199 replies to this topic

[Chris D]

The combat definitely does seem a bit tougher. The AI advances on me more than they used to in the previous games, which has taken me by surprise a couple of times. So I have to be a lot more mobile and dynamic in the way I play. The school mission was a cool one, and I've already taken some losses that I didn't quite expect. Trying to travel around and do some of the scanning to complete side missions right now. But I'm definitely having a lot of fun with the game just exploring the Citadel and space.

[Mikha'il Tegler]

i still haven't gotten that energy blade down. i can aim it alright, but those cerebus troops require that and several pistol shots to the face to go down. i almost look forward to fighting husks, they are like shooting fish in a barrel.

[Ogul]

Btw, I was pleasantly surprised by the strength of my upgraded pistol. I put an armor piercing and a 2x scope mod on it, and the scope is not just cosmetic, it gives me a slight zoom when aimed, and the rate of fire makes it even deadlier than my sniper rifle at medium to close ranges.

[Ogul]

I got a new sniper rifle at the Citadel that's almost like cheating. I forget the name but it's white and looks a bit like a Covenant Carbine with yellow highlights, and it has a 15 round clip and 120 round reserve supply. Compared to the mantis's and Viper's capabilities that gives you a lot of power. The tradeoff is that it's slightly heavier, and more importantly half as strong, meaning even a headshot won't one-shot a Cerberus grunt, you need to double tap them in the head or triple-tap them anywhere else, but given it's rate of fire this isn't especially hard to do, and your chances of at least tagging even a rapidly moving target are really solid. It's really the "idiot's sniper rifle", compared to the more master's weapons the Mantis and Black Widow. I bought the Widow, btw, and wasn't that impressed. I only looked over its stats and fired it on the shooting range, but it wasn't that much more powerful than my Viper II, which had double the clip size and was 1/4 the weight.

I also ran the Prothean DLC mission, got the new crew member. He's fine, a solid Krogan-esc character (assault+biotics), and you get a slick beam rifle too (100 round constant stream of fire laser assault rifle).

Other than that I spent most of my time doing some N7 missions, which are the "generic" missions in this game, where they drop you in relatively small, box-shaped levels and lead you to multiple objective points. There's at least variety to them, as some require you to hold a point, some are more "clear", others involve covering civilians as they try to escape, etc.

My overall defense readiness surprised me, as I don't believe I'm very far into the main plot (I haven't done the "Krogan spire" mission just yet) and yet my defense readiness is almost at the "minimum" mark.

[RossS]

My CE is waiting at home. Soooo tempted to leave work now

[Chris D]

My overall defense readiness surprised me, as I don't believe I'm very far into the main plot (I haven't done the "Krogan spire" mission just yet) and yet my defense readiness is almost at the "minimum" mark.

I played a lot yesterday. More than I should have, probably, but yeah that number does seem to go up fast. My galactic readiness is still low though. Everything is still at 50%, I think. Not really sure how to change that.

The Krogan Spire mission was pretty cool. A very satisfying mission after 3 games of build up.

There was another mission I did that I also found incredibly satisfying. I'll put it in spoilers as I think it probably doesn't activate until after the Krogan mission

Spoiler

it was on the Citadel, which is under attack by Cerberus. Then ending made me so happy as I finally get to put a bullet into a character I think everyone has hated since the very first game.

Anyway, I feel like I'm maybe halfway through the game, but it's hard to tell.

If I have one minor complaint it would be that

Spoiler

so far it seems like all the paragon choices from previous games turn out to be the right choices. I thought for a second BioWare was going to throw a swerve in there when I went on the Rachni mission in this game, which would have been a really cool thing to have saving the Rachni really come back and bite you in the ass.

Great game so far, though.

[Ryan Landau]

I'd guess I'm about halfway through the main story and thus far ME3 is an enthralling, often breathless experience. The combat is about as refined as you're going to get in what is still ostensibly an action-RPG hybrid, and the plot is rife with moments that have caused it to get really dusty in my apartment.

