I've finally finished Mass Effect 3, oh boy.

First off I'd like to say that I enjoyed the game, and I think ME3 is a good game, but pales in comparison to ME1 and ME2. I personally feel this game has been EA'd to death, as Brad put it so eloquently. Even after the DLC this game still feels hollow when compared to its predecessors, in terms of dialog, and gameplay content. It seems that this game was on the dangerous path of being another DA2, I wish Bioware had an extra year to work on this game.(Although I don't know if that would've helped?)

I also ended up buying the From Ashes dlc and Leviathan, one hour into ME3 after breaking down. I'll talk about those later. For now I'll say From Ashes is holy overrated since ambient character interaction is sparse when compared to the two other games, and I don't see how Javik adds anything worthwhile to my personal story. On the other hand Leviathan is an absolute must.

In terms of the ending, in my view people who disliked the ending were/are invested in the Mass Effect Universe/Characters to a greater degree, while people who liked the ending weren't as invested. My reasoning for this is that Mass Effect although a wonderfully crafted universe is about the characters, about Shepard, and his interactions with everybody. The ending of ME3 is about the wrapping up the all-story and has little, to no real focus on the characters. In my opinion this is the major flaw in ME3's ending, and I'll talk more about that later.

The Good

• The high points are really high, although the lows are grimace worthy. The best scene in Mass Effect 3 is when you get some R&R with Garrus on the Citadel, I'm slightly biased though since hes been on my squad since the beginning. Bro's charging Reaper lasers, before sexy organic/synthetic Babes. Leviathan as well is a fantastic mission/scene, it not being in game is unimaginable and I continuously love everything involving the Illusive man.
• Combat in the Mass Effect universe has never been better, everything flows like a dream. Combos are fun, and I actually want to play more after finishing the story.
• Art style continues to be great, and keeps getting better with every game. Destroyed London was a fantastic set of sequences, Reaper battles in the background are awe-inspiring, and everything looks so slick.
• The Mass Effect Universe continues to be a great playground where I want to continously learn more about the different races/worlds.

The Bad

• Most of my squad in ME3 was terribly uninteresting, Tali'Vas Normandy died in ME2, Ashley in ME1, and I hated Kaidan so I sent him off. I also did not find Javik interesting enough to be a good squad-mate,(I feel he should have been a non-squad main Character) and James Vega was so goddamn annoying. So I was left with Garrus, Liara, and EDI which would have been ok, but everyone saying Javik was so mind blowing made him take up a slot for the first half of the game. I finally said screw it and just played with Liara and Garrus, in my opinion the two best characters in ME3 (I also repeated a few important missions with Javik). Even so my interest in my squad never reached the ME2 level of squad love. (I'll be starting a trilogy replay when I have time, ensuring Ashley, and Tali survive.)

• The game feels hollow to me, the Citadel feels miniscule, passive squad dialog is non existent, and dialogue choices in general have been watered down to really sparse levels. The RPG elements such as loot seem to be getting cut more and more every game, I feel the next game within the universe will just be a Gears clone with two dialog choices per conversation. I honestly feel this is a result of EA's influence on this game, it has that eerie DA2 feel of quick push out when compared to its predecessors. Hopefully sw:tor fever dissolving means Bioware can be left alone to make their games again.

• The combat areas all feel like derivatives of the multiplayer maps. I've never had this feeling in the franchise before, but the combat areas all feel Devil May Cry ish. Beat section 1 proceed to section 2, pick up designated heavy weapon, move to section 3, maybe all the games in the franchised followed this methodology but it feels really evident in this iteration.

• Oh and super important core story DLC is really lame.

The Conflicted

The ending, oh dear.

Having played à la Brad. definitively enhanced the extended cut ending, and I can imagine the frustration upon release window. The star child was grimace worthy, and really deflated some of the gravity of my choices. Synthesis was too perfect an ending, Mass Effect has been fairly dark at points and the synthesis ending felt like a Disney movie. The destroy ending was resolved during my interactions with EDI, and saving the Geth over the Quarians. I willingly allowed an entire race of people to be massacred, why are you making me choose again? Control in my eyes is the only real ending if the starchild sequence is necessary. But then the issue is Shepard now controls an army of Repear's to defend the galaxy, how can there ever be another threat in this universe again? Also I’m not sure how many of you know this but during destroy there's a chance Shepard survives as you hear him gasp for breath in the rubble.

