Finished my Mass Effect trilogy playthrough. (spoilers forthcoming)
ME1 was, as I've stated before, better than the sum of its parts. It had the overall best plotline of the series and a sense of wonder that the other two games lacked as the series became progressively more streamlined and linear. Still, there was this permeating feeling throughout the game that the developers took the spaghetti approach when it came to developing the game: i.e.: they threw everything at the wall and waited until the game was finished to see what stuck. As a result, you had drawn-out vehicle sequences that weren't much fun, an awful inventory system, cookie-cutter sidequests, buggy gameplay, and interesting but mostly one-dimensional characters. In other words, a lot of what was there seemed half-baked, even the good aspects of the game. It didn't stop the game from being addictive, however, in large part due to an interesting story arc, the freedom you had in creating and developing your own version of the hero character, the whole Paragon/Renegade angle, and of course the romance nonsense.
ME2 was probably my favorite game of the series. A good mix of the sense of wonder and exploration of the first game and the heavy-handed space opera nonsense of the third game. Combat was tightened up, the inventory system was overhauled, the repetitiveness of the first game's sidequests were removed, the writing was tightened up, the voice acting was improved and the character development was much better. I agree with what Trots said earlier in this thread; Mordin is about as good a character as you'll find in a video game. If they ever go through with a Mass Effect movie (though I think the franchise would work better as a TV series) I think David Tennant should play him. Legion was sweet too: I wish you didn't get him so late in the game. He's pretty awesome, and he in turn helps make Tali's story a lot more interesting (the Quarians, who on the surface seem like a largely sympathetic people in this game's universe, have a serious dark side, which is further explored in ME3).
I disagree with Trots on Jack, however; I liked her a lot. While her persona did get obnoxious at times, she can be funny, and if you romance her, she winds up being one of the most well-rounded characters in the series, which leads to her character's biggest problem; if you don't romance her or you are a FemShep, her character development pretty much stops at some point. Lazy writing on BioWare's part, IMHO. Still, she was more interesting than, say, Miranda (bubble-butt fanboy pandering, boring character), Grunt (double-boring), or Jacob (triple-boring). Kasumi was kinda goofy too. Loved Carrie-Ann Moss and Martin Sheen voicing characters in the game.
ME3 was probably the most fun to play due to the changes in the combat system, the ability to mod weapons, the somewhat more challenging gameplay, and some of the unique monsters (Banshees and Atlases are a bitch on Insanity difficulty). Still, it left me wanting, and I'm not referring to the "ending" everyone was going on about (more on that in a sec). The game began taking itself too seriously. Much of the game seemed so heavy-handed, though I appreciated the sense of scope and dread the developers employed throughout the game. One of the reasons I liked the Citadel DLC so much is that it gave the game the sense of humor that it had previously been lacking. (The fact that it brought Wrex back as a squadmate didn't hurt either). I also didn't like the fact that you basically needed to use a guide to find all the stupid war asset side quest stuff because scanning systems was a chore in the game. Still, I liked it. Fun to play (horrible galactic travel aside), great voice acting (Freddie Prize Jr. as some buffed up Latino badass? And it actually works? Wow.), solid combat, solid side-plots (romantic and otherwise), and the aforementioned sense of scope and vision. It makes my inner ultra-nerd smile.
As for the "ending": I downloaded the Extended Cut before I played the game, so in fairness I never saw the original ending that everyone felt the need to bitch about. That said, the ending was just fine. Would I have liked to see my Shepard walk into the sunset with Liara and have a bunch of blue tentacle-haired children? Sure. And if you choose the Destroy ending (the only one where Shepard apparently lives), who's to say you can't head-canon that shit? (The idea of sacrificing EDI and the geth kinda sucks, but I like the Destroy ending the best because I like the idea of the galaxy finally being free of any Reaper influence, which the other endings deny you. That and the Synthesis ending to me seems like horseshit; Reaper code + sentient organic life = HUSKS, not space magic).
But the ending worked. It wrapped things up fairly well (I can live with the plot holes and space magic) while being just ambiguous enough for me to wonder, what direction will the ME universe take next? I'm hoping for a true sequel, set centuries or even millennia after the game (if they go prequel for the next game I'm going to be disappointed because that would be very lazy and unambitious of BioWare, but it'd be a guaranteed moneymaker, so who knows?).
Mordin, Liara, Garrus, Legion, Tali, Wrex and Jack are my favorite characters in the series. EDI, Joker and James aren't too far behind them.
Buying the trilogy was probably the best $50 I've spent on video games in awhile. I'm just now starting to get sick of them after buying them this past Christmas. Time to move on to Bioshock: Infinite finally. Maybe one day I'll do that Renegade playthrough.
TL; DR, I know.
