What happened........? *Spoilers*
The good:
- Graphics have been improved.
- Combat system improved. Ducking, rolling and going into cover feels a lot smoother.
- Some of the characters have been well developed with good cutscenes. Namely Garrus, Liara, Thane and Mordin.
- Beginning of the game was excellent, really draws you in.
- Atmospheric. Bioware have managed to make the whole game (especially the Normandy) feel quite oppressive.
The Bad:
- Importing glitch, all of my Shepards look completely different to the original.
- The only place you can land, explore and accept quests is the Citadel. This is a big thing for me considering the other games had Noveria, Feros, Illium, Omega etc. It's really made the game feel less like an open world game/rpg.
- Virtually all the missions are now basically running down corridors, shooting anything that moves. There are no missions like following Thane's son or talking down Garrus as there was in ME2. Just shooting.
- Scanning. For some reason it's been included again and is just as boring as before, in fact it's worse now as you have to escape Reapers that will end your game right there if you bump into them while scanning.
-Nearly all of the quests on the citadel involve just scanning planets, finding artifacts and returning them which somehow adds to your military strength.
- Included pointless and poorly developed characters. Like James Vega. It was never explained who he was or how he knew Shepard. Also I have no idea why they introduced Diana Allers. I spoke to her maybe twice in the game and each time was just to select one paragon or renegade choice (why not use Khalisah al-Jilani?). It felt very forced.
- They've also included characters from the books, which I haven't read, like Kahlee Saunders and Kai Leng which took away from the atmosphere considering I have no idea of their relevance.
- Shepard was hard to control and a number of times when I just wanted to open a door, Shepard would start rolling around on the floor....
- Shepard seemed to have trouble walking properly. Poor animation.
- Had to change discs over about 5/6 times at the beginning of the game and then once again at the end. Don't see why they didn't use the set up in ME2.
- Bit glitchy, had characters faces disappear during cutscenes, would get black shadows over background and fell through the floor a couple of times, had to restart from another save.
- Some characters poorly developed like Jack and Miranda who didn't rejoin the squad and just had a couple of cutscenes.
- Squad members useless. Poor AI. Often glitched and didn't join in the fight. Also their biotics/tech didn't seem as effective as in ME2.
- Overused Cerberus, had more fights with them than the Reapers.
- Endings. The less said about this the better but I will say I made 5 Shepards from the other 2 games. I won't be replaying ME3 with any of them (or at all for that matter). Mainly because at the end all their choices/romances will only amount to a different coloured shockwave and a very small generic paragraph about what Shepard just did. The choices were pointless. No closure on Shepard or other squad members (they weren't mentioned at all). Also some aspects of the ending were just confusing.
Overall I found Mass Effect 3 to have a few good moments but to be very repetitive and boring. It felt like more of a glorified shooter and less like an rpg. Didn't make me care about the characters at all. The propaganda surrounding Mass Effect about making choices and them having an effect turned out to be a lie.