a little more off in the near ending of 3rd. But enough about the ending it's rather not in my intentions to care but it was still a great game.
Maybe if a DLC to fix the random bugs? Also to help the online more easy to keep the readiness from not dropping every hour? I don't play online as much as one would I have a annoyance to come back after a three hour or full day of outside and find that my score is pretty far back to 50% uh annoying.-Already that I enjoy the story play than online it really gets annoying.

If I had a gamer score I would say 8 out of 10

So my game play was alright the only thing that kept me from not ever playing again was that in the game there are funny remarks and hilarious plots I do tend to enjoy humor once in a while also the interactions had more connection unlike other RPG I had played. Mass Effect for the PS3 the comic interaction should of had more to the fill of the story so that in ME3 I'm out of the loop? In Mass Effect for xbox it was keeping close just the lack of new things? Hm well having both systems seems fine but the difference doesn't seem much.

I love all the characters but sad that deaths come too fast in the third game. (Spoiler) Also why does only three people survive on the Normandy? I mean how in the heck did Normandy get out of Sol? Some parts make no sense but all in all I will continue playing till a DLC comes out that will fix all the problems.

PS: I did like the play through on Mass Effect 2 as Joker that was just perfect to my humor.

[Shawn Pickett]

I enjoyed Mass Effect 3 until the last ten minutes, but it is definitely the lesser game of the series. Mass Effect 1 being the best with awesome story and rpg elements and good combat. Mass Effect 2 had an Awesome story, lame rpg, and good combat. Mass Effect 3 has a story that is pretty good though the last ten minutes drag it into lame territory, the rpg elements are still lame though a little better than Mass Effect 2 and the combat is good.

[CJoriginal]

After playing through ME3 for a bit now, I would rate the game as a solid 85 out of 100

Story / Plot


For me, the story was always going to be the main
part of the game that I would enjoy. I have spent hours on ME1 and ME2
replaying to see the story unfold in different perspectives.

I was first captivated by the ME3 storyline
surprisingly on the very first mission. There was not much interaction story
wise with player choices but honestly I saw no other reason to have more. As
soon as the first reaper landed outside in the city, the atmosphere and feeling
of desperation of the defenders was almost instantly felt creating for myself a
very engaging experience.

The overall RPG experience in the story was very
engaging. Throughout the game I felt there was a perfect amount of player
choice in dialogue and the responses to your choices were equally good. I was
slightly disappointed with the types of side-quests mostly revolving around the
citadel and most being item collection through scans and drop offs. The few
side quests that were engaging were well thought out and enjoyable.

I cannot speak much for the romance options as I
have not experienced any of the other possible love interests. My main love
interest for romance was Tali'Zorah since she had become one of my favourite
characters from ME2 alongside Joker and Garrus.

I was disappointed with the amount of romanceoptions available for Tali but I can equally see why there was so little due to her only being involved later in the game. Although there is much controversy
about the use of a stock image for her face, I actually enjoyed the image that
was edited and used since it fit my idea of how she would appear underneath her
mask. A designed model specifically for her appearance might have been better I
do agree however I am equally satisfied with the current image.

My favourite moment in the story was the raid on
the Illusive Man's headquarters since I had always been curious from ME2 to how
it looked and if we would ever find it. The boss fight and storyline relating
with Kai Leng was one of the best sub-plots for a boss in a RPG I have played.
When Thane died defending the Salarian counsellor, I felt an immediate sense of
anger and vengeance from the individual who had injured one of my closest
friends. In the end, I felt extremely satisfied with his demise at my hand and
felt that the entire plot around him had been well written.

From the story itself, I had always been more
emotionally attached to the game due to being a fan of the series. I felt the
storyline portrayed the invasion of the Reapers and the desperation of each
species attempts to survive was extremely well done. A few moments I would be
cheering and overwhelmed with happiness as we achieved a victory against a difficult
foe, while others I would be deeply saddened by the loss of a close Ally. 

The cinematics and the graphics for the game also
helped with this. They were very well made and scripted well allowing the
situation that was being portrayed to seem more realistic which definitely
helped me to become immersed within the game's story more. 

