An epic ending to an amazing trilogy. Sure, not without some glitches along the way but still an incredible series.
There is a lot similar with ME2 in this one as they did a good job of keeping the good things in place and maintaining their expert ability to balance story, fighting, RPG elements, and solid main/side missions to create an expertly done game. Admittedly though, as the game wore on into its final leg I sort of found myself ready for things to end. While the side missions were, overall, much better done than many games out there, as you progressed through they did sort of begin to fade. They just couldn't hold me quite as long as I had hoped. However, unlike many other RPG style games, I simply love the wide range of side mission options the ME series throws at you. In most cases, you do feel like they put in good effort to actually make these missions important and not just random fetch quests where you feel like you're just burning time. Most of the side missions actually draw you in and have quality mini-stories of their own.
Ultimately, this game is fantastic though I did run into some things that sort of drove me crazy at various times. First, on the PS3 I ran into a handful of lock-ups where I had to completely reboot the console to get things going again. Too, the cover mechanics could be annoying at times and they're not as expertly done as other refined points of the game. Every once in a while you'd find yourself sticking to cover or jumping over a cover without planning too. Just not as clean as I would prefer.
Obviously the controversy over the ending was something everyone has heard about. For me, the biggest ending issue I had was the last major fight with all the Banshees swarming around and then all you have to do is wait a little while and then go press a console and the fight is over. Though this particular portion of the ending battle was challenging enough, it was not big, it was not epic, and to allow an easy out seemed cheap. I really wish they would have made a much more fulfilling final boss. This was a massive trilogy and this final leg deserved something better than just swarms of enemies attacking you. Some other games, like Bioshock 2, did a similar thing and I just feel it's cheap.
The ending options really didn't bother me though it would have been nice if it was a little more clear which side went to which option. In fact, this kind of detail in the game sometimes did actually bother me. For example, I wish that when you're choosing your weapon load out you got more info about the actual info. That is, it's nice to know a particular weapon as X capacity but if it doesn't happen to tell you exactly how much until you're actually using it that is a little annoying. Personally, I had so many freakin' gun options I didn't always remember the names so other characteristics were what I remembered most. This is a minor thing but something I wish they would have done a bit better. These are RPG details that I feel are important to properly allow the player to get all pertinent information no matter where they're at.
This game is fantastic and I certainly wouldn't recommend someone playing this one before the other two. You owe it to yourself to play the series as it was originally intended.