If you put the story telling of ME1 the squad for ME2 and the combat of ME3 you'd have a 10/10 game.
But the first thing that struck me as I excitedly loaded the game on that one Friday evening, was that at the first hurdle they failed their core fan base, the ones that had been playing since Mass Effect 1 was released, upon trying to load my character my Shepard instead of being greeted with his happy smiling face I was presented with error message saying import failed.
Now you can understand the great despair and more importantly disappointment at being presented with this epic fail. But I soldiered on with my crude attempt to rebuild the face the best I could and tried to not let it affect my opinion too much.
One of the concessions that were made early on in this games development is that we wouldn't be getting a big squad like in Mass Effect 2, instead they were going for a small team so that they could better improve squad dialogue and banter. For the most part Garrus was a character that stood out from the pack as in ME2 he didn't have much to say other than "Can it wait I have some calibrations to do". In ME3 he said quite a bit more and was very entertaining. But coupled with glitches whereby dialogue skipped for no apparent reason, meaning what little they did say was missed more often than not.
To me you got a lot less story on the individuals than you did in ME 1 & 2 so again that was a failure as I see it on what they promised. I would have liked to have got into deep conversation with Ashley outside of a combat situation about why you helped Cerberus, even my romance with Liara seemed like an after thought I was hoping for something deeper, but sadly it never appeared. Tali's face was forced in with a random picture the model was attract but I understand why they couldn't put the face on the actually character during the love scene seemed almost like it was an after thought. To be fair they could have had a larger squad and it still wouldn't have affected the near non existing dialogue.
So fair it seems like all I have done is talk about the negative, however there were many positives to be taken from this game the combat was a lot better and it was a lot more challenging. I played as a soldier in all 3 games and on insanity every time and the progression from the limited combat of ME1 to the fast paced combat of ME3 is obvious. The enemy where a lot more intelligent flanking you and throwing grenades to try and force you out of hiding, causing you to keep moving and finding new and better ways to progress through the missions.
The multiplayer was a surprise for me I am not usually a fan of multiplayer it tends to be without substance and too repetitive, but this although still repetitive is very entertaining especially seeing as you can play as different races. I am definitely a fan of multiplayer done in a manner that has a reflection to single player.
Now is the time I talk about the ending. No I am not a fan, you can say what you want about artistic licence and fair comment that is how the writers wanted to finish this great series but for me it left a lot to be desire. Yes it is just one gamers opinion but they could have ended the game a lot of different ways. The one they chose I feel was the wrong one. It created so many questions and answered few, to be fair we all have ideas of how this series should have ended it's just a shame it had to end like this.