Even if ME3 didn't have these things, it allows me to bull rush people at 200 miles per hour and then shoot them in the face with a shotgun that fires giant knives. For this, it wins all awards ever.

In closing,



YEA!!!

[Chris D]

I'm going to have to go Vanguard on my next playthrough. Because I want to fire knives into Cerberus and Reapers faces too!

[Ryan Landau]

I'm going to have to go Vanguard on my next playthrough. Because I want to fire knives into Cerberus and Reapers faces too!

It is so choice. I highly recommend it.

I mean, look at this beaut:

[Ben the Obiwomble]

I'll be very interested in what you all make of the ending, as I'd like to see what the MW response is compared to elsewhere.

[Ogul]

My galactic readiness is still low though. Everything is still at 50%, I think. Not really sure how to change that.

They discussed this on the Bioware boards, don't worry about it. The Galactic Readiness is a modifier. It only goes up if you do multiplayer, it'll never go up if you only do single player, but you can get the Ultimate Happy Ending™ even if it's still at 50%. The difference it makes is that if your "ready to go" bar is at, say, 30%, and you raise the Galactic Readiness via multiplayer to 75%, then it'll jump to 50% or so, but you can max the defense bar without doing that, it just means you have to do all the fiddly little side missions and stuff.

[Chris D]

They discussed this on the Bioware boards, don't worry about it. The Galactic Readiness is a modifier. It only goes up if you do multiplayer, it'll never go up if you only do single player, but you can get the Ultimate Happy Ending™ even if it's still at 50%. The difference it makes is that if your "ready to go" bar is at, say, 30%, and you raise the Galactic Readiness via multiplayer to 75%, then it'll jump to 50% or so, but you can max the defense bar without doing that, it just means you have to do all the fiddly little side missions and stuff.

Thanks for clearing that up. I do plan on trying multiplayer at some point, but I always try and do those little side missions anyway. Got to get the full experience.

[Ogul]

Just did the Krogan Spire and the Rachni missions. Kinda gutted. Big spoilers, don't look unless you're past these missions.

Spoiler

Since I'd destroyed the cure in ME2, I was unable to keep Eve alive, which was a big setback and bummed me out, and then, just as I was getting used to the idea of that, Mordin goes and dies so heroically on me! All the scenes with Wrex and Mordin and Eve were really well done, and the Thresher Maw battle was epic.

The Rachni mission was interesting, although the flamethrower was annoying and I had to keep dropping it to actually fight anything. I ended up saving the queen, again, and sacrificing Grunt's squad, but the scene of Grunt's "last stand," followed by his eventual escape, was very powerful. I also loved how adaptive the level's plot was. I did this mission after the Spire, even though I had the option of doing it first. Because of this, there were Rachnimods on Tuchanka, which was commented on, and then on the Rachni mission as I was coming in Garrus was commenting about the Rachni on Tuchanka. Presumably if I'd done them in the opposite order, none of that would have happened, and maybe even the Rachni on Tuchanka wouldn't have been there, but maybe Wrex would have commented on the outcome of Grunt's squad or something. Nice.

[Chris D]

Just did the Krogan Spire and the Rachni missions. Kinda gutted. Big spoilers, don't look unless you're past these missions.

Spoiler

Since I'd destroyed the cure in ME2, I was unable to keep Eve alive, which was a big setback and bummed me out, and then, just as I was getting used to the idea of that, Mordin goes and dies so heroically on me! All the scenes with Wrex and Mordin and Eve were really well done, and the Thresher Maw battle was epic.

