I think they should've clearly labeled the romance options, as I would often exhaust a lot of conversation trees because I wanted to make sure I didn't miss any quests in ME1 and ME2. Since Commander Shepard would often say something completely unrelated to what I'd picked, he almost wound up in a relationship with Jacob in the second game, and I still don't get how Shep bedded Ashley in the first one, since I hadn't even tried being romantic (as far as I knew) with anyone.

ME2's stupid Illusive Man setup kept me from playing ME3, and after seeing the endings, I'm glad I skipped it (also, fuck Origin).

You wanna romance Mass Effect characters? Exhaust all conversation options. You wanna see the conversation options and not romance them? Then in the on-ship conversation options, just be a dick to them once.

That's all it takes. I told Jacob to stow his whining and Ashley to fuck off with the anti-alien stuff, and it wasn't an issue.

Also you're missing out on both games. ME2 is great, and the Illusive Man isn't a big part, it's more about the well-rounded cast. ME3 does have a bad ending yeah, but the game before that is still not to be missed.

If you're referring to the mission setup (Mission based covered shooter, no real exploring or revisiting), then yeah, ME3 is the same. Even worse, it's completely rushed and pretty much ignores or makes decisions from previous games invalid.

(Spoilers ahead, for those who care.) Did you exterminate the Rachni in ME1? Well they're back now. Why, reapers brought them back. Did you blow up the collector base in ME2 to keep the Illusive man from misusing it? He managed to fix it. How? Who the fuck knows? Did you encourage or discourage war between quatrains and geth? Actually, don't bother telling us, this is how that arc is playing out.

If you made all the 'correct' canonized choices in ME1&2, the game makes perfect sense, but even one different decision (and I had made plenty) completely shatters the illusion. It's lazy and rushed at best, insulting at worst.

From a gameplay perspective, it is fun. There aren't enough cover shooters out there with the kind of variety in terms of powers, special conditions, etc. that mass effect uses to stay fresh. If you can get over the fact that the story is complete rubbish and would have been better off in the long run without the illusion of choice, there is a lot of fun to be had. If things like the fact that major decisions are completely ignored because that's not the story they wanted to tell matter to you, you won't like the game. If you're looking for a fun cover shooter and story doesn't matter at all, you'll probably play this more than once, since the classes feel and play pretty unique from one another.

Also, one of the games major recurring villains is a cyber Asian who brings a katana to a gunfight and routinely wins. I'd be lying if I said that didn't have an impact on my enjoyment.

Just to add to a completely off-topic long conversation, ME3 makes overall story mistakes, but some of the writing for characters is still great, often better than ME2. There's lots of little conversations around the Citadel and moments between characters that remind you these are some of the best writers in the game industry. And some of the big action-set piece blow away anything the other games had. It's just too bad the overall story and how it integrates past-decisions is a let-down.

Shut up.

You forgot the star, CJ. It's not a proper Chocolate Jesus reply without a single star.

While I liked Mordin a lot in ME2, the whole "space Jesus resurrection" thing put me off, plus you were working for Cerberus, an outfit even more incompetent and yet strangely over-funded than COBRA.

One odd thing about ME2 that few seem to notice: The Blue Sun merc you push over the balcony? It's Martin Sheen as well. So either the Illusive Man has a clone, or they were hard up for voice actors and figured the space-suit com distortion would hide his identity. It seems to have worked, or I just have a good ear for voices.

Five stars for playing through the fucking amazing intro to ME2 and then being like all "Fuck this I'm not going to play another minute of this game".

Part of me wishes the Reapers were never even a part of Mass Effect, and that the whole trilogy was about the Rachni Wars, the Krogan Genophage, and Mordin and his team.

That was by far the most intriguing element across all of the games to me, and if Mass Effect 3 suddenly ended with the wrapping up of Mordin's plotline for some reason, I think I actually would've liked the whole trilogy more.

@Blue: I didn't say I didn't play ME2, I didn't play ME3. As far as the "fucking amazing" beginning, it involved Joker, the best pilot in the fleet, steering the Normandy INTO the beam weapon of the Collector ship. He almost does it AGAIN later in the game, in spite of the fact that the weapon can only fire forwards and can't really be aimed without turning the slow-moving ship it's attached to.

Unless "fucking amazing" is just "I like explosions."

Also, Miranda is a freaking annoyance. Even in a quasi-military operation, you should've been able to space her on several occasions and felt justified in doing so.

@Corn;

I would have liked it better that way myself. In all honesty, I had a bad feeling about 3 from the get-go. They had managed to kill 2 (one, really) reapers by the end of the second game, and still had thousands to go, I figured the whole series was either going to end with overpowered characters slaying god-machines left and right, or finding a magic off button for all of them. I was more or less right about the off button, and everything else was far more interesting.

I stand by that the lack of impact my decisions had, especially with the rachni, was bullshit though.

The best thing is that replies don't change with the gender. Pierce "doesn't normally swing that way" if you are woman and Keith has same answers etc.

You can do that in Fallout New Vegas, too. Just go look at the Vault Wiki under "Fisto."