I've just finished Mass Effect 3 and you know what that means... review! (and post-trilogy depression for a few days)

Graphics-wise, the game is really modern and up-to-date. Nothing to complain about other than some characters' eyes being a tad bulgy and weird-looking, and also 1/3 of the male NPCs looking exactly like Default Shepard. Then again, he's famous by that point and plastic surgery must be pretty advanced in the 22nd century so I'm guessing Shepard's face is in fashion right now. Some graphical glitches here and there but nothing major or inconvenient. Gameplay-wise, the game is even more fluid and immersive than the second one and that's saying a lot since the second game was already infinitely more fluid and immersive than the first one, which still had pretty good gameplay. Story-wise, I can see why many people complain about the ending; they like happy endings where everybody lives and everybody is happy and the sun is shining and the birds are singing. There's a way to survive but that implies getting the absolute best ending (which I got, as usual). The last mission alone is influenced by over a thousand decisions you've made across the entire trilogy so getting the perfect ending, as you can guess, can be tricky. But for those who aren't good at decisions or who've followed a different path from the usual goodie hero to experience a whole different trilogy (I'll do that next, plus as a chick 'cause goddammit I wanna screw Garrus. I mean I've screwed Ashley, Tali AND Liara so I've still got it but still, I have a thing for Turians), you can play a few games of coop multiplayer (new feature in Mass Effect 3 only) and get your galactic readiness up. After a few games you could theoretically double your chances of surviving... if you're good. I've only played three games of coop 'cause I needed like 5% more points to get the perfect ending thanks to some bad choices I won't make in the future but these were pretty cool; I might play coop again every now and then. Plus while in the first game you could max out your money by the end of the game easily and in the second game you'd barely have enough money to buy everything, in the last game you're far from having nearly as much money as you'd need to buy every thing so you've gotta plan and buy only what you need (plus a couple extras like model ships, fishes and a 20k aquarium that automatically feeds the fishes when you're away. In the second game it was useless to buy fishes 'cause they'd always starve unless you fed 'em every single time you got on board)

I'd say the biggest improvement is that they've almost completely removed scanning and galaxy exploring. In the first game, you had to land on each planet and drive around to each point of interest in a shitty vehicle that didn't obey physics. In the second game, you had to scan every single planet but at least you didn't have to land on 'em and drive in a shitty vehicle; except in a few rare cases but the vehicle was awesome so it was actually pretty cool when that happened. In the third game, your scanning abilities are greatly improved so instead of scanning each planet individually, you can scan whole systems which saves an awful lot of time. But even if you save an awful lot of time, the game still manages to follow the usual pattern of adding 10 hours of gameplay. First game lasted 30 hours, second game 40 hours and this one lasted me 50 hours. And there's a fair lot of replayability value so you could spend a looooong while replaying the trilogy to get every different outcome. I mean hot damn, I managed to create FIVE couples amongst the crew and they all survived to tell the tale.

I'm reeeeaaaally picky when it comes to sci-fi games but I'd still recommend the shit outta the Mass Effect trilogy. If you think the first game is meh it's totally normal, just bear with it and then be amazed when you reach the second game. Each game is infinitely better than the previous one. I also recommend getting the DLCs, each one of 'em is worth it, though expensive. But if you don't want to use the same armor and weapons for the entirety of the game, avoid the equipment DLCs. I literally used the same DLC armor till I got a better DLC armor which I used for the reminder of the game, and everybody in my team used the same DLC weapons for the whole game. And since the same thing happened with the first and second game, you can guess why some people would get bored :P. DLC equipment is better than everything else (I mean come on, a fully automatic sniper rifle that doesn't weight too much to encumber you).