Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

40 to 100 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Immersive"

I have played through the entire games. I have to say, it was a 9.5 review from me almost instantly. Here are my main reasons why:
- this version adds even more detail to the environment. (e.g., you won't just see a keeper working a single terminal all day long. It'll move over to another one and begin a new task. Another example: you'll hear conversations among the crew members through comm links around the ship... nice touch.
- EDI is awesome in this sequel... and that's all I can say about that.
- Combat maneuvers are far more fluid and intuitive. You can roll between cover or to avoid getting hit, work your way around a corner while maintaining cover, and even jump across gaps in your path.
- Skill system has adopted a simplified tree-style progression
- scanning is much less cumbersome and doesn't consume hours of gameplay
- there's only cash now... no eezo, palladium, etc...
- weapon loadouts and customization has been nearly perfected, is well balanced, and all the while adds another gameplay element
- Environments are much improved over the original ME2 (I'll exclude the Shadow Broker DLC in this statement, which is also awesome).
- Improved graphics on the PC
- No more hack and bypass minigames
- New characters are memorable and well-acted

I don't have many bad comments about it, but here's a few:
- Sometimes the camera angle isn't in focus or is slightly obscured from a bright light source when interacting with characters
- No real space exploration; but let's face it, you're trying to save the galaxy, not boldly going where no one has gone before.
- There seems to be some discontinuity between the playable end of the game and the cinematic end (depending on which characters you choose to accompany you in the end). There is also discontinuity between the outcome and where you can keep playing the game (for DLC, etc.)
- There's been a lot of complaints about the ending of the game. If I had to guess why, I'd say it's one or both of two reasons:
1) The bad review is coming from someone who is too hung up about details and realism. This game is like watching a summer blockbuster, where you ultimately choose how the scenes play out. In the end, things are going to be reasonably similar to someone who made many different choices... get over it.
2) Expectations were too high. Did you really think taking on a multi-hundred-thousand year old race would be a conventional landslide victory? You should not have expected anything at all. You didn't write the story. You just helped the authors choose which directions and actions to include in the "book" before getting to the predetermined end... which was going to be very much the same no matter what. Even then there are some choices to make that change the ending with epic consequences.
...personally, I loved the entire game and thought the end battle was appropriately long, tiresome, and tough as nails, like it should be. It truly felt like everything could be lost.