Another issue with the ending is that I never really got a feel for how war readiness or my para/rene status affected my version.

Now the following is my personal opinion of what the ending should have been:

The true ending should have been what Jeff suggested. Shepard and Anderson tired, beat up sitting on the citadel, the crucible activates building up energy.

Before that depending on your War Readiness reaching a high enough number Anderson happens to have a medi-gel left to prevent a life threatening wound. I love this idea of you ensuring an adequate war supply line was in place helps you save your dear friend.

Then the following scene ensues.

Anderson says: “ We did it Shepard. I'm proud of you son.”

Shephard says: “ Yes we did Sir. Stay with me Sir.”

The crucible fires the energy burst using the citadel to calibrate the energy burst to Reaper technology frequencies, since the citadel was built by the Reapers. The whatever colored light(Probably Orange?Orange is cool) glows over the pair, Anderson passes away,or faints depending on the readiness and the reapers implode.

I feel this was the perfect emotional point for an ending. I also have some ideas for closing cut-scenes, but I won't expose you guys to my fan fic.

The Unforgivable

Teasing an Elcor home-world mission with Elcor warriors is unforgivable.

Didn't read it all yet, but I agree that Liara and Garrus are the squad mates. They fit what I needed in sqaud mates, me being a Soldier I need Biotic and Shield-Striping covered by Teammates, and they're the coolest teammates. Never understood the love for Tali(Whiny and Kinda a racist) or Ashley(Died for me in ME1).

@Beaudacious said:

The ending, oh dear.

Having played à la Brad. definitively enhanced the extended cut ending, and I can imagine the frustration upon release window. The star child was grimace worthy, and really deflated some of the gravity of my choices. Synthesis was too perfect an ending, Mass Effect has been fairly dark at points and the synthesis ending felt like a Disney movie. The destroy ending was resolved during my interactions with EDI, and saving the Geth over the Quarians. I willingly allowed an entire race of people to be massacred, why are you making me choose again? Control in my eyes is the only real ending if the starchild sequence is necessary. But then the issue is Shepard now controls an army of Repear's to defend the galaxy, how can there ever be another threat in this universe again? Also I’m not sure how many of you know this but during destroy there's a chance Shepard survives as you hear him gasp for breath in the rubble.

Another issue with the ending is that I never really got a feel for how war readiness or my para/rene status affected my version.

Once again, another issue of hate against the ending is highlighted, people were never going to be satisfied.

I agree with you about Javik. I think he only got rated so highly because a) the Giant Bomb crew misunderstand almost everything about the mass Effect fiction ... "The entire first two games were entirely about the Protheans! This is the most important thing ever!" and b) because it was DLC/Collector bonus. If it was in the base package, I think it would be pretty blasé.

I also didn't like him for the 'personal' reason. He is this weird side story with no connections to the galaxy as it is. He's disconnected from the events that go around him because he has no history within them; all he can say is how things were in his day, he can't feel or react to anything happening presently. When you bring Garrus to C-Sec headquarters during the Cerberus attack, he calls out for people he used to work with. When you bring Liara to the Ardat-Yakshi stronghold she has a visceral reaction to the Banshees; to this point she's only seen the other races twisted into husks, it affects her completely differently when it's asari victims. All these personal, present reactions are lost when you have a character who can't relate. I prefer even Vega to Javik, because Vega's lack of understanding is challenged throughout the mission, he asks questions and tries to form an opinion as he sees events; he's present and connected to the galaxy.

Still, the main quarrel I have is that there's no point in having 6, 8, 10 squad members if I'm only taking 2 everywhere. I suppose that's where replayability comes in... But I played that entire game with Liara and Garrus because it's fucking Liara and Garrus dood. Liara is my love interest, Garrus is my bro-for-life, why would I bring crazy alien man instead of them?

i still think its the best playing ME game. so much fun

@Brodehouse: Because the Salarians used to eat bugs in his cycle.

I only paid for The DAy 1 DLC. Never again will i buy a EA or Bioware game day 1 or even new. I get fisted by getting it new but still $10 day 1 DLC. then puked upon with a disgusting ending that was just Fucking terrible.

