Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

20 to 40 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Best in series"

It's actually over.

Hours and hours poured into the Mass Effect trifecta, and Ellivro Sheppard's journey has ended was an immeasurable bang. To be reductive, Mass Effect 3 feels like the child produced with the DNA of ME1 and ME2. But who's complaining? Both games were fantastic in their own right, but both were missing parts of the other. ME1 suffered from a clunky inventory system, repetitive side quests and little more-than functional combat. ME2 had stripped most of the rpg depth of the original, and had a non-existent main plot.

Mass Effect 3 addresses almost all of those issues. It continues the series' progression with each iteration and contains the series most coherent story yet. There is a consistent tone and sense of propulsion that previous entries lacked. The sense of urgency and darkness, is almost never lost. Even sidequests blend believably in the overall urgency of amassing a galactic army to stop the invasion of the cataclysmal reapers. Despite the players choices, the game never lets you forget the astronomical stakes and reminds you that no victory is without sacrifice. In fact, the game will teach you that sometimes sacrifice is made for nothing. If Mass Effect 2 was analogous to the Empire Strikes Back, Mass Effect 3 is some alternate Jedi Returns that was adamant in its aim to be more soul-crushingly bleak than it's predecessor.

The combat is the biggest improvement in ME3. It isn't simply functional or decent, it is actively fantastic. It's tight, visceral, challenging, and far deeper than any of the previous mass effect games. Some of the game's set pieces are truly spectacular. It has some of the best combat ever put into an rpg.

There are chinks in the game's armor tough. The game's engine is starting to show its age. Some blurry graphical touches are hard to not notice, and some wooden character deliveries can disillusion you from the experience at times. Moreover, the ending (while satisfyingly final) isn't for everyone; some people may even feel betrayed by it. But given the sheer magnitude of a player's accumulated choices over three games, it's hard to believe that any ending would have sufficed. The trilogy's end is similar in ambiguity to The Sopranos, Lost, Scott Pilgrim series. The ending does not diminish the 5 year ride. In some ways, it's massive choice seems to be the only fitting end for a trilogy that has escalated the gravity of each decision so steadily since its 2007 debut.

Mass Effect 3 marks the end of an ambitious undertaking in video game narrative. It is not simply the third in a line of games. It is the final piece connecting one continuous experience. A massive narrative machine of gears shifting and operating off of each other that is truly unprecedented in gaming. Emotionally resonant and beautifully crafted, Mass Effect 3 is more than the accomplishment of a single game; it is the fulfilled promise of three.