Personally, I don't think the story was too bad, and the gameplay was really good. What really gets me is that the endings betray everything that Mass Effect had been about to begin with. It wasn't a culmination of all your previous decisions, it was "Do you want the Red Ending, the Blue Ending, or the Green Ending?" We'd been told it wouldn't be that simple. We'd been told all our choices mattered, that we had a say in how Shepard's story ended, that we could defeat the Reapers on our own terms. We were deceived.
I'm a geek.
I still don't understand why Bioware fans rage at this game alone for its endings. No Bioware game I know of factors in any previous choices when accounting for what happens in the endings beyond superficial changes. If anything, ME 3 does a better job of that than either of its predecessors on the simple fact that a few lines are changed in a few of the endings based on whether you've been Paragon or Renegade.
While I can forgive ME 3's portrayals of the geth and Cerberus on the grounds that we'd already seen other sides of them in previous games anyway, what bothered me most about the story was the Renegade choices often veering heavily into Stupid Evil, the almost disgustingly misandrist overtones the krogans began to take on, the emotional baiting, Kai Leng being built up to absolutely nothing, Diana Allers, and the ending of ME 2 being totally inconsequential besides a line change or two. I didn't expect it to change the ending but it should have changed SOMETHING.
Why was everyone so angry about the endings? I mean, I've looked them up and I can't exactly see why they were so hated. It was basically a few distinct options that led to different ending cutscenes. What was the big deal?
Well, other than the fact that they were straight up ripping off Deus Ex: Human Revolution with the way it was presented (which is weird in and of itself because no one particularly liked the endings to that game either), before they released the ending revision DLC, the different ending choices basically amounted to "would you like your ending cutscene to have red explosions, green explosions or blue explosions?" The voiceover changed, but it's still hardly a satisfying conclusion to a series that presents itself as being the epitome of choice-based roleplaying. Even after the revision, it's still poorly handled in that it comes out of left field if you haven't played the other DLC, it doesn't quite fit in with the tone of all the preceding drama regardless, and it still doesn't properly conclude every aspect of the story.
I wasn't bothered by it as much though, because by that point I'd already learned not to expect to get all of what I wanted out of a Bioware game. Somewhere in the back of my head I knew the game was presenting me with an illusion of choice instead of an actual choice. If they wanted to give us an actual choice, they should have changed the final mission depending on how we played the game or something along those lines.
I think the final mission was a much bigger disappointment than me for the ending. I'm very much alone in my opinion, but I don't want the game to tell me how things turned out. It trivialises the decisions you made if they have a canonical answer. For example, you spend 3 games debating the genophage and the fate of the Krogans, always going back and forth between is it a good idea is it a bad idea. Can you trust Wrex? Can you deal with Wreave?
And then if you get to the end and it says: 'Yes you can trust Wrex.' 'Or no, you were wrong to believe that Wreave could be handled.' Then it stops being a cool question about life and culture that the game asked. Instead it was a test and at the end of the game you passed or you failed.
I made my decision, I decided what I believed would happen with the Krogans, what would happen to the Geth, the survivors on Theros and all of that. I actually really respect the non-extended cut for letting me imagine my own story of how it turned out.
...but the ending mission, that's where all the choices should have come in. Throughout the whole series the basic choice that you are confronted with in every single situation is 'If I do X will I have enough resources to deal with the Reapers?'. Thats what the Paragon/Renegade decisions were meant to be about. I could save these people, but then I would have one less ship to fight off the Reapers. If I invest my time here will it be wasted or will they help me achieve my goal? etc
And then you get to the last mission and it's just a number. The council don't help you in your fight if you destroyed them or made nice, you don't get reinforcements of people that you saved. In which case, what was the point of ever making a renegade decision? Instead we got a grey dull boring slog through tough enemies with no connection to what we'd done.
As a random bit of analysis on that last mission and why it was bad even apart from the lack of consequence...
I don't actually like making out ME 1 to be the best game in the series because the mistakes in ME 3 are pretty much just as prevalent in both other games (with the other games having a 'we'll show you what this means in the next one' excuse), but compare the location of the final battles. In ME 1 it took place on the Citadel, the first impressive sight you see in the game, the place with all the aliens, all the amazing locals, the shops. It was the quest hub that you continually returned to throughout the game and the first missions were designed to make you explore every inch of it. More than that half the lore in the game always returns to the Citadel. That was where your final mission took place.
