Mass Effect 3 Review

For most of its length this is the payoff the trilogy promised. The Rannoch arc resolving a war between two species you have known since the first game is the best writing BioWare has produced, the Tuchanka mission gives a supporting character a death worth the buildup, and the Citadel content that followed is the warmest goodbye a cast has been given. Combat finally clicks too, with weight tuning, a usable dodge and power combos that make squad orders matter on higher difficulties.

Then the last fifteen minutes arrive and the game stops being about the choices you made. A boy from a dream sequence explains the antagonists' motives in a monologue, offers three options distinguished mostly by colour, and produces near identical outcomes regardless of the war assets you spent forty hours accumulating. BioWare shipped an extended cut months later that added context without changing the structure. Multiplayer readiness feeding into the single player ending was a further miscalculation. Magnificent for thirty hours, and remembered for the last one.