The only flaw of the story I felt was the final
stages of the ending. To me, I had always expected Shepard to either die for
the greater good or to lose everything to attain victory. I got this sense
throughout the game as sacrifices were piling up. The choice of endings I felt
were good and I think the outcomes were significantly different for me to be
happy with my own choice. 

I sadly felt during the ending that I had not
fully understood what exactly happened to get to that point. For example, I did
not understand who the AI was and what the reapers were truly about. I felt
that an epilogue would have been very helpful for me to understand as well as
to finally learn what had happened to the galaxy after the events of the
crucible.

Another issue I had with the game relays back to a
previous mentioned point about my romance choice, Tali'Zorah. During the ending
cinematics, Shepard has a flashback of three people who are Anderson, Joker and
a third dependant on the play through (or so I have heard). I understood why
Anderson and Joker had been remembered as they were Shepard's main support
through all three games and I myself had grown a huge connection between both.
Now for my play though, Liara was shown as the third person. I have nothing against
Liara at all and I find her a very interesting companion to Shepard. I sadly
never played the DLC involving her shadow broker backstory on ME2. Now for me I
would have seen my Shepard actually remembering Tali as the third person
instead of Liara due to her being much closer to him and actually being his
lover. Every time I see the ending with Liara, I can see no justification why
she would be remembered more and prioritised over Tali. 

I actually felt through the game's story (Aside from the main plot, that was very well done for Tali) that Tali had been slightly neglected for some unknown reason such as not being in the ending
cinematic of flashbacks however she did appear out of the Normandy when it
crash landed. Aside from the points mentioned about Tali, I had no problem with
her story and I found the moments with her to be entertaining and interesting. Her new look in ME3
was also a very nice addition and I give a lot of credit to her voice actor for
being able to portray her character's emotions perfectly.

Overall, the majority of the story was extremely
well written and deserves an incredible amount of praise. The conveying of
emotion was felt throughout the game while the plots and sub plots were
engaging and thrilling to do. It was only let down towards the ending by not
being explained enough for me to truly grasp what had happened and I felt a
need for an epilogue for my experience of the story to be fully completed.

Overall rating: 4/5


Soundtrack


The music fitted perfectly through the story. When
the Normandy appears on the first mission, the soundtrack sent chills down my
spine as Shepard ran towards it. Ambient music throughout the game was very
well done and it suited the atmosphere of each situation perfectly.

Overall rating 5/5

Gameplay

comparing the gameplay mechanics from ME2 to ME3,
I felt there was a huge improvement in the general mechanics as well as a few
more.

The combat within the game was very engaging and I
felt the range of difficulty available was at a satisfactory level to enable
players to find a level they wanted whether it is for casual play to enjoy the
story or for a hard challenge. The cover system worked smoothly and the
addition of having an unlimited sprint was also useful. The new melee system
with Omni-tools and biotics was very good. I found it to be more engaging when
charging forward as a vanguard to quickly melee the enemy to knock down shield
and then hit them hard with a shotgun round. The melee through cover system was
also equally engaging and I enjoyed the slow motion animation when pulling an
enemy over the cover for an instant kill.

The AI of enemies I found personally were a challenging
and hard adversary to face. Banshees and phantoms were the foes I found the
most challenging to kill however the connection between an atlas and combat
engineers was equally challenging since they supported each other very well,
the atlas providing heavy firepower while the engineers took cover and repaired
damage done to the Atlas.

My overall impression of the gameplay was a challenging,
enjoyable and fun experience.

Overall: 4/5

Multiplayer


I was quite unsure of the multiplayer when I first
tried it since I was really put off by the idea of multiplayer for Mass Effect.
However I can say that my view has almost turned around completely. I have
found the multiplayer to be very enjoyable and a challenge for friends to work
together.

The co-op in multiplayer is highly important and I
actually preferred it being solely co-op rather than a competitive game mode,
since it emphasized much more on team work to succeed at higher difficulty challenges.
I have yet to try a gold challenge but comparing to a silver challenge, I can
see very little amounts of people being able to do it without working as a team.

The operations within matches are also good. My
favourite operation is the enemy VIP operation to kill important enemies in the
certain time as I think it forces players to work together to get through the
swarm of enemies and defeat the target within a short time.

