I held off buying Mass Effect 3 for a while because it’s EA and the only way to buy it in downloadable form is on Origin. But I always knew I would buy it eventually because I’d played both of the previous games and wanted to see the ending (however controversial it is!) I have to say that the experience with Origin really put me off. I had a hard time downloading the game and couldn’t download the free Extended Cut DLC at all. I’d download like 60% of it and then the downloader would silently throw it all away and restart from zero. This happened multiple times until I finally downloaded it via torrent from a pirate site.
- I don’t mind the ending I saw though I have no idea how it compares to the original one without the DLC. It wasn’t fantastic but it wasn’t kill-my-kittens bad either. It’s more or less what I’d expected though the Star Child and slow-motion dream sequences were clumsy as hell. The main thing I would have appreciated more if there were cutscenes or even text descriptions about the specific war assets I picked up and how they contributed to how the war turned out. But I can see how that would complicated and expensive fast.
- I found the final battle pretty unimpressive. It was pretty silly to have all those ground troops lined up but then at the very end, it’s still just Shepard and two squad members fighting off hordes of Reapers. There were boss battles I liked such as the one on Rannoch and watching the giant Thresher Maw kill the Reaper on Tuchanka. I really liked the scenes on these two planets since you get to see colour palettes rarely used elsewhere in the Mass Effect games. It turns out that when they use organic colours and have directional lighting, the graphics actually don’t look bland! I was amazed.
- Rather than introducing new characters, this instalment is all about bringing everyone who ever appeared in the two previous games back again. It really is pretty amazing how your actions in previous games determine who lives and dies in this one. It gives an epic feeling of completion and closure to the game, something I don’t think I’ve ever seen in any other game, even if the ending does somewhat betray this. Honestly, a key part of my enjoyment was walking the Normandy between missions talking to everyone about what they thought and reminiscing over the past. It felt very satisfying.
- Combat as usual is kind of bland and janky. I’ve always disliked the shooting mechanics in these games. The weapons don’t feel right, the animations are still clumsy and so forth. Biotic powers are still the most exciting and fun to use. I was stuck with a soldier due to previously imported savegames but I almost always used Liara as a squad member due to her biotic powers. And having a space ninja as an enemy boss was just silly. Please don’t put anime in my Western science-fiction game.
- Missions, other then the final one, were mostly well written and made more sense than the ones in Mass Effect 2. I liked fighting Cerberus troopers more than fighting Reapers but I disliked how implausible it is for a single human terrorist group to be so resourceful that they can continually stymie the collected might of the galaxy. Some of the mission areas seemed really small however and it was odd how the mission would abruptly end once an objective had been achieved, leaving me no time to look around the place to pick up stuff I’d missed. I always had to go back to the Spectre terminal to buy back the missing quest-related items.
Overall I am very happy that they actually successfully completed the trilogy. I still remember what an awesome cinematic experience the first game was and I remember how much I doubted that Bioware would ever manage to finish the story. But they did and the ending is pretty definitive and it does provide closure. Yeah, there were a lot of missteps along the way and it’s pretty evident that they didn’t have everything planned out right from the first game so some things are badly inconsistent (for example, synthesis is clearly intended to be the best ending here, but Saren argued for synthesis all the way back in the first back and the conclusion was that it was the indoctrination talking), but the whole thing is still a pretty impressive epic. I still won’t buy another game from Origin though.
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