Mass Effect 3 was the single worst game to come out in recent history, in my mind.
Not because it was mechanically broken, or because it had the worst story in existence, or terrible graphics, but because of the expectations built around it, and how it completely betrayed them. Big Rig Truckers is, objectively, the worse game. Worse gameplay, broken mechanics, bad graphic... ect. However we expect it to be bad. ME3 we expected to be fantastic, given the previous games in the series, and the promises we were made about its end. Not only did not a single thing meet those promises and expectations, they fell well short of them.
The entire game was a rush job. Its evident from the first 10 minutes. Not only did they completely change the tone from previous games [Mass Effect 1 was very much your old school sci-fi adventure, Mass Effect 2 was still your old school sci-fi adventure, but with modernised gameplay {Eww =/}, Mass Effect 3 was modern 'edgy' sci-fi in a post apocalyptic world where psychology and philosophy have to be deeply discussed, and the protagonist has to be an analogue of Jesus Christ. See the Matrix for what I mean]. Beyond that, it also failed in the buildup department. 90% of Matrix 3 was fighting. It STILL had a 10% buildup to that fighting. ME3? Starts. 30 seconds later BOOM, EXPLOSIONS, DEATH, OMG REAPERS WE MUST FIGHT. Pacing, Bioware. Have you heard of it?
Now I'll get the good out of the way. Gameplay wise, best of the series, just beating ME1 because of the polished shooter mechanics which still had depth. 2 had the worst gameplay IMO, as it was simply generic cover based shooter in space. It got old, fast, and without appropriate customisation options, it fell flat on its face. ME3 fixed this, though more customisation and inventory management [Limited number of each gun, not "You have 50,000 of this gun. Please melt one for more items"] would have been great. But, by and large, the shooting gameplay was good.
Everything else though... Terrible.
Many, many plotlines were dropped. Giana Parasini. Anyone remember her? Her arc didn't really finish, but she just disappeared in 3. There were a lot of such characters and stories, which quietly disappeared. I understand budget restraints, but perhaps rather than dumping budget into Kai Leng Anime Space Magic, you should have dumped it into things people actually like.
Dialogue was fucked. It was removed near entirely, outside of one or two options at 'choice' moments. It was more like playing a visual novel than Mass Effect. Even if not every one of your dialogue options makes a difference, the ability to portray YOUR Shepard, rather than Bioware's Shepard, was an important part of the game.
Speaking of your Shepard, he died at the end of Mass Effect 2. Shepard in 3 is, regardless of your choices, a PTSD guy who has nightmares about some kid and a forest, whilst not caring about his dead squadmates, and who loves Liara. Yay. If you were going for an angle on how PTSD is bad and can affect your ability to make choices, games like Depression Quest [I think there was some controversy about that, but I never got involved and don't even know what it was, so please don't flame me] do that much better.
Then there's your choices and each mission. Regardless of previous games, your Shepard always saved the Rachni, destroyed the station without rewriting the Geth, and put Udina on the Council - after saving the Destiny Ascension. Any choices other than those ones were not reflected in the game, and were simply deflected and redirected onto those paths by 'convenient' story elements. Beyond that, inside most missions, there's little choice involved. There is no different way to approach a given mission. You shoot everything that moves, kill the boss, and then make a single choice. Unlike ME1 where you could talk your way out of fights, and I'm pretty sure I saw that in ME2 occasionally too... ME3 is very much just a run and gun game. Your choices from previous games also just add to a numerical score. I didn't realise I was playing Galaga here. I thought I was playing a story game where, rather than a numerical score, I'd get a specialised cutscene reflecting my choice - even if it wasn't too long.
There were poorly managed budget things - pushing an IGN reporter into the game as a reporter for... Reasons. IDK why to be honest. The cynic in me says for the 10/10 review. Whatever the reason though, it was a character that didn't really belong in the game, and took valuable resources away from improving other areas of the game.
The story itself was... a bit unfocused really. Tonally inconsistent, jumping from place to place, and in a lot of places was kind of iffy. Of the story, I think the Krogan and Quarian homeworlds were the only decent parts, and the Krogan moreso than the Quarian due to the lack of influence on the story anything to do with either the Quarians or Geth had on the Quarian arc, even where it could/should have, whilst the Korgan arc was more limited in that aspect from the beginning [Note; I'm just talking homeworlds here. Things like Grunt's quest don't count, as they sucked, for aforementioned Rachni reasons].
And then the ending. Take all the building problems from the rest of the game, and compress them all into the space of 20 minutes or so. Every choice you ever made, ignored. Hundreds of plotlines, entirely dropped [Everything but the Crucible plotline amusingly enough]. Gameplay being scaled back to the most unimaginative portion possible; 3rd person shooter horde mode survival. Story jumping tonally with little explanation. No choice in the entire mission outside the final 3 "Choices". Your Shepard being entirely removed for Bioware's Shepard for their "Artistic" ending. The ending wasn't the singular bad part of the game, like many took it to be. It was simply a compounding of all the issues throughout the rest of the game, concentrated into a single mission.
How did I feel about it? I remember I spent about half a year rewriting literally every mission in the game to fix all the problems I described above. I played through it once. Extended cut came out and I tried to play through it again. I got up to the Turian homeworld, quit, and just watched the endings on Youtube. I played through ME1, got to ME2 when you get to Illium, and gave up.
Mass Effect 3 killed my interest in the Mass Effect franchise. The entire series was a buildup to the finale, and that finale was the biggest blue balls ever delivered. I can stomach ME1 because it works as a completely self-contained story. Bioware could have never made ME2 or 3, and I would have been satisfied with the end to ME1. Sure, I don't know exactly what happens, but its a GOOD open ending. Its plotlines are resolved. Even the Reaper threat is somewhat resolved with a "We'll prepare for them" line. In actual fact, ME1s ending is actually sullied by ME2 and ME3's stories. All this is making me want to play 1 again, actually, which is a miracle in itself. But I think I'll treat 1 as the entire Mass Effect series. 2 was decent, but too dependent on 3 to finish it off. 3 was horrible. So I can't do either of them.
Mass Effect 4? Zero interest. I know literally nothing about it that's how little I care. Meanwhilst up until ME3 I knew everything there was to know about Mass Effect, all the dev statements and press conferences and sneak peaks and articles and lore bits and Easter eggs, entire codex memorised by heart.
So, how do I feel about the ME3 ending?
Same way Jim Fucking Sterling feels about Konami. Originally, it was a horrible insult and something that deeply hurt. Now, I just laugh at it. I don't even care anymore.