My only displeasure with the multiplayer is the
fixed amount of waves. For now, I can agree with having a maximum of 11 waves
since I have no problem with that amount. Yet sometimes I feel when playing
with a group of friends that I would much rather play a continuous game where
there is an indefinite amount of waves (More of a survival game type) to see
how far we can manage to get before the enemy finally defeat us.

The multiplayer of the game is a success for me
and I hope that it is improved further in the future as more content and
updates are released into the community.

Conclusion:

My overall conclusion of my Mass Effect experience
is that it has definitely been one of the best moments of my game history. I
thoroughly enjoyed the story and the multiplayer. My only quarrels with the
game as I have mentioned are the lack of clarity towards the end of the story
and a feeling of other characters being focused on more than other main
characters, however I still believe that the story and the gameplay is
incredibly well done and deserves all the credit given to the team for
developing the game.

I am looking forward to more content being
released for the game and I am especially looking forward towards the extended
cut DLC to be released in the future.

Modifié par CJoriginal, 17 avril 2012 - 08:15 .

[Evil_Jashinist]

First I feel that I must bring up... the quest system. It drove me crazy. It didn't update my progress and when the player is given quests simply by WALKING AROUND that gets incredibly frustrating as you get a huge number of quests and easily forget where you are in each of them.

Secondly, I felt much less in control than in previous games. I don't mind Shepard taking the reins once in awhile but there were fewer options, and very few neutral ones. No middle grounds. I demand more shades of grey! xD In all seriousness though it often felt more black and white than it used to. There was less roleplaying in the game in general, which is one of my favourite parts.

I greatly enjoyed how the crew would get up to things on the ship and on the citadel though. It was a very good idea that had a lot of potential. I can't help but feel it could've been developed more however. It was a shame that the crew in question was so much smaller this time however, though I am glad for the cameos.

I greatly disliked the ending, for reasons most people here have already talked about. I did not like the ideas behind it, heroic sacrifice and all that, but such preferences can be put aside. They are not so relevant. The EXECUTION however, is poor. Also much of the logic behind it, as it does go against previous foreshadowing. The godchild simply didn't work, and Harbringer should've been the main focus concerning the Reapers, if you go with the unwritten rules of storytelling. You need to follow through on what you started. As a writer, the ending really pained me. I am not angry nor am I demanding anything, I am simply disappointed and sad that the oppertunity to make a masterpiece slipped us by.

Of course, as a gamer I am also disappointed, but more on a personal level - mainly concerning the characters and universe that I had grown so fond of. Usually when I finnish a game I feel bittersweet sadness that I have completed the journey because I will miss these people and the world they live in. Dragon Age Origins even brought me to tears at the end because of it. Mass Effect 3... Not so very bittwesweet sadness here. Just plain bitter.

I would've wanted more choice, for me to choose how I wanted to end MY character's story. Mass Effect belongs to Bioware but the customized, personal Shepards belong to the players. That is the difference between rpgs and other games. The player's own character. The player's own story. And most want to end it in the way they believe suit THEIR Shepard.

I have several characters. I do not want all of them to have a "happy ending", I want them to have the ending that suits their story. In my case, at least ONE of them has to die for the greater good, for the story to work. So we DO want the option I believe. But we are diverse. And we need diverse endings.

In short, I was satisfied with the game, but would have liked more squadmembers, a better quest system and more possible outcomes of the game as well as better writing concerning the ending.

Modifié par Evil_Jashinist, 17 avril 2012 - 08:47 .

[SpartanCommander]

Their are many problems with it like how the gameplay and what happens is nearly identicle no matter how you play the last 2 games.

I would have voiced that concern if the ending wasn't just so bad. Especially the Starchild. and my character with no actually reason completely surrenders to what the Starchild said. Which is not how I made my character to do. If anything it would be a heated counter at how the Starchild is wrong and this sounds more like a ploy to control evolution not stop war between synthetics and organics by wiping them both out. Which also makes no logical sense.

[ioannisdenton]

Orumon wrote...

Terror_K wrote...

Going to repost something I wrote in another (now closed) topic since it covers a lot of my issues:-

The ending(s) aren't ME3's only flaws, they're just one of the biggest, most detracting and the ones everybody is going on about.

