The gamer intelligentsia have led me astray. Mass Effect 3’s ending is relatively alright (heavy emphasis on “relatively”) – it’s near enough everything else that’s the problem.

Enough time and post-release patches have passed now that its stronger aspects have started to overshadow its shortcomings, which to an extent isn’t without merit. Intergalactic supersoldier Shepard no longer struggles to breathe after jogging for three seconds and has learned how to dodge roll, making movement less restrictive in general. The game makes full use of his enhanced agility through a legitimately great enemy roster which sports all sorts of new dynamic behaviours, whether it be homing projectiles or lunging attacks or setting up turrets to create chokepoints on the fly. Feedback on attacks is probably the most cathartic it’s ever been, in no small part thanks to power combos, which also go some way toward making the RPG mechanics feel the most relevant they’ve been since the original.

You might notice that that’s all to do with combat, which is because it’s about the only respect in which ME3 isn’t an unequivocal step back from its predecessors. The already simplistic dialogue wheel’s stripped down even further, the player barely having any control over what Shepard says most of the time and the middle option often being axed in the few instances where you do. This kind of railroading wouldn’t be so egregious if Paragon and Renegade choices weren’t as polarised as they are; alternating between the two within the same conversation feels akin to a series of mood swings, with Shepard going from Aslan one moment to Judge Holden the next, now with no in-between. No part of the game better illustrates how poor a roleplaying avatar Shepard has become than the fact that you can choose to murder a longtime friend, doom his billions-strong race to extinction and proceed to lie about it in the most aloof tone possible, only to then have to sit through PTSD-induced nightmares over the implied off-screen death of some kid he’d only seen for the first time a few minutes prior.

The impressively lame Kai Leng and the inability to shove him into a locker would be enough to dock several points on its own, but many of the other side characters aren’t inspiringly handled either. I laughed when a certain somebody died in the main quest’s finale, not because I particularly disliked him, but because of the contrast between Shepard’s mournful head shake and my trying to remember what his name was. Tali’s Joss Whedon-isms feel similarly misplaced aboard a ship controlled and staffed by hostile AI in the midst of a battle for the fate of her species. Ashley and Liara continue to suffer from essentially becoming different characters in each game of the trilogy, though Javik is a saving grace and his deconstruction of the latter’s naive preconceptions about his people is about the only personality she’s afforded. James also exists, supposedly, though you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise given that you can’t actually speak to him or anyone else anymore once you’ve exhausted all the dialogue they’re generously granted for whichever point in the main quest you’re at.

I praised the combat earlier, but no amount of bolted on, marginal improvements can offset how woefully uninteresting the scenarios you fight through are. Prior to the release of Dragon Age II, someone at Bioware was infamously misquoted as saying they “want the Call of Duty audience,” but what's on offer here doesn't feel far removed from this hypothetical philosophy. Much more often than in either of the prior games, control’s wrestled away from you for such invigorating setpieces as sliding down a small pile of rubble, the stakes these are obviously trying to communicate rendered inert by how it’s impossible for you to be in danger during them. Just about every situation, from making your way down to the hideaway of ancient sub-aquatic alien giants to aiming missile batteries at the weak point of a starship, is solved through wave-based survival sequences in square arenas that wear out their welcome within the first hour. The return to Omega is the epitome of this sort of design, and a microcosm of ME3 in general, because for all intents and purposes it’s not actually Omega – it’s a series of linear shooting galleries that happens to look like Omega, with all the merchants, quest givers, decision-making and everything else resembling an RPG snuffed out.

It’s staggering how dreary the first few parts of this game manage to be considering it opens with a full scale invasion of Earth, but I caution against wanting it to be over with as soon as possible like I did. As a result, I skipped a certain sidequest, not initially knowing that they’re effectively just excuses to catch up the cast of ME2, and it led to one character making a reappearance as a standard, unaltered enemy who happens to share her name and reuse that one voice clip from ME1. It’s so shoddy I like to imagine it’s intentionally so, to really drive home what a punishment for lazy players it is, but even this rationalisation can’t shake the feeling that I would’ve preferred nothing at all.

I’ve written before about how I prefer to avoid negativity unless I can use it to highlight something else I care for, and I hold to that – cynically tearing down somebody else’s hard work is as effortless as it is exhausting, both to do and to read. But nothing’s made me appreciate what lightning in a bottle ME1 was quite like experiencing firsthand how hard its potential was fumbled. From the HUD, to the composition of your squad, to the ending’s attempt to bring back ME1’s focus on organic vs. synthetic life (for which I give it credit), ME3 is drenched in the feeling that it really wants to be ME1 again. I wish it wasn’t, because I’d rather just replay that instead, even knowing where it leads to.

I should go.