I used to hate this game to death, but oh boy, there is worse to be had with this series. It's still definitely the worst of the original trilogy for sure, but after replaying it with the legendary edition years later; it's... fine.
I still think parts of it are ugly, with it just having blue/grey filter laid on top of it. Commander Shepard themself and all the new characters built in the same character creator look like Play-doh. It's unimaginative in that department because it's like they cut corners.
The squad in this game is the least cool (minus the one character that used to be DLC), with James being one of my least favorite characters ever. The combat is just copypasta'd Mass Effect 2, but with more damage sponge enemies to act as difficulty. Also, they added the addition of grenades just to piss me off. The worst offender of it all though is the downsizing of the dialogue and player's choices. The morality mechanics of this series have always been kind of black and white with additional contexts for world building, but this game really dumbs that down to a massive degree. Most dialogue choices are literally just 2 options and nothing important is ever fleshed out, just glossed over. The plot is massively rushed for a finale and ends with a loud wet fart rather than a bang. I can't stand how most of the missions in this game involve Shepard solving most of the entire universe's problems with 1 simple red or blue choice that don't really lead to anything but numerical war assets. It's such an infuriating way to wrap the trilogy up, it's like all the world building from the first two games meant fuck all and makes the impending doom feel so weirdly trivial for how dire it really is.
Renegade Shepard in this game is just a murder hobo genocidal maniac and they lose out on most of the cool shit in this game for it. This has never been the case and it makes that playthrough pretty unfun. Most of the squad characters get shafted in some way, some of them barely appearing at all, and the romances are awful, especially for FemShep. The ending is still very disappointing and convoluted for the sake of being convoluted, but I'm unsure if we can even call it the ending today knowing what we know now.
The Citadel DLC is still one of the best parts of the series.
I still think parts of it are ugly, with it just having blue/grey filter laid on top of it. Commander Shepard themself and all the new characters built in the same character creator look like Play-doh. It's unimaginative in that department because it's like they cut corners.
The squad in this game is the least cool (minus the one character that used to be DLC), with James being one of my least favorite characters ever. The combat is just copypasta'd Mass Effect 2, but with more damage sponge enemies to act as difficulty. Also, they added the addition of grenades just to piss me off. The worst offender of it all though is the downsizing of the dialogue and player's choices. The morality mechanics of this series have always been kind of black and white with additional contexts for world building, but this game really dumbs that down to a massive degree. Most dialogue choices are literally just 2 options and nothing important is ever fleshed out, just glossed over. The plot is massively rushed for a finale and ends with a loud wet fart rather than a bang. I can't stand how most of the missions in this game involve Shepard solving most of the entire universe's problems with 1 simple red or blue choice that don't really lead to anything but numerical war assets. It's such an infuriating way to wrap the trilogy up, it's like all the world building from the first two games meant fuck all and makes the impending doom feel so weirdly trivial for how dire it really is.
Renegade Shepard in this game is just a murder hobo genocidal maniac and they lose out on most of the cool shit in this game for it. This has never been the case and it makes that playthrough pretty unfun. Most of the squad characters get shafted in some way, some of them barely appearing at all, and the romances are awful, especially for FemShep. The ending is still very disappointing and convoluted for the sake of being convoluted, but I'm unsure if we can even call it the ending today knowing what we know now.
The Citadel DLC is still one of the best parts of the series.