For one thing, there's the character face import, which has gone beyond a fiasco. Given the promises from BioWare and intent of the trilogy, the fact that it was broken at launch was unforgivable as it is, but to make matters worse we've since been given a patch that claims to fix the issue but just outright doesn't, and not only that, people have discovered that some Shepard faces are literally impossible to create or recreate in ME3 because the facial options are simply not there. That is beyond ludicrous and to state how mind-boggingly bad that is can't be put into words. You've got a series based entirely around carrying a completely customisable character through a trilogy, and not only do you guys not have this working at launch, but whoever designed the CC cut out options entirely? Seriously?! The term "WTF?!!" does not even come close to covering how poorly planned, programmed and designed this major fubar is. So right out of the box, before the player is even into the game, if they're importing in the manner the series was designed for, they're already screwed over. It's the equivalent of trying to build a world class soccer team to take on the best in the world, but not even picking a goalie and leaving it completely undefended for the entire game. That's how bad the planning was here and how outright stupid whoever was in charge of the CC design was. What's the point of wasting time making a brand new default Femshep and adding more hair options if a quarter of the options from the previous titles aren't even there.

And that's before we even get into the gameplay. ME3 nailed the shooter mechanics and combat, I'll give it that, but at the cost of pretty much everything that made the original games what they were. I'd even go so far to say it was the core gameplay that suffered and was greatly reduced in ME3, which is NOT the combat, but the roleplaying, dialogue and choices.

For starters, only two dialogue options 90% of the time, even with "Full Decisions" on. Why "Full decisions" is so damn simplified and watered down compared to just the default way things were in ME1 and ME2 that "Full Decisions" is supposed to represent is beyond me. The third neutral option barely makes a showing at all, not to mention that the amount of Charm/Indimidate options in the entire game equates to such a pitiful amount I could probably count them on both hands and not run out of finers. As I've said before, there were more Charm/Intimidate opportunities on Noveria in ME1 alone than in ALL of ME3.

Then there's the autodialogue, with Shepard running his/her mouth off without me, the player, doing a damn thing. This happens far too often, so much so I wonder why there's any dialogue choices at all. I'm never going to touch "Action Mode" but I get the strong feeling that given how much Shepard yammers on without me picking a damn thing and the amount of times I'm just given two options that are either not that different or simply "Jesus or Hitler" that I'd barely be missing out on anything. Why you guys wasted your time programming the different game styles (Narrative, RPG, Action, etc.) is beyond me given how little effort seemed to be put into the dialogue itself.

Then there's the fact that 80% of the time you talk with your crew, they're Zaeed and Kasumi all over again. Here's a test for you Stanley (or any other BioWare employee who may be reading) to see how much BioWare supposedly "listens" to its fans: while Zaeed and Kasumi were generally enjoyed by fans as DLC companions for ME2, what was the most commonly griped about aspect about them? Here's a clue... it's something you did to the entire Mass Effect 3 crew whenever you talk with them more often than not! I go to talk with my L.I. after a long absense for the first time, and do I get a proper cutscene with a dialogue wheel and choices? No... I just get her standing there saying something I have no control over as I click on her, pressing her like a button. I finally get Ashley back after her accident and onto the Normandy again, and does she have anything to say and do I get a dialogue wheel and a cinematic scene? No, I just get, "Hey, Shepard" and that's it. With the rare exceptions here and there, my crew have become less like squadmates, friends and companions and more like talking plush toys I can go around and squeeze or yank the pull string on every so often. I enjoyed that they moved around a little more, there was inter-party banter and we got the odd moment on The Citadel with them, but it wasn't worth it to get "Tickle Me Garrus" and "Speak and Say Liara."

On top of it all, the ship ended up becoming boring in the end, as you had to run all around it every visit from top to bottom and back again, just to make sure you'd found everything. The Citadel had the same issue. For example, if you speak to everybody else aboard the Normandy before coming across drunk Tali at the bar and you have to go back and revisit them all just to see if it unlocks some drunk Tali banter, because it won't happen if you don't see her first. And then you slog all the way back just to find that all that happens is James say, "hey" again. *sigh*

The Citadel and the Normandy were highlights in the other games, but the execution of them in ME3 made them into a chore I was sick of dealing with. Not to mention all the samey fetch-quests that took up 90% of the sidequests (with the rest pretty much just cheap rehashes of MP maps as you just kill guys). It was the most tedious and hamfisted, lazy-ass pieces of DA2 all over again, as you hunted down every race's lost artifacts from random scans and brought them back. What's this? An interesting quest to the elcor homeworld to rescue some elcor? Wow! That actually sounds like... oh wait, it's just another fetch-quest where you click on the planet and it's all done for you. Oh, and half of them are just found sitting in the Spectre terminal. All in all, ME3 sidequests were the worst of the trilogy.

