I'd gone through ME2 again before this, doing the loyalty missions and DLC, and set myself up to finish the trilogy in style. There were some excellent sections, Tuchanka was the real highlight; both the Thresher Maw and the debate about that to do with the Genophage (until Eve died and I sabotaged the cure, saving Mordin). Enjoyed the Geth section too, and Grunt emerging from the Rachni cave was brilliant. The first twenty five hours or so was great overall, and it was building nicely. I also liked seeing what the old crew had done since the suicide mission, (Thane
), but they looked different, which was a little off-putting.
I was disappointed with how little choices from the previous games affected this (actually, I saved the collector's base at the end of ME2, were Cerberus significantly less powerful if it was destroyed?), the squad and Normandy in general were less interesting, with the exception of Traynor being a lot better than Chambers, and the enemies seemed to be a lot less varied, especially in the latter half. I would also liked to have been kept up to date more with the building of the Crucible, as it's completeness seemed to come out of nowhere. And I didn't like the new weapons systems either, the weapons attachments didn't greatly affect anything, which meant that there was nothing worth spending credits on, but the combat was solid enough most of the time (apart from Shepard refusing to go into cover and choosing to stand by it instead).
One question though, how did you increase the effectiveness rating? Did a fair chunk of the side missions, but it never moved from 50%.
Then it came to the final section, and it started relatively well. It dragged a little, but I can understand why there would be a lot of enemies there. The Banshees were a giant pain to deal with, but I wasn't too annoyed, even when there were three and the brute things together, seemed like it was building to a huge crescendo. And then everyone got destroyed by the reaper, apart from Shepard (which I could accept), nice section to reach the Citadel, but then Anderson was there too? Wasn't happy with that. Did the conversation, and then, the worst part of all, the part that tainted the whole trilogy, that child. Came out of nowhere, was really cheap and got rid of any huge battle, something that I'd be looking forward to until the end. There was no real conclusion either, didn't get to see the impact of who I'd saved and of my previous actions over the past 90 hours or so. And I still have no idea how EDI got back to the Normandy, and what happened to pretty much everyone.
I'll give the extended DLC a go, as I really wasn't happy with the original. Does From Ashes relate to the ending, or is it separate. Going to go back through the thread too, as a lot of people were unhappy with it, and I'm sure I've missed a lot out.