One of the best RPG series destroyed by the worst ending i have ever seen. Review updated to reflect Exte
I am very glad that the fan base spoke out and that BioWare released this Extended Cut, Not only does it explain more about the ending but also adds several new cutscene's and narratives to give the ending a much needed closure.
I will not go too much into detail but I will say that most of the questions that were left unanswered are now properly explained, your EMS score now also has a much bigger impact on the ending, for example in the Destroy ending (my personal favorite) if you have a high EMS score you can see that the Mass Relays and Citadel are only damaged and not completely destroyed, The Normandy is only slightly damaged and we see it taking off the unknown planet.
When I finished the game with the original ending it was so bad that it overshadowed everything good about the game, Now that I replayed it with the Extended Cut I see just how amazing this game really is, I have played all 3 games in the series several times and I can tell you that this game is an emotional rollercoaster, The characters in this game are so real that when something happens to them it's almost like you truly lost someone, so many great scenes in this game, Mass Effect is truly amazing.
None of the endings are truly happy endings, but perhaps there shouldn't be one, There will still be some people upset with the ending but this might just be because this truly great series came to an end and no one can really be happy about that.
Like Garrus said: It's been a hell of a ride
Feel free to read my original review below.
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I have been a fan of the series since the first Mass Effect was released back in 2007, Then when i finished playing Mass Effect 2 back in 2010 it was obvious to me that this was the best 2 games i had ever played. It now saddens me greatly that such a great series was destroyed in the last 10 minutes of the finale, i will talk a bit about the ending further down my review.
Gameplay:
Mass effect 2 already had excellent gameplay and a very good combat mechanic, i would say that Mass Effect 3 has slightly improved in this aspect, you now can move from cover to cover much faster and the controls do feel more fluid.
RPG Elements:
The converstation wheel has been slightly stripped down, you no longer have neutral options to pick and instead there are only options for Paragon and Renegade, this was a bit disappointing since it really takes a lot out of the conversation wheel, In Mass Effect 1 & 2 it was nice that you had a neutral option (the one in the middle) in case you did not fully agree with neither the Paragon or Renegade choices. You do get options now to modify your weapons and armor which was taken out of Mass Effect 2, i am glad this was put back in Mass Effect 3. One last thing that was a bit disappointing is that most of the time you no longer get to speak directly to your crew aboard the Normandy, instead you can only click on them and they will just say something to you, you may or may not say something back but this is not up to the player. I did like the fact however that you can now find and talk to your crew on various locations of the citadel.
Main Missions and Side Missions:
I think the Main Mission's did see an improvement, Obviously with the reapers in full force the missions have much more action and are higher paced than the previous 2 games, Side Missions were disappointing due to the fact that there were barely any, Also unlike Mass Effect 2 non of your crew has loyalty missions at all.
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Here is where a great game crashes down in just a matter of minutes, i will explain:
The Reapers:
What i thought about the reapers (and what i believe many other people thought) was that they were Evil Machines that would eradicate all advanced life every 50,000 years for their own gain, Mass Effect 2 made me believe that they were doing this as a means of reproduction, letting civilazation advance to a specific level and then find the most capable species and make a new reaper out of them. At the end of Mass Effect 3 however we find that the reapers were never really in charge, and were instead controlled my an AI on the Citadel. It's excuse was that without the cycles all orginic life would be destroyed by synthetic's created by the organic species, this in my option is total bull, synthetic's can co exist in peace with organics, the Geth are a perfect example of this. This whole thing completely ruins the menacing nature of the reapers and to me they went from being one of the best villians i have seen in a game to being a complete joke.
Mass Relays:
Whatever ending you pick ends up with the entire Mass Relay Network destroyed, which pretty much means that all of the planets end up isolated and cut off from each other, possibly forever. to me this is not a good ending and is barely better than getting destroyed by the reapers, In the end the galaxy ends up worse than when you first started, and non of the endings change that.
Normandy:
The Normany is in the last battle but for some unexplained reason it leaves the battle and starts making a Mass Relay jump to who knows where, during this unexplained jump the Mass Relays are destroyed and the Normandy ends up crashing on what seems to be an unkown planet, For some miracle your team is seen exiting the Normandy even though they were with you on earth during the last battle, If BioWare knows how to tell a convincing story then i want them to tell us how the hell your entire crew suddenly ended up on the Normandy.
Conclustion:
When i first started reading all of the negative user reviews about the ending i thought that they were just expecting too much, now that i finished the game i can honestly say that they deserved all of those negative user reviews, This is a slap in the face to the fanbase of this game who have dedicated over 100 hours to this series.
If BioWare makes a new ending though DLC and makes us pay for it then i am though with them, In the end the ending that matters is the one that is on the disk, and that ending is a piece of ****