Not that the main quests were much better. The writing was fairly solid, they had some great epic and emotional moments and the level-design was definitely better than ME2's. But damn... were they linear as all hell. Not only were there barely any choices during them so they ended up almost all playing out the same, but the entire structure was linear throughout the entire game. No freedom for the player to go where they want when they want... it has to be Mars, Palaven's Moon, Sur'Kesh, etc. in that order without fail in every playthrough. As much as some people may moan about the BioWare pattern of, "Tutorial Place, Forced Secondary Place and then 3 to 5 Locations You Can Do In Any Order" at least that pattern gave the player some freedom. That's non-existent in ME3. Yes... players said they wan't a more focused story than ME2's was, but that doesn't mean completely on the rails from A to B to C to D, etc. ME1, KotOR and DAO all proved you can have a focused story that unfolds without forcing the players where to go. BioWare said this was supposed to be the most diverse of the trilogy and give players the most freedom since it was the last part, but were' restricted far more than in ME1 or ME2 in ME3.

Which leads to another promise that was broken: our choices mattering. They just outright didn't. ME2 was already guilty of BioWare's lazy way of dealing with variations: either trivialise it, sweep it under the rug or offer a weak substitution. ME3 suffered this even worse, and it was, again, supposed to be the part where all our choices were shown to matter and had real diversity. Save the Rachni Queen or kill her? Doesn't matter, same result. How about those people who lived or died in ME1 and ME2? Doesn't matter, somebody will just step in and take their place and dialogue on the exact same mission. This goes for the likes of The Council, Wrex, Mordin, Grunt, etc. It doesn't matter what you did in ME1 or ME2, it's still exactly the same game with the same missions done in the same order and the same outcome and same ending. Even the Virmire Survivor was cut out of half the game so the devs didn't have to put any effort into their return it seems. No wonder the endings didn't reflect our choices, because they never matter in any of the rest of the game either, so why should they at the end. All they countered towards was a stupid, arbitrary number called "Galactic Readiness" that has no real bearing on anything and is just a counter to indicate whether once the end comes you're "Kind of Screwed," "Really Screwed" or "Totally Screwed." Again, this was the final part where BioWare said they could "go nuts" and that our choices would be really diverse. Another lie.

And then there's the endings. 'Nuff said there. It's all been covered more than enough times.

The point is, ME3 has major issues even without the endings, and it seems largely because the focus has shifted away from what really mattered and when to other things that were less important. Kinect Support, Multiplayer, Different Game modes, etc. and even the combat all seemed to be far more crucial than the factor that to me (and thus I'm sure many other Mass Effect fans) was supposed to be the most crucial, key and core of the series: the dialogue, the roleplaying, the choices and satisfying consequences that should come from those things.

And yes, I was calling for more statistical RPG elements, such as power evolutions and diversity, weapon modification and more customisation as a whole. But that was because despite my concerns about the direction ME3 was going, I didn't really think for one second that the dialogue, choices and other roleplaying elements were going to take as much of a hit and be watered down as much as they were. I suspected after ME2 that the choices and consequences weren't going to be as fulfulling as I'd hoped and we were promised, but I still expected a far better job than this. I didn't expect things like the Rachni Queen choice to be so utterly pointless as they turned out to be. But I certainly didn't expect as much autodialogue as we got, the ME2 DLC Squaddie treatment we got for the whole crew and the complete lack of dialogue choices, not to mention so few Charm/Intimidate opportunities.

ME3 took all the things I loved most about the other two games and watered them down, and as much as I complained about ME2's lack of hardcore, statistical RPG mechanics, it at least didn't skimp on the roleplaying and dialogue choices. ME3 just felt so half-assed and dumbed down in this regard. And that's why I think it's the worst of the trilogy, even if it did nail the combat, have better designed levels, bring back modding, diversify skills more, get rid of Mission Complete screens, arbitrary XP gains and other annoying aspects of ME2.