TELL me more about the SHEPARD FUCKKKKKKKK

Multiplayer was fun though, got to N7 rank 75.

That scene with Captain Anderson at the end after the Illusive man scene was so good, would of ended it there.

@Brodehouse: But alot of the missions you have to take one of those squad members which is great, my favourite missions in 2 where all the loyalty quests for each character.

I finished the game with all the DLC installed, even though I started playing it when it launched. I was so put off by all the negative reactions towards the ending, I was really enjoying ME3 up to that point and I just didn't want ME3 to leave a bad taste in my mouth, since it was my favorite new ip this generation. So I waited a few months, then Brad started talking about it on the podcast. I remembered buying the game not only on the 360 but also on PS3, finished another playthrough of ME2 on PS3 and started playing again.

My experience was similar to yours, I loved the gameplaymechanics, hated the way BioWare handled side-quests on the Citadel. Running around on the Citadel trying to find new things to do was one of my favorite things in the original Mass Effect. Mass Effect 3 had some great setpiece moments, like the assault on the moon of Palaven, curing the Genophage and uniting the Geth and the Quarrian.

But it has the EA 'quality' stamp printed all over it. From the multiplayer maps being used in singleplayer to hide that there really aren't a whole lot of missions to the fact that story content was cut to sell later as DLC. Jaavik was a nice addition, even though he's only vital during the mission on Thessia. Leviathan was great, right until the moment Shepard dives down in that mech. The last sequence of Leviathan also feels rushed and is another attempt to 'fix' the ending. I also enjoyed Omega, although I'll probably be a minority. I was really dissapointed that the Omega mission wasn't part of the main game, especially after Aria hinted at such a mission when you talk to her on the Citadel. The aftermath of Omega was poorly handled (Aria just sits there in that nightclub, even though she hates it there).

As far as the ending goes... I think the revised ending is fine. It could be better, but I was satisfied with it. Like Brad, I watched the original version on YouTube afterwards and was shocked. I also would be pissed if that was the ending I got. I chose 'Destroy' since I wasn't going to let everybody be half-robots and letting Shepard become the leader of the Reapers... absolute power corrupts absolutely.

"EA'd to death," can someone explain what that actually means? I get that it's cool to hate on EA, but I wonder if anyone knows why they do it?

Fantastic write up. I disagree with your opinion on Javik but I get where you're coming from.

An alleged writer from Mass Effect described an epic scenario which -- according to me -- should have been present:

I wanted to see banshees attacking you, and then have asari gunships zoom in and blow them away. I wanted to see a wave of rachni ravagers come around a corner only to be met by a wall of krogan roaring a battle cry. Here's the horror the Reapers inflicted upon each race, and here's the army that you, Commander Shepard, made out of every race in the galaxy to fight them.

To begin with, glad you managed to experience the same version as Brad, as that seems like the best one. Other than that, I'm still bummed about a lot of things you bring up, including the ending, so it's pretty much depressing for me to think about this anymore. I'm really invested in this universe, but I'm also tired of it. Have to let it go, or else I'm just gonna keep on being sad about how they tied it all together. But it feels good to know that some people had a greater, meatier experience than a lot of us did. The R&R with Garrus on the top of the citadel was the best moment for me, together with Mordin in the elevator on Tuchanka.

How often did you go talk to Javik between missions? That was where I felt most of his value came from, in the Prothean perspective he brought to the current events of the storyline at any given time. Otherwise, his major contributions consist of the infodump you get directly after awakening him, and of course the revelations on Thessia. He doesn't add much as a random squad member otherwise, as mentioned, but the tidbits of context he consistently adds if you visit him obsessively on the Normandy are great.

I agree with mostly all of your points. I don't know if they did not had enough time or if the project itself was too big for them but man did they screwed up the end...

A lot of the stuff you said what right on. I'm past the point where the ending has bothered me. Its now about the journey.

The high points in 3 are so good that in retrospect I love 3 the more I think about it.

• Mordin's Death (both versions)
• Thane's Death when you read the prayer with his son
• Killing Kai Lang ("That was for Thane you son of a bitch")
• Hanging with Garrus on the Citadel
• Drunk Tali
• When that giant Thresher Maw killed that Reaper!
• Liara's Time Capsule

I could keep going but I think I made my point. Its all these little moments that went added together make Mass Effect 3 great for me.

