Yea i'm gonna play on insanity and vanguard looks promising. I love the "high risk high reward" type of play so it should fit me. I started with an Engineer but it was such a major let down right from the start.
You can punch through most of the enemies on the engineer (Insanity, at that) by spamming Chain Overload. It's the return of Force Lightning.
Drones suck. It's not like ME2 where their short cooldown made them worth spamming if needed--you have better uses for your cooldowns now. Overload + Neural Shock destroys barriers and shields and incapacitates any organic enemy. So far the only real use I've found for drones is tanking Banshees with them.
And the engineer turrets are all terrible and are nowhere near what Cerberus engineers get. ;_;
Is this true? I don't have a real objection to playing the horde mode, but I intended to make my first playthrough 100% without any online. I guess I'll have to use that XBL Gold 12mo card I've been saving for when I played multiplayer again.
Don't really understand what the deal is with 'total military strength' and 'effective military strength', though. Nor the Readiness Rating, I suspect that's the one tied to multiplayer?
God damn, combat is a lot harder than it was in ME2. Enemies are bullet sponges and they move all the time and very quickly. Smoke grenades, shields, turrets, mechs shooting rocket launchers all the time. Jesus.
Just got to meet Tali again. So far it's keeping my busy and entertained. First it rubbed me a bit wrong but after about 5 hours it started to get real exciting again. Might try some MP later tonight.
Just got to meet Tali again. So far it's keeping my busy and entertained. First it rubbed me a bit wrong but after about 5 hours it started to get real exciting again. Might try some MP later tonight.
I love how the story just flows from one event to the next seamlessly, the low amount of possible characters opens up the ability to have them engage in more conversation about what is going on. So far I think it's the best Bioware has ever done
choosing the parangon of saving the rachni and losing his team, then going alone to save you, where he fights with all those rachni kids, and falls into the abysm with the awesome music. It was breathtaking because I really thought he was dead. Grunt is too tough too die now lol
You can add a little bit to the "best" ending if you get 4000 or more EMS though. Like someone said though it looks like you'll have to play multiplayer to get it that high. I did everything I could find and only had about 3500 EMS with about 7000 total strength.
The highs in this game are so damn high. There are probably 4 or more missions that I can think of on the top of my head that I like more than pretty much any mission in ME1/ME2. There are a lot of little things that make it so good too. The characters are fleshed out better than ever, even Shepard. Some of the character scenes are just touching.
And one again the day is saved, thanks to The Powerpu- I mean Commander Shepard.
Huh, I kind of like the ending. And that's all I'll say about it in this thread. Gonna skedaddle over to the spoiler thread about that.
It's kind of fun to finish a game with a character you imported from its predecessor, which you also imported from THAT game's predecessor. A story 5 years in the making. Small things I did way back in ME1 coming back and affecting what happened in ME3.
Mechanically, Bioware did one hell of a job with that. Yes, the face-thing sucks. I hope it's fixed, but I'll just know when I'm going to do my ME1, ME2, ME3 marathon at some point, that it's a pretty good idea to reconstruct the face anyway. The importer isn't very... graceful. Even when you just use a facecode to import to ME3. Adjustments are required to make Shepard look like... Shepard.
So... did I unlock anything good by completing the game?
Oh, I'll spoiler one thing. For those of you, like me, who worry about the point of no return? Don't.
When you complete the game it dumps you right back into the system where the point of no return is, just before you do it.
should I cure the genophage or alter it like the Dalatrass asked....damn it, she made it sound like the crucible can't be built without Salarian scientists. Damn!
should I cure the genophage or alter it like the Dalatrass asked....damn it, she made it sound like the crucible can't be built without Salarian scientists. Damn!
An hour or two in. Here's a list of things I don't like about the game so far:
* James Vega. He feels like the result of a "LIKE US ON FACEBOOK FOR A CHANCE TO BECOME A SQUADMEMBER IN MASS EFFECT 3" contest. Completely out of place.
* The deep and meaningful conversation options. Often I look at my options and don't even see what the difference between them is supposed to be, so there's no point in giving me the option if both of those basically say the exact same thing. I'm not that into the role playing to care if Shepard says "yes", "yup" or nods.
* The absolute nonsense of the plot. "Hey, the Reapers are invading and soon everyone will be dead. We should fight!" says Shepard and "No, because that guy stole my lollipop in school once and I hate them for that" replies absolutely everyone. How about you ignore the petty differences for the sake of not being dead later? Just for that? Feel free to hate each other again after THE UNIVERSE HAS STOPPED EXPLODING. Jesus.