This needs to be kept about and BW needs to see it.

bumping this post. i so want to shove this excellent written review to any of these lame proffesionals game reviewers that obviously after the perfect Me3 reviews they gave Me3 it can be seen they are clueless about gaming.

[Feanor_II]

I would like to add a few things to my yesterday message (which I realized it's terribly written )

Good things:
- Level design
- Conversation between crew members at the Normandy.

NotSoGood:
- FedEx quests: Better than in DA2 but I still believe it's not the best way to handle a quest.
- Expected more participation from ME2 squadmembers, also expected some of them to became temporary squadmates, but at the end they only appear as cameos

Bad things:
- More on simplification of conversation (extended): The conversations wit Normandy crew where we can't select any response.... and even don't switch to conveersation mode.

Ending Plot holes:

• If the Catalyst has been on the Citadel since the begining..... why the keepers were needed to activate the Citadel Mass Relay? Why use Saren & Sovereign for that purpose? Wouldn't it be better if the Catalyst itself activates it.
• On ME2 it was hinted that the problem with Haestorms accelerated agging could be something important, but we haven't heard anything more about it
• Shepard reproches to the Catalyst that it decides the destiny of advanced civilizations witout taking into account their desires, that it is not legitimated to do so, and by acting like that it is behaving like "synthetic apocaplypse" it is trying to prevent....... But with the synthesis ending (I understand that this is what BW understands as "best ending" because it requieres high Galactic readiness, or whatever that indicator is called) isn't Shepard behaving the same way modifying all existing live based only on what he believes is right no matter the rest of the Galaxy thinks?

Modifié par Feanor_II, 17 avril 2012 - 11:11 .

[alkeiser]

The disappointment that is the ending is now the reason that I will no longer buy Bioware games at full price on day one, and especially never again from Origin.
I will be waiting until they go on sale and/or on Steam again and atleast a few weeks after release.

[hemorrhoid]

Ah, the whole shebang, ok...

I give ME3 a ... 90/100, I'd say, because (frankly, like all games) it does, despite how indescribable joy I had playing such a terrific game (it's so sad to think that this is the end game...) once, twice and thrice, have some flaws. Many are very understandable, I'm listing them simply because I don't like them, that's all.

Without you having to hear the endless complaints that others have (only some of which I agree with), I'm going to state some things that I haven't seen much of from others, probably partly because it's my personal opinion:

Likes: The overall game, pretty much. I haven't tried every conversation combo in every situation or mixing imported character choices from ME1 and 2, so I still have a lot more to explore, but judging solely on the "default" save file in ME3 I'm speaking from the heart.

I especially liked that I got to see and put "my" foot on the quarian, salarian and asari homeworld, cure the genophage, see a female krogan (now all you need to do is show me a female female turian (and male asari. How do they populate again? XD)).

I loved that many ex-members (ME2 mainly) have become so successful since ME2 (like Jack leading a band of mischievous kids without swearing (love the humour you put into your games) but that eventually when being teased by Joker she flips and the scene cuts off right before the F-word. Priceless), and that we get to see more of Miranda and (regardless if Miranda returns in ME3) Oriana, kind of like Jacob and his father.

The ending. You're surprised now, right? At least after some of your other less appealing feedbacks, maybe, but here it is: I was surprised and relieved that, I assume, it was possible to save every squad mate from the ending (judge that from what happens when the Relays are destroyed...), which was a saving grace for me. I know not everyone survives a war, and it was not fun at all to see Mordin die on top that tower even though it's good to know he died willingly and contently knowing that he fulfilled his mission and hopefully set a temporal halt to the krogan-turian-salarian feud. But to see with 100% galactic readiness and 5200 war assets both Kaidan and Garrus come of of that wreck was a tiny miracle, so thank you for making that possible.

I'm grateful for getting back on my team, as well as Garrus and especially Liara, whose appearance I think you've polished exceptionally well since ME2 (even though I barely got to see her then). Her 'romantic' and also her last moments with Shepard were really ... heart-warming and I'd say brilliant. I like that she's a two-way romantic interest.