I'm just gonna say that I personally don't think that Leviathan adds a lot to the ending of Mass Effect 3. Like, the ending already states that there was someone that created the reapers and their intent, and why the reaper look the way they do. So I don't understand why meeting one makes the ending so different. I feel the info you learn in the DLC is academic to the story of mass effect. Its, nice to know, but doesn't really change anything, to me at least

Also, can I just say, through out the entire series, it was the combat i Loved the most. The characters are great and they certainly was a major factor to wanting to play those games. But man, the combat in that game is so fucking fun.

I did a hybrid-style, compare and contrast thing when I finally finished Mass Effect 3 a couple days ago-- I watched the original ending, waited a few hours while the Extended Cut downloaded, then finished it with the Extended Cut. I had two reactions.

One: I now totally understand why people were enraged at the original ending of that game. It bummed me out completely with its lack of detail, and then it almost made me feel like there could never be another Mass Effect game with its horrible "jumping ahead into the pastoral past-future where all the events of the story have become fairy tales" epilogue.

Two: Having finished it again with the Extended Cut, I was blown away by how much it fixes everything. The sense of "the story is over, but the universe continues" was much, much stronger; the decisions you made are given at least a token of representation; and by fixing the tonal problems, it now feels like there can still be Mass Effect games made in the future that I would want to play. (As long as they use the "Destroy" ending-- the others are just too crazy.) The old man stargazer can be easily explained away as living on some backwater planet that never got its mass relay repaired! Everything is fine.

So basically, if you consider the Extended Cut to be the "true" ending, the game is now great. Unfortunately, for millions of people, that isn't the case.

So the trick for whoever makes the next Mass Effect game will be to convince all those people that their memories are wrong.

@Beaudacious

In terms of the ending, in my view people who disliked the ending were/are invested in the Mass Effect Universe/Characters to a greater degree, while people who liked the ending weren't as invested. My reasoning for this is that Mass Effect although a wonderfully crafted universe is about the characters, about Shepard, and his interactions with everybody.

@QuistisTrepe

"EA'd to death," can someone explain what that actually means? I get that it's cool to hate on EA, but I wonder if anyone knows why they do it?

• The character of James Vega who would be a somewhat guide for new players asking the questions they'd be curious of.  

• Adding a choice deciding game mode. (A bizarre linear mode which allowed the game to decide dialog and other major choices for you, to appeal to a Call of Duty or Gears of War crowd.) 

• Multiplayer and tying Galatic readiness to multiplayer so people would not ignore it. Multiplayer also had a micro-transaction component.  

• In my opinion this was a product of being rushed out too fast, Aria specially mentions taking back Omega and I was curious why this mission never turned up during my playthrough only to find out it was DLC.  

• It is hard to tell if Leviathan was retroactive in order to prop up the ending or was on the cutting floor due to dates and whats even worse is neither alternative is acceptable.

• Javik held some very interesting story components which added greatly to your understanding of the Mass Effect Universe although you had to buy him unless you bought the Collectors Edition. It seems unusual that he would not be free to everyone, similar to how they handled early DLC in Mass Effect 2. Using him as an incentive not to buy pre-owned copies or just general goodwill to loyal fans.

• This is perhaps the biggest issue, for the task at hand Mass Effect 3 needed more time which is obvious now. Side Quests were merely MMO worthy and the War Assets system was heavily undercooked, I expected it to have an actual visual impact on the final battle in London similar to the end sequence in Mass Effect 2. It seems they were so fixated on hitting the release window of March that they didn't allow it to be the generation defining game it could have been. Profits not quality was on their mind and Mass Effect had missed a previous release date which probably gave the developers no leeway in this decision. This isn't the first time EA have pushed a game out to early in order to maximize sales, Battlefield was pushed into an early release in order to come out before its major competitor Modern Warfare 3. 

@Brad said:

He doesn't add much as a random squad member otherwise, as mentioned, but the tidbits of context he consistently adds if you visit him obsessively on the Normandy are great.

