Mass Effect 3 barely edges out Mass Effect 1 to be my favorite game in the series. The game does a great job of showing off the characters from both ME1 and ME2, especially in the amazing Citadel DLC where you get to throw a huge party for everyone at your massive apartment in the city.
Mass Effect 3 is my favorite ME game because it *feels* epic. The first 10 minutes of the game are more exciting than most of the plotlines of entire other games. The pace never lets up unless you want to spend a bunch of time side-questing (which, of course, I did). The DLC is also very good, and the story wraps up a lot of loose ends from the other games that were left hanging. I really enjoyed bringing together all the disparate parties to fight the Reapers. The second ME game, to me, felt like filler. Nothing really happened. This game....everything happens. The Reapers are here, and you have to unite the entire galaxy in order to prevail.
The storytelling and character development is the best in this game than the other 2 ME games. I could've done without the new Mako thing where you just fly around collecting items in fire-worlds, but those are optional quests so I can't hate too much.
The battle system is pretty much the same as ME2, but I appreciate that navigating is easier in this game (you can jump over objects easily and strafe side to side, and there's a convenient arrow pointing to where you need to go if you get lost). They also took out the annoying-ass mini-games from ME2 (that stupid memory game was a waste of time, I liked the mini-game of QTEs from ME1 better). I also liked the shooting in ME1 better, because there was unlimited ammo but your gun would overheat, which I found more interesting than just picking ammo off the ground. ME3 lets you basically choose either one, because some guns have unlimited ammo/overheat and others have the traditional ammo. I was very happy to be able to play the way I did in ME1 again, and without the horrible mandatory Mako missions.
I thought the ending was fine. Granted, I played the extended cut, so I don't know how much of a difference that makes. I think no one was going to be happy with the way they ended this game, the expectations were too high. Overall, I thought it was a cool way to end the game, staying in line with giving you a choice of how you want to end it. The ending hate was way over the top, I actually liked the ending fine.
Overall, I had a blast playing ME3. They took out the worst parts of the other games and kept the parts that worked, and included some epic fights, such as watching a reaper fight a thresher maw. I played for 38 hours.
9/10