This is like a wet fart as a game. If I wasn't playing the legendary edition I wonder how much of this game I would've loathed more. There's so much to unpack story-wise, that I don't think BioWare thought about certain parameters actually being met come the finale. There are two literal walking plot devices in the party and the main one that you waited three games for is regulated to a background character after their introduction.
The overabundance of "hey let's chill at the bar" character interactions was annoying especially with what's at stake currently in the galaxy. Hanging out and getting to know my party members was the highlight of the second game, but in this game, they didn't even have some background catching up to talk about. They become just one-liners until you see them somewhere else. And for a game that pushed so much one-on-one time with these characters, It felt forced at this rate. Certain characters didn't get a proper ending to their built-up arcs over the years.
Story aside, while once again the gunplay and moment-to-moment gameplay are improved, something is adversely affected by it. This time it's a compound of a bunch of small things. While guns have better modification and distinct use cases, the weight system is a really neat feature to stop the class-based limitations, and the combo systems with powers make for more engaging firefights, not being able to just put your gun away is weird. Planet scanning is annoying with the Reapers chasing you for hitting scan one time. Side quests being regulated to scans and random pickups and eavesdropping made them boring to do.
I guess that's the best way to put it. This game is boring, not because the story wasn't engaging or the gameplay was, but because after trekking through 2 games of build-up, I expected more. My disappointment just compounded when there wasn't a "man that was all worth it" moment. I slogged through unbearable gauntlets of firefights only to end off with a lackluster finale, and I'm not talking about the ending, but the entire third game.
The overabundance of "hey let's chill at the bar" character interactions was annoying especially with what's at stake currently in the galaxy. Hanging out and getting to know my party members was the highlight of the second game, but in this game, they didn't even have some background catching up to talk about. They become just one-liners until you see them somewhere else. And for a game that pushed so much one-on-one time with these characters, It felt forced at this rate. Certain characters didn't get a proper ending to their built-up arcs over the years.
Story aside, while once again the gunplay and moment-to-moment gameplay are improved, something is adversely affected by it. This time it's a compound of a bunch of small things. While guns have better modification and distinct use cases, the weight system is a really neat feature to stop the class-based limitations, and the combo systems with powers make for more engaging firefights, not being able to just put your gun away is weird. Planet scanning is annoying with the Reapers chasing you for hitting scan one time. Side quests being regulated to scans and random pickups and eavesdropping made them boring to do.
I guess that's the best way to put it. This game is boring, not because the story wasn't engaging or the gameplay was, but because after trekking through 2 games of build-up, I expected more. My disappointment just compounded when there wasn't a "man that was all worth it" moment. I slogged through unbearable gauntlets of firefights only to end off with a lackluster finale, and I'm not talking about the ending, but the entire third game.