Finished the game yesterday, here are my thoughts:
It started off pretty weak. It was like playing an incredibly ambitious fan-made DLC for Mass Effect 2, with amazing gameplay but no real narrative. It was only until halfway through did the game start coming together.
Ashley and James both struck me as very boring. Neither of them added any interesting commentary during missions, and given later developments, you'd think they'd know a little more about galactic civilizations. The DLC character provided much more interesting commentary and played a stronger role in the storyline, which I thought was a huge 'fuck-you' to the fanbase.
And the endings, god damn, the endings. If you thought DXHR's endings were bad, you're in for a sweet surprise.
Nerd rage inc:
The catalyst turns out to be the Reaper Overmind, which takes the form of that obnoxious little kid from the dream sequences. You get to choose the color of the deus ex machina (red, green or blue), resulting in the destruction of the mass relays. Let's ignore that this means the destruction of galactic civilization and leaves the entire fleet stuck in the Sol system with a ruined Earth. Depending on the color, the reapers fly away or die and your crewmates are mysteriously teleported onto the normandy, which then crashes onto a jungle planet.
Also his voice actor is fucking terrible. Dungeon Siege III did the mysterious child thing much better and less creepy. Or perhaps instead of it being the child, having it be the crew member who died on Virmire in ME1.
The major difference between the three endings is the color of the explosion, and who comes out on the shuttle at the end. There's no reflection on the events of the game, or discussion of what happens after your choice.Your choices and actions throughout the series/game aren't incorporated into the ending like in any good Bioware game. Instead, you get to choose from three different flavors of shit sandwich.
What SHOULD'VE happened was a conversational battle with paragon/renegade tests, much like the Illusive Man conversation before. Maybe you could persuade the catalyst life is different, or that the reapers are [b]just as bad[/b] as whatever synthetic war would've occurred.
Okay, now for the good:
Gameplay was incredibly fun. I played an infiltrator and AI hacking turned out to be incredibly useful due to the amount of turrets and mechs in the game.
EDI provided great commentary and insight throughout the game, and was surprisingly useful.
There were a few awesome moments:
Thane coming out of nowhere to save the councilor, and then paying back Kai Leng with the renegade interrupt.
"Had to be me. Someone else might have gotten it wrong."
Finding out the true history behind the Geth/Quarian conflict. Legion going out like a rockstar, and forcing the Quarians to retreat.
The entire end sequence for Earth: fighting your way to the destroyer, holding down the tanks, and then facing down Harbinger.
I'd give it a 4/5 if you've played the previous games. If you haven't played any of the previous ones, I'd skip over it. You miss out on 75% of the awesome and get 100% of the confusion/disappointment.
Ok, here's a post that explains why all the endings are horrendously bad:
Digiwizzard from SomethingAwful.com Posted:
Imagine if Humanity found a single large oceanic planet and then dedicated all of it's resources to orbiting that planet.
Every 5000 years humanity deploys a fleet of fishing boats to the oceans to kill all fish that had mass above a certain threshold, as these fish had a chance of evolving into land based animals, who would eventually become the dominant life form on the planet. They also use taxidermy to preserve the largest and most impressive species as elegant mounts for their fishing boats.
After many hundreds of thousands of years, fish eventually evolve in such a way that they develop wings and jump onto the deck of the largest fishing boat. They are then greeted by the President of All Humans, who explains that no matter what they do, the cycle will continue and the one day the fishes distant descendants would walk on land and turn into bipedal humanoids. But this way of regulating the cycle is now untenable, and they offer the fish 3 choices.
A) Destroy all the fishing boats.
B) Control all of humanity.
C) Turn all planetary life amphibious.
Also, all of these methods will destroy all of the artificial reefs and hatcheries on the planet, killing millions.
There is never explanation as to why humanity loves marine life so fucking badly.
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