Great game but was not able to achieve all it could.
The main reasons:The main story being offered here is not as absorbing as the stories of the previous games, the emotional connection they are trying to establish here does not feel natural but forced, the dialogue options seems to be simplified, the side quests are really boring.
What Bioware seems to have done is create a more action oriented game
while the strong points of Mass Effect were its story and ability to immerse you into its world which seems to be missing here, don't get me wrong its still a great game but it did not achieve what it could have and from what i see Bioware were trying to fuse the combat of Gears of War, with the immersive atmosphere of games like Elder Scrolls 5 and Witcher 2 but failed due to leaning a bit more towards the action genre than the RPG genre and they were not able to nail the action mechanics as well as they could have the RPG Mechanics.
The exploration in this game is also quite pointless as almost all great RPG rewards you for your exploration in various ways but not in this game first there is not much to explore and even if you explore there is not much to do even compared to previous Mass Effect games and i am excluding those boring side missions that you get from time to time most of which includes fetching some items or raiding some enemy bases.
The only thing improved over the previous Mass Effect games was combat but at the cost of story and immersion and even that was not upto par with other 3rd person shooters. Please make RPGs if we would have been interested in shooters we would rather play Gears of War or Uncharted.
Bottom-line, Bioware please do what we love you for that is making great RPGs with immersive atmosphere and even if you try to make a more action oriented game try to get assistance from a studio who is good at it.