I found playing through recently having Javik and Liara in my team was great because Liara kept asking him questions all the time. Maybe with other characters he doesn't bring much info to the table. But yeah on the Normandy between each mission he's interesting.

This is slightly insulting. I fit in your weird minority where I was heavily invested in the Mass Effect universe (as it's tied as my favorite game series ever) and I quite liked the ending.

@Beaudacious said:

In terms of the ending, in my view people who disliked the ending were/are invested in the Mass Effect Universe/Characters to a greater degree, while people who liked the ending weren't as invested.

@LiquidPrince: Same here.

@SlashDance said:

@LiquidPrince: Same here.

Yep I agree. I liked the original ending, didn't like the EC and was really invested in the story. We aren't a minority if this poll is produced from honest opinions.

@LiquidPrince: Out of curiosity can you tell me why you liked the ending? I also used the words like and dislike on purpose, I didn't want the stark contrast of; you loathed the ending or adored it with every fiber in your body. By dislike I mean not worthy of what was built up in the previous two games, and even in ME3 itself. Its a serviceable ending, but it lacks emotion, creative writing, and I feel ignores everything you done up to that point.

I just honestly have a hard time imagining anyone enjoy this ending over any other possibility. Where you just pleased with the journey and not overly concerned with the ending. Because in my personal play I wasn't mad, or yelling at the screen " WTF! BS! " I simply finished the game and went " Hmph, alright?". I still think its a good game, but the ending was kinda flat.

In terms of people complaining about information, and closure. Personally I was satisfied ending at the Anderson scene, which would of divulged even less information then the original ending. I felt the explanation in Leviathan was the only time the AI should have been mentioned in the game, and the whole final scene just deflates everything.

I may not count since I played it at release, but hollow is a good word for it. It wasn't a bad game though, more fun to play than the other 2 but the overall story of it was less interesting than 1 and 2. I couldn't help feeling there was just something off about everything the characters said throughout the entire game. I will say though that the scenes with Mordin on Tuchanka and the Whole Geth/Quorian arc are some of my favorite moments in the series. I also romanced Liara and there was some pretty well done scenes in there, specifically when you're talking about her archive she prepared just in case. Still pretty good though when compared to the story in 75% of video games. Really wish developers could figure out how to make interesting compelling stories for games, but it seems like they've been moving in the right direction recently with games like The Walking Dead.

@Beaudacious said:

In terms of people complaining about information, and closure. Personally I was satisfied ending at the Anderson scene, which would of divulged even less information then the original ending. I felt the explanation in Leviathan was the only time the AI should have been mentioned in the game, and the whole final scene just deflates everything.

Indeed. I actually quite like the fan edit ending where events conclude there, you fire the catalyst and sit back and presumably bleed out next to Anderson whilst the Reapers are destroyed. Albeit I have objections about the rest of the game overall, as far as endings go I'd of been more than satisfied with that in truth.

@Beaudacious said:

The Unforgivable

Teasing an Elcor home-world mission with Elcor warriors is unforgivable.

That is disappointment of the year. Fuck, man.

On the topic of Javik: He should have always been on the ship where it was a bad idea to exclude him by DLC. If Bioware wanted to DLC, make it so you buy it and Javik says "i'll join you if we do this task". Otherwise, he should have been on the ship giving insight into the situation.

When should I dive into the two dlc? And I assume the multiplayer is still active?

@Rebel_Scum: Maybe.............I'm not forever alone ?

I thought there were a boatload of high-character moments in this game. Not only Garrus, but Mordin, Thane, Grunt, Tali, and to a lesser extent Ashley all had touching character moments and sequences. Also I have to disagree with Javik not being interesting, I talked to him as much as possible and felt like I got a lot out of it. Samara's mission was shoehorned but very valuable to me, because I found the end of her arc to be emotionally engaging.

Honestly, past the whole "He's a dude-bro and those guys bullied me and got girls in high school so I think he's worthless!" nerd bias, James Vega was interesting. He was this sort-of inspiring look into the future for me, where even the meat-head type character has accepted homosexuality as being okay. In addition to that, although the arc was not large, the Mars mission Vega to end-of-the-game Vega was a nice little addition of a green soldier becoming a vet of the team, sort of how Jenkins might have been had he lived past the first mission in ME 1.

