One of the finest games in its genre.
When playing this game, It felt like I was playing the third or fourth game in a series, as if it was set in a gameworld with years of built up history behind it. Humanity, after discovering alien ruins which alter mass and allow it to be sent millions of light years instantly, is plunged into a well established galactic civilization. We're the new kids on the block, brash, short-lived , but full of drive and determination (I wonder if the qualities which represent humanity in this game would be different if it was made by non-American developers). When a threat to all advanced life in the galaxy presents itself, at first as an attack on human colony in a dangerous region, and is ignored by the more established species, humanity must step-up, save the day and take its place in the milky way.
Story (A)
Very well told main story regardless of which path you go down, It can play out in a few very different ways, since you are literally making important decisions right up until the last moment of the game. The ending ramped up beautifully was suitably climactic, one of the better endings this generation and frankly put most other western rpgs this generation to shame. There was a ton of lore, interesting factions, political intrigue, personal animosities, etc, etc. Unique alien species that have evolved based on their planetary geography and their histories, interesting little text backstories to the many worlds you can scan or visit, species based bias, and everything else you could hope for in a space opera.
Combat (A)
You basically have three types of attacks- gun improvements such as tempory increases in rate of fire or fire power, tech related attacks such as grenades, hacking drones and robotic baddies to fight each other, or neural shock, and biotics, which are telekinesis and force power :) like attacks that you will specialize in depending on your class. These attacks are selected off an in-game radial menu accessed via the right bumper while your guns use the trigger, of course. When you bring up the radial menu the action freezes, but you still have camera control for targeting purposes. This means the combat is a little slower than you might like at times (though one attack can be mapped for quick pressing), the weapons are not as impactful as they could be and the biotics could use a few more frames of animation and a little flare, but overall I found the combat to be quite fun if only for its variety and how well thought out certain aspects were. You will for the most part always have two out of six possible squad members with you at all times, each with their own special abilities you can select (hint: set the squads special powers use to defense only so they don't waste their good attacks and you have them available when you want them).
There is a decent amount of variety in the attacks and more importantly none of them are redundant or useless, unlike many RPG spells & abilities. Some may seem so at first, but when they are maxed and you have the game on the insane unlockable difficulty, you realize just how useful and well thought out every single attack is to the player in combat. The gear is well scaled, but could have been a little more distinctive visually. I appreciated that some weapon add-ons actually made significant gameplay differences, unlike many rpgs. When you stick high level high explosive rounds for instance, (which massively overheat your weapon, but have splash damage and a lot of weapon force) with a couple scram lines (which increase damage at the cost of overheating) you can turn any weapon into a mini-grenade launcher that can send opponents flying, which sure beats adding a little flame to your sword swipes as in many rpgs.
As for difficulty ramping, I appreciated how when playing on the higher difficulty settings, the combat changed substantially. The quicker pace gave way of course to a more careful plodding one, but it was more than that. Facing a single Krogan Battlemaster on insane (a pretty tough enemy) could be a several minute affair since he has access to many of the same defensive abilities you do, and the fight could take on a decidedly more strategic feel of resource management as you conserve squad powers and special abilities to be used in concert with one another to mitigate those defensive abilities. One of your squad might have damping for instance, an ability that inhibits tech and biotic abilities, another might have overload, which damages shielding, and a third might have a powerful offensive ability and when used in concert it will let you bypass defenses and put the hurt on the Krogan, but used randomly in the battle each individual ability would be next to useless.
Mission/Assignments (A on missions C- on assignments)
Missions, or main story quests, are great and will take you to neat varied sci-fi locales and let you fight awesome and intriguing sci-fi enemies, a 50,000 year old mind controlling plant for instance, whose tendrils cover the surface far below on a planet of ruined skyscrapers (the first interesting tentacle monster I've faced in a long, Long time which is saying alot considering they're in every game nowadays). As you might expect from Bioware, you're constantly making little choices that effect gameplay and a few profound choices that effect the game as a whole and offer a great deal of re-playability.
Assignments, or side quests, on the other hand are weaker than some other recent rpgs. There are about 60 or so in the game, about 20 of which are on the Citadel (the galactic seat of government and the closest thing to home base in the game) and are fine & generally entertaining, if a bit talky. The other 40 or so are spread around planets, generally one per landable planet, in the dozen or so star systems you can visit in the game. These are generally quite repetitive. You land in your Mako, a drivable vehicle with a cannon and a machine gun on its turret, you drive to the anomoly on the map and pick up something for one of the collectable quests, you drive around the map looking for 2-3 metal deposits for another collectable quest, and you visit the main compound or mine, which will always look the same, slay a dozen or so enemies, who will be one of 3-4 types, get back in the mako and go to the next planet. It doesn't help that despite some of the descriptions of the planets mentioning a vibrant ecosystem, the most you'll ever see is 3-4 species over the whole 40 possible planets, even then no one planet had more than one species (one planet had moss, one had a kangaroo/horse hybrid, and one a few bugs, one had monkeys). That said, every once in a while it works to the games benefit. When your driving over yet another barren rocky world, going 170 degree up the side of a mountain and all of a sudden BAM! your screen fills with a massive red star with flowing plasma all over its surface = wonderful. There are a few other discoveries like this that get the sci-fi juices flowing, but surface exploration just isn't this games strongpoint.
Character Interaction (A)
Very solid. Well written dialogue, generally good acting, and a lot of interesting motivations make for very good character interaction. Your squad mates will not interact with each other on the level of a JRPG, though there is some chit chat, however your interaction with both squad-mates and npcs is or can be extensive. It's got a good guy/bad guy system that uses the terms renegade/paragon, that system is not a trade-off, meaning you can be shades of grey, THIS IS THE WAY ALL FUTURE RPGs SHOULD BE. If you are in general being a renegade, but the game crosses a line you don't like, you don't have to worry about losing renegade points when you show that ounce of mercy, making role-playing far more effective. In general when making decisions (as opposed to investigating or just pushing the story along) you will have a renegade option, a paragon option, and a neutral option. Some of these decisions are meaningless beyond giving you different dialogue options, some will have major implications. There is a charm/intimidate stat that will come into play in certain situations allowing you to avoid combat or get better rewards. It will also assist in the more delicate interactions like talking down suicidal abused ex-slaves or homicidal team mates.
Presentation (A-)
Production values overall are very high, but there are problems here and there. Character models are excellent all around, and lip-synch is impressive with this much dialogue (and you can make a custom character that isn't a hideous troll looking human, woot!). The main story locations have some outstanding well rendered, impressively scaled environments. Some of the aliens species are interesting and unique, but a few more artists could have been hired since many non-main story areas, alien species, and even some areas of the Citadel lack inspiration and variety. Like all unreal engine games it has texture pop-in, though this game takes it to a ridiculous level in its persistence, as it will ALWAYS take a few second when entering an area for the textures to finish loading. Framerate is a problem. I am very forgiving with framerate, but with super fast sprints combined with biotics making bodies fly all over the place and bullets going everywhere, bad framerate should have been given more consideration. Music was very good and most of the sound effects were as well, though I could have done with a little more distinction with the biotic powers.