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Battles were nicely balanced difficulty wise, apart from one about two thirds of the way through which was just annoying and also glitched RIGHT AT THE END. I got Cam to do it for me. Also the ammunition was just…random. Piles and piles when you literally couldn't ever need it at that point of the game, then none for ages when you're surrounded by waves of bad guys. But 99% of the time I forgot you even could run out of ammo. By the end I was rolling in money, too, I never felt the need for cheats.

There were a couple of other annoying glitches. I'm sure my weapons were changing about without me choosing them to do so, at once point they refused to change OR fire. One mission is impossible to finish if you kill the mid-level bosses instead of just driving them away to be killed later.

The level of characterisation was nice with a lot of emphasis on friendship, none of the annoyance of ME2 where you missed half a character's dialogue if you didn't romance them.

The moral choices were pretty well done, way less annoying than ME2, and forming a fantastic character arc over the whole set of three games.

Some people don't like the ending but I did, I found it satisfying and in keeping with the themes of the all three games. And EPIC, this is such a glorious epic scifi story, on large scales and small. Seriously, if you like intelligent science fiction you should check out these games. There are cheats and an easy mode! They are pretty dark and violent in parts though. EDIT: Ok, on further reading and thought, it really is a badly written ending, even if it worked REALLY WELL for me.

And finally: SO MUCH GAY. Random lesbian couples in the background! A majority of the new love interests are queer! I did an f/f romance and it was lovely, very sweet and funny without being overly sentimental. Though this is in comparison to the aggressive heteronormativity of ME2, it's still a moderately heteronormative game.

As always, female characters tend to be way fanservice-ier than they need to be, but a lot of them are amazingly awesome. Fairly white and very Anglophonic apart from one not entirely sympathetic alien who was given an African accent. HMMMM. Various other Issues, but overall much less faily than ME2.

EDIT: ONe thing that really bothered me, and would have seriously pissed me off if I hadn't have been warned: the game doesn't really care about any of the characters who were introduced in ME2. They show up, and some are fairly important, but a lot of their scenes feel tacked on.

Anyway, overall: I loved it. Though it was emotionally intense enough that I don't feel like rushing in to play it again with a different character.