I finally finished ME3. I love the ME series itself, and despite all the controversy around the ending I wanted to see it for myself not spoiled... with that I came to the conclusion. If ME3 was a stand alone game, I could see the ending make total sense. But seeing it is the ending of the Story Arc, I did not like it at all. These are my reasons, and I feel they are valid.
1) So much time was vested into the characters between the three games, Tali, Garrus, Liara alone are primary in all 3 games. We see nothing of their fates.
2) Is it sad to see Shepard die, yes. Does it suck, yes. Did it make for a compelling story, yes. But Shepard already died once, and again for the vested fan who stuck out a love intrest from the first game, it's like great (love interest) has lost him twice now...
3) You guys made choice the biggest part of the game, all the choices made don't count for crap in the last 20 minutes of the game. Good, Evil, who lived, who died, did this race get saved, did you kill that race... what did it matter?
4) The destruction of the Mass Relays in all 3 endings was dumb. In the destroy synthetic it makes sense... but the others it doesn't. Plus all those races, the Turians, the Quarians, the Krogan... how do they get home with out the relays??
5) The Suicide Mission in ME2 felt more like the final battle to me then the Battle for Earth. Yeah it was a **** of a fight, even on Normal, but in that you are just going through a mission. During the Suicide Mission, you needed to pick squad leaders and specialists based on their strengths and weaknesses. And the outcome was did they survive or not?
Like I said, I am a fan, not a fanboy where I'll never buy another ME game or DLC or be stupid like that. But I felt that ME3 was over all a great game, trying to make the alliances, the choices, collecting the War Assets was awesome fun... but the final battle for earth just felt half-assed to me, like it was just another mission, it wasn't special or a good way to cap off 5 years of story and decisions. It felt like you could have fought the same battle trying to liberate Palaven.
If you really are reading these, then I hope you see my point. If not, maybe someone who finished and felt left down will agree with me.