There are bad character moments though. Jacob from ME 2's inclusion in ME 3 felt forced and silly, and there wasn't much to be gained. That's mostly because there wasn't a lot to Jacob in ME 2 anyway. Miranda felt a little forced in, although she should have had better cause to be there due to the whole Illusive Man thing being so big in the third game. Honestly Miranda should have been a full squad member in ME 3, it would have fit so much better with the Cerberus stuff. Jack was shoehorned in as well, although I liked her characters situation and portrayal regardless.

If Mass Effect is about the characters, then I can't agree with the idea that the character stuff in the 3rd was worse than in the 2nd. The 3rd could be exist without it's predecessor but it's highs were so much loftier.

@Brodehouse said:

Still, the main quarrel I have is that there's no point in having 6, 8, 10 squad members if I'm only taking 2 everywhere. I suppose that's where replayability comes in... But I played that entire game with Liara and Garrus because it's fucking Liara and Garrus dood. Liara is my love interest, Garrus is my bro-for-life, why would I bring crazy alien man instead of them?

First of all, this is me 100%.

Secondly, I agree with the post, in that it was kind of frustrating having so many characters that were limited by the game design. Having that many party members would have been more fully utilized by an older style Bioware games were the playable party was of a larger size. That said, the out-of-mission interaction was important enough for me that (as my above post indicates) I found a lot of value in the many different characters arcs during this game.

I just finished the game again for the first time with the DLC. The ending is so much better! I am happy they changed it! Why not change something that is bad? People would not complain if a game improved the controls or the graphics or sound or something like that in DLC but because they improved the story people rebelled. I would have understood it if the original ending was good that people did not want it changed but I don't know anyone who love the original ending so why are people bitching about Bioware improving it?

Playing through it again (managed to get the finished on insane achievement while I was at it) it made me exited about Mass Effect again and actually looking forward to ME4.

Very nice read. I agree with Brad, not with his liking of the game, but how he said the game was "EA'd to death". If they had more time and lesser sales expectations it would have been fine. I can't imagine what the game would have been if it would have stuck to it's original release date, holiday 2012.

@LiquidPrince said:

This is slightly insulting. I fit in your weird minority where I was heavily invested in the Mass Effect universe (as it's tied as my favorite game series ever) and I quite liked the ending.

@Beaudacious said:

In terms of the ending, in my view people who disliked the ending were/are invested in the Mass Effect Universe/Characters to a greater degree, while people who liked the ending weren't as invested.

Between all the over the top characters like Kai Leng, long drawn out action sequences, forgettable side missions, and overall lack of dialogue choices, after all was said and done, I felt that the ending was one of the more authentically Mass Effect esque parts of the game.

I'm so jealous of Brad's playthrough

So, the hour long talk on the bombcast about the ME3 ending, which I skipped, got me interested to see what Mass Effect was all about. I just played through 1, 2, and 3 back to back, not knowing anything about the story other than bits and pieces (nothing spoilery at all), with the important DLC (From Ashes and Leviathan for ME3), and found that taken as a whole, with the DLC, it was one of my favorite gaming experiences, period. I had no problem with the ending I got in ME3, and the catalyst made sense with what I'd learned in Leviathan... Reading some stuff about the ending pre-extended cut is really bizarre, especially since Leviathan wasn't out. I can see how it would be weird and not make a lot of sense. I know not many people will have played the way I did (waiting this long for ME3, and even fewer playing all three games back to back for the first time), but it was definitely worth the 90 hours or so I put in.

@Beaudacious:

I will say that the ending at first annoyed me to no end. I hated the ending and all of the holes in the story. BUT after I got over I respected what BioWare was trying to do, although it wasn't a perfect ending it was different, and nobody expected it. The Mass Effect universe is HUGE, and a lot of people think that Shepard was the center of it. Shepard was only a small part, the original ME trilogy was just the beginning. I agree the From Ashes DLC wasn't that great at all, I don't really like Javik as a character. But all in all ME3 was actually my favorite game of the series (each game I have played several times) I had non stop fun through the entire game, and I know everybody else who played it did too, and a lot of people are letting the ending ruin the entire game for them.

I was pretty invested in Mass Effect and I liked the original ending.

