My review for this game is indeed a little late to the game. I guess it’s better late than never. Something important to know is that I am indeed a fan of the Mass Effect franchise, but that being said I also thin that the franchise has it’s problems. Take all that in consideration while reading this review.
Mass Effect 3 starts almost immediately after the events of the DLC for Mass Effect 2 titled The Arrival. The game takes no time to get started and throw you right back into the action. You notice as soon as you start playing how much more fluid the game mechanics are and even though it took me a moment to get back into the swing of the combat, the game plays pretty solid. This was important for me as one of the biggest issues I had with the first two games the cover system and how the mechanics felt a bit clunky. After I settled back into the gameplay I started to remember why I love this franchise as the deep story played out and I continued through the game I seen so many repercussions of decisions I made during the first two games and even though you may not like how some thing turned out, you still have to appreciate the idea of choices carrying over for a whole series of games.
Before long I’m back on the Normandy and I find that the first place I go to every time I arrive to the ship is the armory. I was happy to see the RPG aspect of the franchise return to this game. The second game was watered down into a 3rd person action title and one of my favorite things about Mass Effect was the RPG elements. Now, you can customize all of you armor and weapons. Your weight that you carry reflect how fast your powers charge and I found myself playing with more strategy. This idea not only makes the game have a whole other layer of interest, but it also makes for combat to be more interesting. I found that I played this game different than I have the previous two and the idea of the third game in the series to make me find new ways to play it was a win for me.
The game will demand a hefty amount of time if you prefer to do things 100% or even if you want to run through you still may be looking at 20 hours of gameplay. The game features at least three ending to choose from. Yes, I know the endings are a very sensitive issue with a lot of fans right now. I personally seen nothing wrong with the endings of the game. I think it’s hard to please so many people with the ending of a game that allows for so many thing to be taken away by so many people. Even if the endings do not give the amount of “closure” that fans are looking for, I think it fits with the games theme and serves it purpose. None of the endings took any of the magic away from the game for me. Even if you hate the endings you have to appreciate the ride. In one of the most gripping and interesting stories I’ve had the privilege of playing I was very happy with the game as a whole.
I did have some whims about some of the details. I don’t care for the way your journal is set up now as things are very vague as to what you need to do. Also, I had some issues with a freeze up here and there and there were more than a couple of times that an auto save put me in a bad situation, but none of these things were game breaking by far.
The replay value on this game was huge enough with the single player alone, but the inclusion of multiplayer has improved the replay of this game by 10 fold. The multiplayer is set up in a horde mode fashion. You and three friends fight 11 waves of enemies. The enemies can vary in difficulty. It has three levels of difficulty and multiple locations to play from. You can level your multiplayer character and buy equipment, weapons, character and other items from special packs in the store. These can be bought with in game currency or MS points. Every class has three races to choose from so you can always be changing up your way of playing. After you cap your character out you can promote him or her into your single player game and start from scratch. Every match you win you will have a certain percent of “Galactic Readiness” added to you Galaxy at War map. So, even though the multiplayer is a separate thing from the single player, BioWare still found a way to make them work together.
All in all, the game is a solid outing and a good end to the current Mass Effect universe story. I found no major issues with anything in the game, not even the endings. With the combined multiplayer aspect and the as always awesome single player from a Mass Effect game, there is not a valid reason I can think of to skip this game.
