Ok, so I beat the game last night.
I’ve been mulling in my head the events of the last 10 minutes of game play and I’m still feeling confused and utterly unsatisfied. But first I’ll start with the rest of the game.
The mechanics and the gameplay where, for the most part improvements to the series. Some of the elements of ME1 that made sense where re-introduced, some from ME2 where polished up a bit and it worked, save for a few GUI missteps here and there. The only real draw back to the gameplay mechanics that was consistent, was the whole “let’s bind umpteen actions to a SINGLE button” blunder. I can’t count the number of times I died PURELY because my Shep couldn’t figure out whether I wanted to sprint, take cover, dodge, or open a door. Hint, if I’m getting shot at, opening an ecrypted door for 10 seconds ISN’T what I’m looking to do.
I guess this was a limitation of the gamepads on the consoles, but I’m playing on a PC, god damn it, let me assign some of those actions to ANOTHER key.
Another thing that bothered me was the whole planet scanning, followed up by reaper pac-man. This part of the experience felt woefully unpolished, almost like they were trying to do something with it, ran out of time, and just threw together the disparate remnants of a torn up ME2 galaxy map. It’s really not up to snuff with the rest of the experience, IMHO.
In terms of narrative elements and thematic style, the theme of ME3 certainly needed an emphasis on getting things done quickly, I understand that, but I still felt like things were too confined. I tackled my missions and that’s it. There was no reason for me to visit or look at any planets/moons/asteroids that didn’t ping back something on the scanners. And so the galaxy felt a lot more unanymous to me.
In contrast, I really enjoyed the feeling of wondering the galaxy, exploring, and discovering new things in ME2. I was a space bum in that game, and I enjoyed every minute of it. Sure, the mechanics of exploring could have used some tweaking in that game, but it still felt like a grand adventure in a huge galaxy.
In ME1 and ME2 someone could reference a planet or a system and I knew right away what they were talking about… Oh right, the third planet by the red giant on the outer rim! In ME3, I had no clue, nor any interest in anything outside the main planet missions. It didn’t help that journal entires were so damn vague about locations either.
Finally, I truly enjoyed the characters. The old and the few new ones I encountered. Most were well written (the Prothean was a surprise!), interesting, and in the end I felt I had a satisfying relationship with each one fo them, one that took into account our past experiences. Liara, specially, stood out. She and my character truly shared a special friendship, and Bioware got it right. I kind of wish I had romanced her 
Another cool addition was the fact that characters felt less static. They could be found in various places on the ship, they interacte with eachother (loved Garrus and Vega’s conversation by the messhall), and they had a lot of “throw away” dialogue lines that weren’t just “throw away” lines, if you know what I mean. They all added some interesting tidbit to their personalities, or touched on, in a coherent way, on what we just did or where about to do.
The game took me quite a bit to beat, and I missed out on some side quests, mostly due to frustration at trying to locate the mission targets. I was playing on hardcore though, which tends to slow down game progress as fights last a lot longer than even on normal (the final battle on hardcore took me like 20 minutes, and I didn’t finish due to dying in a cheap way, I switched to normal for it and I went through it in easily less than 1/2 the time). But ME2 seemed longer to me… even though I enjoyed my time with it more!
OK, so now the ending. I’m still not sure how I feel about. I’m going to read through the spoilers in this thread to see if my feelings mirror other doper’s but basically, it went something like this:
Ghost kid: Hey, I’m ghost kid. Reapers are my idea for your salvation.
ME: So you use synthetics to anhilate us, in order to prevent… synthetics from annihilating us? WTF?
Ghost Kid: That’s right, now shut up. Look, that crucible thing isn’t a weapon, it’s upgrade to my operating system. They’ve finally added touch controls! but that’s not relevant here. What is releveant is that now I see that the reapers might not be the only choice in order annihila… I mean save you organics.
ME: You don’t fucking say.
Ghost Kid: Yeah I figure stranding all you organics in this here solar system and condemning many of the rest to a slow death lost in the void of interstellar space might just be a better solution! All you gotta do is decide what to do with the reapers, control them, destroy them, or integrate them with organics to form a new race of cyborgs.
ME: You mean husks.
Ghost Kid: Shut up.
ME: Well, this is stupid. And If I destroy the reapers, the Geth die too? But they’re good peoples!
Ghost Kid: Yeah whatever.
ME: Hell, the fact that they’ve made peace with their creators, with all organics for that matter, and helped us fight the reapers, that should show that there is yet ANOTHER possible solution…
Ghost Kid: Look, you got three choices, and none of them involve me acting in a logical, intelligent manner. So get to it bitch.
ME: WTF??
On reading some of the spoilery comments so far, I’m in total agreement about the Bioware dropping the ball on what the ending should have been about:
The thematic importance is placed on whether Shep lives or dies, and not on the satisfaction of knowing what he did MATTERED.
It’s almost as if Bioware’s writers were replaced, and the new ones missed the point entirely.
But I did donate to that “Retake Mass Effect”/Child’s Play charity event - the organizer cut it off at the $80K mark but the donation button still works - and I hope they take an honest look at the ending.
