Hrothdane

To answer you closing statement:

1. Seeing war assets in action is a perfectly normal expectation.

2. Story problems do exist. Harbinger flying away without firing at the Normandy? Why did Mr. Catalyst need Sovereign to activate the Citadel Relay if he "is" the Citadel?

3. Details are always relevant in storytelling; thus, inconsistencies are relevant.

4. It is a game that is not Xenosaga and was not made by Hideo Kojima; there is a natural expectation of gameplay.

Furthermore, your understanding of Hegel's dialectic is pedestrian. Hegel only used thesis, antithesis, synthesis when describing a dialectic he attributed to Kant. Hegel's dialectic was abstract, negative, concrete. The actual German word he uses for the third step--what you call synthesis--is "Aufhebung." Sublimation probably captures his intended meaning the best. You seem to have based your analysis entirely on the use of the word "synthesis" and the fact that there are three options presented. Synthesis is a perfectly normal word for describing the combination of two things, and a set of three is hardly a rare occurrence in well, anything. Your analysis is also rather shallow in that his dialectic was meant to be general enough to apply to everything, so it should be widely applicable, even to things not intended to be.

In fact, let me have a go with another blue, green, and red trio:

Bubbles (abstract): You should be nice to everyone.

Buttercup (negative): You gotta be tough and mean to survive.

Blossom (concrete): You should be nice normally, but tough when you need to kick butt and save Townsville.

I have now proven that Craig McCracken based his design of the Powerpuff Girls off of Hegel's dialectic.

Ares/Rakshasa are great to have. Stick some healing spells on one of them so that Yukiko can focus on her fire magic.

Sisyphean above makes some great points, and I would like to add one.

I think one of the reasons so many people have such a negative reaction to these games lies in their fundamental design philosophies. Dark Souls and Demons Souls are action RPGs designed for defensive players that are deliberate in every action, while almost all other action RPGs are designed for offensive players that prefer action to planning. In many ways, the Souls games are not designed for the standard action RPG crowd at all and appeal more to turn-based RPG fans (like myself). All the action RPG fans expecting a faster and come into the game expecting to play it like their other games and soon find themselves frustrated because the game is designed to incentivize a gameplay style they do not enjoy.

@Dynablade I think you might be underleveled. I'm doing Void Quest right now and my party is in its high fourties, low fifties. If you can at least get to 39 so you can make Black Frost, you might be okay. He has no weaknesses, a nice move set, and actually drains both ice and fire.

Are you going back and revisiting old dungeons when the optional bosses show up? The game seems to be balanced based on the assumption that players will go back and train some and do quests.

What level are you with the Hermit social link? If you have been leveling it, you should have no problem keeping your SP up to keep fighting in the TV forever if you want.

@feliciano182 I enjoyed most of the game, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have problems. Most reaonable people appear to agree on that point. However, the average person likes to make everything out to be all good or all bad, but most things will always be somewhwere in the middle. They feel as though admitting the faults of something they love will somehow lessen it, and if something is all bad, they can just ignore it and dismiss it. Just as many of the more extreme ending haters will try to argue the entire game is terrible, you are oversimplifying and dismissing many legitimate concerns out-of-hand. The writers wanted us to consider them artists, so we are just holding them to that standard. As haggis said, emotional reaction is a legitimate concern in storytelling, too. A large reason Mass Effect series has such dedicated fans because it has always done such a good job of hitting the right emotional notes in the players.

I can easily see why the game won so many awards. The design of this game is well-thought-out. By keeping the ability inputs simple, the memorization aspect becomes so much simpler. The challenge shifts away from "remembering how to use a move" to "figuring out which move is the best for a given situation."

I enjoy the plot as well. It actually puts a lot of effort into making the fighting game premise make sense in-universe. It could have been a little less visual novel a little more game in story mode, but the story engrossed me enough that I didn't care.

Not with the information we have.

Mass Effect 3's main problem (besides the ending) is that it follows Mass Effect 2. BioWare went all-out with introducing so many characters and DLC things to carry-over. There was no way they could satisfyingly resolve the storylines of all 12 squadmates (10 if you exclude DLC), while also accounting for the possibility that they might be dead, without basically making ME3 nothing but character stories. While that formula worked well with ME2, the Reaper storyline needed to happen in ME3.

Because ME2's main plot did little to advance the Reaper plot, it meant that most of that plot would have to fit into ME3. Combine that with the all the character arcs, and the problem starts becoming clear. If I were writing the series, I would have started the Reaper War sometime in ME2 and kept the squad numbers lower. ME2 would have been mostly darker and desperate, but would have ended with a hopeful "we have begun to turn the tide" scenario. Some characters could even die to cut off some of the story branches and set the mood. We would "Take Back Earth" in ME2 and "Take Back the Galaxy" in ME3.

BioWare wrote themselves into a corner, and EA did not give them the extra time they needed to get out of it.

I've played it three times, watched it once on the Endurance Run, and seen it twice on the anime. It still doesn't bother me.

The intro does a great job setting up the normal world before things get sent out-of-whack, setting the story in motion. It introduces the supernatural elements a slow pace that builds a little suspense for the final reveal of the TV World.

Besides, after Kingdom Hearts II's intro, no other prologue can bother me.

Honestly, I have found few abilities that I would actually call useless.

I'm playing on hard mode, and Tentarafoo is amazing. It gives you extra time to take out the enemies, and you have a fair chance of getting some bonus money. The multi-target silence skill (forgot the name) is pretty useful too.

Hama is actually really useful in Yukiko's Castle. Several of the stronger enemies are actually weak to it. You don't want to spam it that early on, but it can get you out of jams. Late game P3 and P4 (don't know about Golden yet) (ma)hamaon and (ma)mudoon with the appropriate boosts can make you tear through many of the beefier enemies, many of which have no weaknesses. If I remember correctly from previous games, Mudo and Hama Boosts even affect Samsara and Die for Me! (which already have 80% success rates), so you can do the math.

However, Rebellion is a waste of time. Revolution (the one that affects everyone) is useful against Gold Hands, but not much else. Don't even bother with the Survive Light/Dark skills, and you probably won't get much use out of trying to pass on Dodge skills. Regenerate does not make enough of a difference to warrant the ability slot, typically. Invigorate is a must for the first couple dungeons, but by the Strip Club, you should have little problem getting back SP. It can help on some of the longer boss fights, but you are almost always better off with a different ability.