The music. Honestly I think ME1 has the best, but some of the ME3 tracks are just ... far too recalling of memories that I either want to remember forever because of the nature, or that I want to forget because it's so ... unwanted. Not in because it's badly done – quite the opposite, actually: it's so well done that I feel bad when watching it. A lot of these feelings have to do with me knowing it's the end of a trilogy (but PLEEEAASE not the end of Mass Effect!), and that's partially why I react like I do. I know that goes for a lot of fans, and you're right – we give reviews like we do PRECISELY because we love and care deeply about the games and characters.

I do have some more points, but I think I should focus on other points for now, maiinly because the rest is so general that it's hard to pinpoint. So please don't assume that just because the less positive points are more and/or larger that the game had more 'negative' sides because you KNOW that is not true.

Dislikes: Such a small team... Other than Javik I hope to see some extension in the future.

I think Kai Leng was an interesting character, but I don't see him as super-necessary for the plot - couldn't the 'Delusive Man' (starting to think if I'm the delusive one if the man was actually right in the end like Shepard realised (if, again, THAT was the correct realisation...)) just have sent a few hundred troopers who'd be less troublesome and annoying (no offence whatsoever to Leng's script writer - props for creativity)? Though I suppose there had to be a mini-boss along the lines.

And they seriously only used the human Reaper to evolve their tech? I honestly imagined they'd a bigass surprise for me when I gave them that thing. Aw...

And then the returning ex-members, whom I imagined would want to join me but who really couldn't. Then again I suppose it's good that some of them actually got to happily go on with their lives.

And why did Legion have to die even if I decided to help him and doom the quarians? Why wasn't there a way to restore (or create?) peace between them? Why did Thessia have to die (granted it was one of the greatest scenes in the game, and definitely one of the greatest across the series, as well as it was understandable), but why did the comms suddenly work only one way? Given such a device it doesn't really make sense even if the Reapers scrambled the signal because then it wouldn't work at all, right?

And then comes the war... How are our ex-members doing? What happened to all the extra (ground) support we picked up along the way, like Elcor, Aria's mercenary bands, the different troopers, the Spectres and so on? Would've loved to see some air support engaging the surrounding Reapers, but I understand why the Alliance can't spare many.

Oddities/annoyances: The Illusive Man's scorched face at the end of the game – what happened? I honestly thought he'd been huskified; is that the visual indoctrination result?

And then the end-of-interaction scene: I found it weird that the choices were actually coloured. And I was outright personally ANNOYED that the Illusive Man seemed to be right – that it was right to control the Reapers instead of destroying them. I disagree completely, and I know that that's exactly the meaning of the games – for the player to find his own ways and opinions on matters and choose how to best solve them for himself. But that makes me wonder: WAS the Illusive Man right after all? I know after watching your conference the other day (great show, by the way, thanks a million for hosting it) that the indoctrination theory, which I don't know whether I should be nonchallant about or not – is a matter you as creators don't want to meddle with exactly because of what I've stated, and frankly that bugs the bejiggles out of me, because now I'm gonna go around wondering for the rest of my life if the man was right and I was wrong.

Yes, that there was quite a mouthful. Moving on to my next and final point, the

Multiplayer: Until I actually tried it I was very sceptical towards it, but gameplaywise it seemed to be fine.

I'm not very much one for using powers often though, and seeing how only two weapons can be used in a match (possibly, I figure, in regards to every class in singleplayer only being able to use two respective weapons), I think it's kind of unfair that the Soldier class also has to abide by this rule istead of using all weapons in a match like in singleplayer.

Also when promoting a class I think that resetting every responding character of that class to level 1 kind of blew away the fun of leveling several in that class and then promote an individual.

I don't really like the idea of single-use items. Medi-gels, ammo packs and survival packs and stuff is obviously one-use-only, but stuff like amps and ammo powers like incendiary and disruptor I think should be permanent, again like in singleplayer.

And is it that we get weapons in MP that we don't get in SP?

That's all I've got that's worth commenting on for the time being. I know it might be a lot, and I'm sorry, but I have to let you know that you should be proud, like I know you are of the franchise, and give yourselves and each other a big glass of champagne and a pat on the back if you haven't already.