*
That dream sequence
felt like a parody of a parody of a bad art movie. I don't know what emotion they wanted me to feel, but I was laughing out loud so they probably missed it.
Here's a list of stuff I like about the game so far.
* There have been three moments so far where Shepard says something, walks off, then turns and says some oneliner before actually leaving. Example
Get better Kaidan...and that's an order
Those would make me want to stop playing the game if it wasn't for the fact that they are just dumb and cheesy enough to make me laugh.
It is also nice that characters are more diverse. In ME2 I pretty much rolled with the same party (Samara/Thane first time, Zaeed/Kasumi second time) the whole game. In ME3 I've diversified my abilities and choose parties based on the situation.
I do agree that the squadmates have much more diverse abilities now, but because of mechanic changes, as an Engineer at least, I found myself using
___EDI___
and Garrus almost the entire game, using Tali during the Geth missions of course and swapping out Garrus when I was forced to bring someone else. What I mean by mechanic changes is Tech Bursts and the changes to Overload. With Overload, I now have an answer to barriers, and it hits health pretty effectively. Tech Bursts give the Engineer a lot more flexibility, but by bringing a squadmate with Incinerate along, it makes my character full so much more powerful. I Overload a target (or Garrus does), then my other squadmate Incinerates, I can take out a Centurion/Marauder like this almost instantly, even on Insanity. And if you take out a target with Overload when they're on fire, you get another explosion. It's a lot of fun, and makes the squadmates with Tech abilities have a lot of synergy. It's kind of like how an Adept works so much better when you bring Liara along.
Started my Adept run last night (Insanity). The class is so much fun now. Double Pull (especially with the radius upgrade) is so much fun to use, as is Double Throw (especially when you use both and get two explosions). Pull has such a small cooldown, as does Throw which can detonate, as does Liara's Singularity. I can now set up Warp Bombs on an unliftable target through Warp -> Throw, and I now have Stasis -> Throw for shielded targets. Does have any points in Singularity, don't need them. Adepts are amazing.
Found this interesting. Even OXM (UK) says that there is no defending From Ashes and that it blatantly should have been in the game. They also gave it a 4/10 review. Nothing most of us did not already know, but it is nice to see a mainstream review outlet like this confirm it instead of ignoring the obvious and just gushing over the game like a blind fanboy.
The load times for the PC version are sOooOo fast, I love it. Even the biggest areas load in 2-3 seconds, I've counted, just 2-3 seconds. The PC version in general is awesome. The thread that calls it a "broke ass console port" is just BS. Aside from the lack of controller support (I'm actually loving kb/m which was totally unexpected) and the FOV (a problem in so many games so singling out ME3 and burying it isn't fair), there is nothing broke-ass about it. Great version of the game.
First Mordin and then Thane, Bioware is really pulling on the heartstrings with this one. Both were surprisingly well done. "Had to be me...someone else would have gotten it wrong".
Found this interesting. Even OXM (UK) says that there is no defending From Ashes and that it blatantly should have been in the game. They also gave it a 4/10 review. Nothing most of us did not already know, but it is nice to see a mainstream review outlet like this confirm it instead of ignoring the obvious and just gushing over the game like a blind fanboy.
So GAF, should I pick this up today or should I continue to play SF4 until the end of time?
I enjoyed all the improvements ME2 made to ME1, but I really hated the overall plot.
Is ME3 any better?
So GAF, should I pick this up today or should I continue to play SF4 until the end of time?
I enjoyed all the improvements ME2 made to ME1, but I really hated the overall plot.
Is ME3 any better?
idk, having finished the game and watched From Ashes stuff online...I thought it was kind of badly written and irrelevant. The idea behind it is obviously 'big' but I feel like the universe makes more sense if you don't have it. The entire notion that the Reapers
can just 'miss' people who are trying to survive is pretty silly. I know they sort of had it in the first game but it failed, as it should. How much less threatening is it if you can just 'lol stasis' away from them.
So GAF, should I pick this up today or should I continue to play SF4 until the end of time?
I enjoyed all the improvements ME2 made to ME1, but I really hated the overall plot.
Is ME3 any better?
Ending is pretty bad, but the other 95% of the game is like ME1 intensity in storytelling and ME2 mechanics, though improved a bit (mostly in terms of the scenario designs, different enemy types in combinations that make you work harder to stay alive).