4.5/5 ★ – zappinzues's review of Mass Effect 3.

Top line: I went in with low expectations knowing the criticism of the ending, but I still really enjoyed this game. Plenty of ink and tears has been spilt discussing the ending, and I don't think I can add much of value. All I will say is that I was mostly content with the ending, and fully understand what Bioware was doing and why people are rightly critical of it. Between ME2 and this game, I'd be inclined to actually score them similarly, except the apparent regressions in Quality of Life. My guess, a result of "Bioware Magic" (aka crunch). ME2 and ME1 broke quests down into multiple steps that update as you make progress. ME3 has a single entry for the mission. ME1 and ME2 split missions into primary and secondary, ME3 treats them as all the same. Missions in the Citadel require running all over the place and names just pop up in the minimap when there might be something to turn in. For those reasons, I rate Mass Effect 3 under ME2. I really enjoyed the main story of Mass Effect 3. It was a good wrap-up to the trilogy - we got to see characters return, there were exciting setpieces as we defeat Repears, and galactic politics! I pretty much cheered once the plan came together. Like in Mass Effect 1 and 2, I played renegade Shep, and he felt more off in ME3 than in ME2. Issues from ME1 resurfaced where going with the renegade option can sometimes prematurely cut off entire characters. Also, I don't think ME3 justified the renegade option for the genophage choice, and the story seemed to encourage going paragon. After making renegade choices every time in the previous games, it was a bummer I had to go paragon to make my character make sense. Since I played this game at narrative difficulty, I'm not going to discuss the combat. I will say Shepard can finally dodge roll! Having completed the trilogy, I can agree that this is one of the best trilogies of all time, especially in video games. I'm glad I played these games.