In ME 3 the final battle takes place in the ruins of a world you've barely ever visited and has basically no lore significance other than us being humans and wanting to see Earth. Even then it was barely recognisable as a place we actually inhabit, it didn't feel very different from ruined planet #180.
The decision to have or not have a canonical answer is a double-edged sword in a way. In a case like this if you do have it, like you said, it removes player agency and also ambiguity. But not having it can also be wrong, because it's basically a cop-out. If the writers didn't think about and actually show the consequences that would naturally follow from your decisions, it comes across as lazy and leaves a little too much up to the player, which in, a way, may trivialize your choices just as much as a canonical answer. If you have to imagine all the consequences that arise from your decision without it happening in the actual work, it's as if the writers care as little about your answer as they would if you made a decision that goes against what they'd be trying to railroad you into with a canonical answer. That's why, I think, there are multiple canonical answers to most of the conflicts, like your Wrex and Wreav example above. It enables them to show the consequences and still have a degree of ambiguity.
But I'll agree on everything else. I still maintain that ME 1 had the strongest overall climax even if it was the weakest game in just about every other regard.
My preferred method would be to show little bits of different characters starting out with some dialogue. 'Wreave stood over his Krogan army, strong at last, and then looked at the sky above him. There were always other fights to have...' Looking at it, the extended cut actually hits it eight for a lot of things, with the significant dialogue and pictures. Why I hated the extended cut (apart from completely awful pacing to satisfy some plot holes people took issue with) was it went into way too much detail in what Shepard did for the control ending. I had plans for what she was going to do, she was going to take the Reapers out into dark space and try to give them control of their lives for the first time, so I was annoyed to hear about how she'd set herself up as some kind of demi-God.
I hate the collectors and I hate their designs and fighting them, but I think ME 2 wins on climax because the suicide mission was such a great gaming idea.
Just as a minor note, some people have mentioned things here that I really would have liked to address or go further into than I did. The problem is, we're limited to four hundred words when we write these. Another one or two hundred words would go a long way to letting me go further in a review, but since that's not likely to happen, when you write one of these you have to cut away a lot just to get a few basic points in.
Gotta agree with Tom With No Numbers, ME 2's climax was the best, because it had the most personal stakes. While the human Reaper thing was a little off-putting, the fact that your decisions both before and during the mission affected the final outcome was a stroke of genius, and a sign that BioWare was actually trying to play around with the medium more than they ever had before. That was really cool.
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A Very Divisive Question
Mass Effect 3 and reaction to it can be best summarized with this one question. Does the story matter as much, or more, than the gameplay? Does a bad story mean that good gameplay can't cover the flaws?
And in ME 3, I think it can generally be argued that the gaming is really at its best for the series to date. There are certainly those who preferred the system in ME 1 or ME 2, but playing through the trilogy I would say that ME 3 has gone the furthest in getting the combat, role playing, customization and resource exploration right. Whatever else, to this reviewer at least, the combat is a fun way of testing out many different powers and weapons and the story was kept much faster than before. I was disappointed that the Soldier's power has been weakened, but that was not enough to outright ruin the experience.
The downside of ME 3 is, as suggested, the story. This is not even about the endings, though those were poorly designed. Throughout the game, it seems to delve deep into authority figures acting even more like idiots than the did in previous games, there is little in the way of moral choices, and there is blatant emotional baiting, especially with the Child and Rannoch. The Geth are now presented as purely innocent victims, with the game handily ignoring their near total genocide of the quarian species much like it generally ignored Cerberus atrocities in ME 2. Speaking of which, Cerberus effectively has taken over the game here, it being telling that your last 'fight' is with the Illusive Man. Still, at least the game makes the new characters interesting and fun to interact with.
For the purposes of reviewing the game, all of the storyline DLC has been bought and played. However it is infuriating that to get information on two of the most pivotal species in the games, the protheans and the Reapers' creators, you have to pay for the DLC. The info should have been there from the start. The extra missions are nice but don't make up for it much.
Lastly, the endings are simply stupid and show a clearly rushed product. Little reason is given for anything and we should remember those were the endings that were 'good enough' to release. Fans had to fight for anything better.
Personally I would say that while the game is worth playing for the gameplay, only at reduced price and with wariness towards EA in the future for this behavior.