In Colin Moriarty's review of Mass Effect 3 , IGN rated the trilogy's epic denouement "amazing" with a score of 9.5. He praised its "deeply woven story" and called it a game of "exceptional poise and skill". Now, other editors have played the game at length. Here's what they have to say.

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The Mass Effect trilogy represents a truly unique serialized experience in gaming, one that echoed loudly throughout my time with Mass Effect 3 . At countless intervals, I witnessed contextual scenes and reactions, and plenty of knowing glares from my crew and the supporting cast, that I knew came about because of one decision or another I had made or not made.It intertwined to such a degree that I'm confident saying that even if some other people experienced something close to the way my story played out, my playthrough felt like it was all mine. Incredibly smart. That is to say, Mass Effect 3 The Galaxy At War system feels incredibly arbitrary as well, which is to be expected when it's based on a largely shallow gathering mechanic that resulted in nothing more than a number you had to grow. Lastly, and this is an extremely tiny thing, but I also felt like the Journal system could benefit from a default starting point of your active missions. Getting sent to the bottom of the list of completed assignments every time I open the Journal, requiring me to slowly scroll up to the top to my handful of active missions, feels like an oversight considering how often you use the Journal.Those reasonable quibbles aside, I still had an utterly fantastic and very meaningful time with Mass Effect 3 and I consider it a great conclusion to the trilogy. But, for what's its worth, I haven't felt compelled to start a second play-through the way I immediately did with Mass Effect 2.The irksome moments are those when a character pops in for one mission just to say "Hey! Remember me?" before becoming an obscure reference. The unforgivable moments are those that take place during the final hour of the game. I've made it clear around the office that I'm utterly disappointed with the ending of this series.None of the final moments feel like they have any weight to them. They simply feel incorrect, and they make me want to tell my television "This is not what my Shepard would have done." Never did I expect the franchise that I've praised and cherished since the first video documentary would end with what amounts to "Out of the three doors he picked door number two. Tell him what he's won."I had the maximum Galactic Rating possible. I had 100% preparedness. And I got a confusing and weird cutscene for it.I wanted to love everything about Mass Effect 3. Actually if you take away the ending and a few buggy moments the game is still phenomenal. But instead of ending on something noteworthy, all this final moment did is make me think of how expertly crafted a similar ending was in Enslaved: Odyssey to the West.I didn't like the ending to Mass Effect 3, but I wasn't devastated by it. The crushing thing for me was that Garrus didn't even notice or care that I was cheating on him. I made a point to play Mass Effect 3 on the Xbox 360 so that I could continue my Shepard's story -- which included a Mass Effect 2 hookup with Garrus. I started Mass Effect 3, Garrus and I "reconnected," and all seemed right with the galaxy (minus the Reapers ruining everything). However, I then fell in lesbian love/lust with Specialist Traynor. After our shower scene, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop with Garrus. For him to call me on my wandering hands.See, relationship problems were nothing new to Garrus and I. In Mass Effect 2, I chased Jacob and Garrus at the same time, and they called me on it. They made me choose. I expected the same in Mass Effect 3, but as the game went on, nothing happened. Eventually, I walked in on Garrus hooking up with Tali.And that was it. No blow-up. No discussion about what happened to us. Our love was just over. That disappointed me, but luckily, the other 20 hours I spent with Mass Effect 3 were awesome.I love the Mass Effect universe. I like nerding out over the alien races, meticulously catalogued planets and the rich history the writers of Mass Effect provide as a backdrop for the games' events. The Mass Effect universe may be as varied and expansive as the Halo or Star Wars universes…but while playing Mass Effect 3 I was constantly bothered by the feeling that the galaxy isn't that big of a place after all.This breaks the illusion of a massive, populated universe. If we're expected to believe a galaxy with billions of races and planets exists, then you cannot run into a familiar face every single time you touch down on a planet without fail.Other times Mass Effect 3 also seems to "contract" the universe: The tiny Citadel area, with one hallway, where every important character lives; the mainly unchanged hub of the Normandy; the lack of explorable areas, in general. I still enjoyed shooting stuff, and I didn't mind the ending, but I wasn't able to lose myself in Mass Effect this time.My experience with Mass Effect 3 didn't start out well. My character's face didn't import properly , some of my decisions from Mass Effect 1 didn't carry over (I miss you, Wrex!) and I was a little turned off by the idea of a new multiplayer mode. As I've started to make progress in the actual game, though, all of my concerns have washed away.Mass Effect 3 feels drastically different from the previous titles, and that's a good thing. Battles feel far more intense, and I'm consistently amazed how warlike and frantic everything seems. I think the character models look slightly worse than they did in Mass Effect 2, but it's easy to forgive considering the amount of content in the game. I do think it's kind of crazy how every female character in the game has HUGE boobs. Seriously, every single one. Even the robots. It's almost distracting.The Mass Effect universe is one I've always found fascinating, and while I'm not quite as knowledgeable as die-hards like Destin Legarie , I love watching how each race reacts to the war at hand. Assembling the pieces on the chess board and gathering the allegiance of each race is a brilliant way to mix up the franchise's gameplay, especially after the "find a person, recruit them, repeat" pattern of Mass Effect 2.I'm about fifteen hours into ME3 and really look forward to diving in deeper. But seriously, BioWare , I'm not kidding about the boobs thing.Everyone knows that the malleable story, the characters, and the relationships that are built and dismantled make up the bulk of the Mass Effect experience. So for me, it was really the combat that pleasantly surprised me in this final installment of the Mass Effect trilogy.It took three games for BioWare to get the combat to feel right – like an elegant shooter. Mass Effect 3 orchestrates a perfect symphony of cover-based shooting, squad commands, and special power usage. Each encounter presents a good amount of tension, quickness, and fluidity to make for fun, exhilarating combat.I couldn't just rush in guns blazing though. I had to prioritize enemies, figure out how to best incapacitate armored foes, and use my helpful squad-mates by commanding them to flank the enemy or work together to pair effective offensive combos. The cover system worked well enough, but sometimes I found it too sticky. While I appreciated the huge assortment of weapons, the sheer number of weapon choices felt muted by the added ability to modify a weapon's strengths with weapon mods, and I ended up not using many of them.Still I enjoyed the veritable tactical flexibility in combat just as much as I enjoyed the numerous options I was given to help shape the story.