3/5 ★ – corbintm's review of Mass Effect 3 - Legendary Edition.

Mass Effect 3 had an ambitious goal of wrapping up a story with multiple branching paths, concluding the reaper threat from the first two games and successfully balancing the decisions and choices made across 2 games with a host of different characters. Overall it tries its best but falls somewhat short of lofty expectations. The story itself is a bit of a mixed bag. There's a lot of returning characters from the first two titles, with more of an emphasis on Mass Effect 1 characters than Mass Effect 2 characters. The characters return, often having found themselves in positions of power after the events of the first two games. While it's fun to see someone like Garrus being the leading authority on the reapers, seeing Wrex go from a glorified merc to the leader of an entire race across the 3 games continues to be a bit hard to believe. This is sort of central to the way Mass Effect 3 tells its story - everything from the prior games has to wrap up super neatly. We have to have a final conclusion to the genophage and a definitive ending to what is happening with the Geth/Quarian conflict. It ends up feeling like even though you're trying to save the fate of the galaxy, it's more like a small town. Because of the reliance on ME1 and ME2 characters, there are very few new characters. While this makes sense from a fan service perspective, it doesn't from a storytelling one. It's interesting in ME2 that you mostly recruit new squadmates because you're building this team to take on the fate of the galaxy and the random mercs that you picked up in ME1 were not always the premier team of the galaxy. The DLC's inclusion in the main game is sometimes frustrating, as it's not clear what was an add-on after the fact. As a new player, jumping for a quick side mission to overtake Omega ended up into multiple hours fighting through corridors that didn't feel important to the overall plot. The shore leave DLC does this on a far larger scale. Being locked-in to DLC content is also just not super fun. I did find the Leviathan one and the Javik DLC to be the best integrated. As far as the ending, it feels like almost nothing you do matters. You collect War Assets, then you end the game. It's hard not to compare this to the fantastic suicide mission from ME2, utilizing many different decisions for a ton of variable outcomes to the story. I'm sure there's more nuance to this, but it doesn't feel like it. Earth being destroyed or not doesn't mean anything when I'm never going to see it again regardless. I feel like Mass Effect 2 and 3's stories should be swapped. Go straight from the reapers attacking and cerberus being understood as a questionable organization into the galactic threat of the reapers. You attempt to unite the galaxy against this threat and the choices you make leave the galaxy's fate up to player choice - affecting what happens in the next game. The final push in ME3 is larger scale - you're gathering what you can from the remains of the galaxy and finishing the reapers off fully via the suicide mission. Then the suicide mission would have effects based on loyalty missions but also available crewmates based on how the galaxy fared after eliminating the reaper threat. The suicide mission in ME2 already severely hampered the storytelling here - if everyone squadmate can die in ME2, you can't reasonably build around them in ME3. The fact that none of them are avaialble squadmates is super lame. By changing the order here, there's a bit more fun and decisions across games. After playing three games in a row with this combat system, I found the combat to be mostly used to break up the dialogue options. I don't find it particularly engaging nor satisfying. This is a common problem with RPGs and this is no real exception. I was mostly just rushing through when I could. I'm glad that I got to play through this but I don't think I'll have any desire to come back to it.