Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

40 to 100 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Best in series"

Let it be known that for the first time, in the history of ky9, Mass Effect 3 is the first video game to make me shed a tear.

This in itself would be temptation for me to give this game a perfect 10. How many games have you played that have truly moved you and gotten you to care deeply about its characters? I thought I'd played some pretty good story/character-focused games before, but none of them come close to this one. It even feels a bit odd to refer to this as a "game"; the term implies that you just shoot things for the sake of shooting things, or drive fast cars, or collect glowing stars or something. But Mass Effect 3 isn't just fun. Even more than its already-excellent predecessors, it has you invested. It's an immediate, engrossing experience, and it packs one hell of an emotional punch.

Thus, this is one review where I'll first give kudos to the voice actors (especially you, Jennifer Hale) and composers. I'm fairly certain that they are 85% the reason why this game, and the series as a whole in fact, is so good at what it does, and the reason that a game that mostly consists of standing around talking can be so successful. It's the reason you bother to go through all the dialogue trees. It's the reason you pursue romances. It's the reason Garrus is your bro and you're willing to exhaust every one of his conversation threads. It's the reason that when one of your friends dies, your heart plummets right through the ground and you pretend you have something in your eye(s). And Mass Effect 3 does a great job of bringing you even closer to the same characters you've come to know and love through some truly excellent dialogue that will make you laugh and cry.

The other 15% can be attributed to a combination of things done well. For one, the combat system has been improved upon even more from Mass Effect 2, and is for the first time really exhilarating. No longer are you stuck behind one box for cover; you're now able to roll, climb, and jump from cover to cover, and a much greater variety of foes will force you to think harder and quicker about your tactical approach. For example, long-range enemies are often paired with terrifying, charging brutes, so it's up to you to prioritize according to your class weapons and abilities. To this end, it's fun and worthwhile to try out different classes, as each has a unique combat approach. In addition, the level designs are much richer and more varied, and allow you to find cover spots that are more creative and improvisational than before. Your enemies aren't undefeatable but they're also not too easy; the action sequences feel just right, and when you've found the perfect combination of weaponry, weapon mods, and squad mates with abilities complimenting your own, it's damn fun.

Another thing done well is the sense of pacing, particularly with the main storyline missions. Of note especially is Tuchanka, involving the conflict between the krogan and salarians. Do you support of the krogan and help them cure the cruel salarian-made disease that is slowly making their race extinct? Or do you support the salarians and prevent the dangerous possibility of krogan overpopulation? Not only that, but you have old friends on both sides; not only THAT, but you have the option of deceiving one side or the other. Punctuating these thought-provoking issues are some exemplary action interludes, which have you facing the most terrifying foe in the series to date. This particular mission is a triple threat: fun, intellectually engaging, and emotionally involving. And it's Mass Effect 3 at its absolute best.

Of course, every game has its weaknesses and this one is no exception. Most notably, some of the choices you made in previous games which seemed monumental at the time are only given cursory screentime here. While you do get to revisit the major characters of Mass Effect 2, their appearances are episodic and tend to end abruptly. And while romances in previous games had more of a steady, gradual buildup, the ones here are a bit more perfunctory and become slightly static after a while.

On the technical side, the journal system is poorly done. There are a large number of somewhat trite fetch quests requiring you to scan planets, but for some reason the journal doesn't show you when you've found the item you're looking for. On that note, the planet-scanning minigame has been improved from ME2's tedious mining one, but only slightly; this time, you can get chased around by mini Reapers, and getting caught sends you to a rather silly "Critical Mission Failure" screen which then sends you straight back to the planet you were already on. The whole system became more of a chore than anything, and I mostly just exploited the Reaper thing by dipping in and out of the planet system until I'd scanned everything. On the plus side, the annoying, time-consuming hacking minigames from ME2 were removed.

I admit that these weaknesses should bear greater weight than I give them, but being a story- and character-driven player I found it easy to overlook them. I am able to forgive an amount of gameplay clumsiness if it means that I can experience an emotionally engaging story - that's just how I roll. But there is one issue that I do have a problem with, and it's difficult to discuss without using spoilers; so I'll just put it this way: all the decisions you've made in your epic three-game journey culminate into numerical values as "war assets". On the one hand, this literally gives your choices a tangible value; on the other hand, should your choices have a tangible value? How is it that this one character is worth 25 points, but this whole team of soldiers is also worth 25 points? The values seem arbitrary, and it's a bit annoying to have a multiplier value that can only be increased through multiplayer or iPhone apps; overall, this war asset system breaks immersion more than I'd like.

And the ending. It's seemingly impossible to discuss this game without that particular elephant in the room. However, I don't believe that the ending is reason enough to not play this game, and I don't think that my opinion about it has a place in this review; each player should judge it for themselves. (Incidentally, I will shamelessly self-promote and mention that my thoughts on the ending are on my user blog.)

Therefore, I'm going to simply say that this game is absolutely worth playing. No game is perfect, so it must be judged on how well it does what it tries to do. This game strives to be fun and both emotionally and intellectually engaging, and it succeeds in doing just that. It might just change the way you look at games.