I think the issue most people had was that we wanted Mass Effect II-2 and not ME3. I was much more emotionally invested in ME2 and I absolutely loved the way you went around recruiting people and doing their loyalty missions. It wasn't perfect: I hated the fact that I couldn't just be a really good friend to Jack, but instead had to fuck her or get told to "Fuck off!". So they could've taken ME2 and fixed in. Honed it to perfection. And I think majority of people would've been satisfied.

But in ME3, instead of focusing on the relationships, we end up playing the diplomat and making decisions that affect whole races and the universe at large. While ME3 still managed to pluck my heart strings here and there, they were always moments that took advantage of the work which was done in ME2. I wouldn't give two shits about the Geth vs. Quarian situation, except they placed me next to Tali and Legion when it was time to make a decision and I would get immediate feedback on my decision through those two. Seeing the "bad end" of that situation was horrible.

So while the ending is suitable for Mass Effect 3 (though, like some others, I would've preferred one that didn't have the AI in it), I definitely didn't feel like it was suitable for my Mass Effect story. Screw the universe - this was about Shepard and his relationship with his shipmates. I wanted more than just a cut-scene of them fleeing and then crash-landing somewhere. And more than just few scenes of Shepard's friends hanging his name on the memorial wall. Hell, I would've settled for a wall of text that told me what each and every one of them went on to do in their lives like in Baldur's Gate.

Shit - actually, I think that would've been the best possible ending for me. Every game that has large focus on relationships should have an ending like Baldur's Gate.

i really liked the extended endings. Though for a week after i beat it and chose the destroy ending I was yearning for a LI reunion, but now I am satisfied. ME3 is the best game in the best series ever.

@Beaudacious: Do a second playthrough with Tali. Seriously, that character has a LOT of emotional pay-off.

I really loved every mass effect game, i still think number 1 is best, 2nd one had so much promise and 3rd one tied most of everything across the series up storywise. I enjoyed Mass Effect 3 99% u can guess what 1% is?

I finished this up last night. I started playing ME1 in late November, then played ME2, and then this.  
 
Everything about the game was excellent. I loved the character moments. There were so many great scenes with characters that I'd been spending the last couple of months with. The game engine was much improved. Going from ME2 to ME3 with only a couple of hours in between made me look up if they were using a different engine. The lighting, framerate, character detail, etc. was all much improved. This game also has by far the best combat in the series. I really liked that they varied the enemies more and the way power combos were handled changed up the way I played a lot.
 
Fast forward to last night when I started Priority: Earth. I was completely on board with just about everything. I hadn't built up any weird expectations about half-remembered parts from the previous games because they were still fresh in my head. Then, as I was running down that final hill, the game crashed. I loaded it back up, watched it try and fail to connect to EA servers for 5 minutes, and had to shut down my 360 because it wouldn't let me navigate the menu. Again, I started it back up wrestled with the EA servers for a bit, finally got back into the game, and had it crash about 3 minutes past the last place where it crashed. 
 
I should have taken those crashes as a sign, because everything that happens after you start running down that hill was my least favorite part of the series. I spent roughly 100 hours on those games in the last couple of months, and about another 100 hours playing ME1 twice in 07/08 and ME2 once, and those 20 minutes were so far from anything that I liked or wanted in the series. Most of my thoughts about those scenes can be heard in the mid-December Bombcast, so I won't making this longer than it's already somehow getting. But, wow. What a disappointment. On top of that, despite being pure Paragon in all three games and wringing every bit of content out of ME3 via side missions and DLC, the last paragon option in the game that apparently gives you a final goodbye with an important character, was unavailable to me. 

I'm becoming more and more convinced that something's off in my head, because I thought Mass Effect 3 was the best one in the series, ending and all.

Honestly, as someone who hasn't picked up Mass Effect 3 yet, is it worth it to finally get it or should I just hold off for the inevitable game of the year edition?

I guess I'm the only person in the world who really liked Vega. :\

@jjm494 said:

Honestly, as someone who hasn't picked up Mass Effect 3 yet, is it worth it to finally get it or should I just hold off for the inevitable game of the year edition?

You'd be better off waiting for an Amazon sale, and grabbing From Ashes/Leviathan (both are only $10). Skipping Omega seems like a proper decision, and we don't know how that final DLC piece will work out.