The Rachni mission was interesting, although the flamethrower was annoying and I had to keep dropping it to actually fight anything. I ended up saving the queen, again, and sacrificing Grunt's squad, but the scene of Grunt's "last stand," followed by his eventual escape, was very powerful. I also loved how adaptive the level's plot was. I did this mission after the Spire, even though I had the option of doing it first. Because of this, there were Rachnimods on Tuchanka, which was commented on, and then on the Rachni mission as I was coming in Garrus was commenting about the Rachni on Tuchanka. Presumably if I'd done them in the opposite order, none of that would have happened, and maybe even the Rachni on Tuchanka wouldn't have been there, but maybe Wrex would have commented on the outcome of Grunt's squad or something. Nice.

Oh yeah, those missions were pretty great. Though the outcomes weren't quite the same for me but with regards to the Rachni mission

Spoiler

That Grunt sequence was epic. I was sure he was done for, so when he showed up alive I may or may not have yelled "fuck yeah!"

[craggy]

multiplayer looks like it could be okay.but tried to get a game and no-takers.

[Ogul]

I think the thing that gets me about the ME3 missions is that there is real player agency there. Like I really dislike Uncharted, which has very cinematic gameplay, but it's basically just pushing yourself forward through a pre-determined story, and all you can do is choose to succeed or fail at pushing through it. With ME, by contrast, the missions have a very cinematic quality to them, with plenty of set pieces and linear progression, but at the same time when you get an action scene, you have all sorts of options for how to get through it, and when the cutscenes come up they're significantly impacted by the choices you make, so that the results play out differently in both small and major ways depending on what you've done. That, to me, makes it an infinitely superior game.

Oh, and one other thing I really enjoy in this one is the eavesdropping/ minor dialogs, the ones where it doesn't go into a cinematic cutscene but you can have a little dialog with another character, or listen in as two characters talk amongst themselves. They're usually very funny.

[Chris D]

Oh, and one other thing I really enjoy in this one is the eavesdropping/ minor dialogs, the ones where it doesn't go into a cinematic cutscene but you can have a little dialog with another character, or listen in as two characters talk amongst themselves. They're usually very funny.

It's also kind of interesting because those conversations actually progress throughout the game.

Tried out multiplayer a bunch today. It's fun, but I don't like that the character unlock system is random. So much so that you might never unlock any damn characters. I've bought several recruitment packs (both Veteran and Spectre, which take a long time to save for) and haven't unlocked one character. My friend finally unlocked one with his last pack. But it shouldn't be that hard to get to play as an Asari or Krogan.

[Ogul]

Completed the Post-Spire Citadel mission:

Spoiler

The one where you fight off the Cerberus troops trying to take out the Senator. I ended up killing Udina, even though I try to go full paragon, because the game had worked me up so that my instantaneous instinct was that I had to take him out or he'd take out the Asari. I risk my own life on stupid Paragon choices all the time, but will go renegade to save someone else. I wonder what would have happened if I didn't pull the trigger. Thane's death sequence was extremely touching.

Oh, and Chris, about the Paragon/Renegade thing, they seem to reward both ways, just in different ways. If you choose one side then it may be callous and mean but you'll get some hardasses to help you out, while if you choose the goody two-shoes then it may cut off support from one side, but rally support in another. I doubt that going full-renegade would leave you too far off from going full paragon. One thing that does seem to be rewarded is consistency, like if about the rachni,

Spoiler

I hear that it's a very bad idea to spare the rachni queen IF you'd previously killed her in ME1.

[Ogul]

Btw, two more notes, one, without doing any multiplayer, I already have a defense rating of around 60-75%, and hopefully a good bit of time left to improve it further. I've been doing a ton of side missions and item hunting though.

Two, before doing the Tuchanka Spire mission, make sure to do as many of the "do stuff and then return with them to the Citadal" missions as you can. After the spire mission, some of those quests are still available for completion, and even more pop up, but some of them go away, with the necessary NPCs wandering off.

[Ryan Landau]

Brief ending spoiler:

Spoiler

They most definitely did NOT split the uprights on this one. I appreciate the desire to do something unexpected....but sometimes, people just wanna watch Frodo throw the fucking ring into Mount Doom.