Well, this was a game I was really waiting for… And (as you may already heard on the internet) it was bittersweet…
First, let’s get the good out of the way:
The game is freaking amazing… it’s probably one of the best games in its genre (and of any genre, to be honest), that gripped me from beginning to end… except for the last 10 minutes, but I’ll go into that in a bit…
The storytelling was the usual Bioware-grade bonanza, with a bit of everything, including some unexpected curve-balls which kept the game interesting!
It was one of the first games where the concept of cooperation as a path to victory didn’t fill me with annoyance, and it really made sense, with tons of difficult choices along the way which made me feel like I was really Sheppard…
I really can’t say anything about the game that hasn’t been said a million times by reviewers and fans all over; it’s a masterpiece of gaming, specially because it makes overlook its faults (the graphics are a bit outdated, the interface a bit clunky sometimes, etc, etc) and pushes you to delve into the galactic war scenario where you’re facing insurmountable odds in name of something larger than yourself… and that’s cool… 
Unfortunately, what would be a 10 out of 10 game is spoiled by the last 10 minutes… the ending is one of the most appalling, badly cooked endings I’ve ever seen, filled with plot-holes and general nonsense that kind of ruins the whole experience… I can’t say more without going into spoilers (and that’s what I’ll do after the break in the post).
Anyway, how do you rate a game like this? A game that made you feel like you were on an epic movie, the game you felt you always wanted to play, a game that you spend 40+ hours enjoying, but at the same time delivered a punch in the stomach in the last 10 minutes that makes you feel like “Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus” was a great coherent movie?
I would be unfair to rate it less that 9/10, but at the same time, the game really made me mad!
My suggestion is that you play it for yourself, even with the pain at the end and come to your own conclusions!
Now, for the spoilers part:
First of all, I don’t have problems with sad endings… I was totally prepared for Sheppard to die in the end of the game; anyway, he could never go back to a “normal” life, after what he had done for the galaxy… everything he did, from curing the Genophage to bringing the Geth and Quarians together is a testament to a man that believes that you have to be the best you can… only then can he achieve victory…
That said, my anger towards the end of the game is derived from the fact that nothing the player did during the game matters on the end… You just choose 3 paths and that’s it… Nevermind the fact that all the cutscenes are the same (in different colors), you just have to pick a door and walk through it to get a different ending…
Not only that, the endings are highly illogical and leave more plot-holes than what they fill…
For example, in three games, it was always said that destroying a mass relay would destroy all the planets in the solar system where the mass relay was standing… So with the choices we did, we “defeated” the reapers, but we destroyed most advanced civilizations anyway because most of them had mass relays in their home systems!
Even if we believe (as I do) that the explosion of the mass relays was “different” from a normal explosion that would annihilate the system, there’s the small problem that most of the war-fleets of all the major people in the galaxy are stuck on the Sol system without any way to go back… either way, Earth is fucked, or anybody believes the million or so people in war ships will play nice and not try to take over the Earth (a planet ravaged by war) when they start going hungry?
Even if that’s not enough, the Normandy fleeing the fight scene is completely incoherent… Why are they running? From what? How the hell did the people that were with me on the suicide mission running towards the teleporter got back into the Normandy during a huge fight, when most of the shuttles were destroyed coming down (including the Normandy one!)?
Not to speak of the fact that the person that got everyone talking to everyone can’t talk a retarded AI of a ill-conceived plan and backup plan? He can shoot the thing in the Citadel/Crucible, destroying every AI in the universe, but he can’t talk to the stupid star-child and convince him that there’s a better plan, like “wait until advanced races indeed built advanced AIs that will go psycho and start taking over before committing the Reavers into Galaxy annihilation”?
The ending fills most people of rage not because it’s sad, but because it actually solves nothing… it explains nothing, it just pops out some “omnipotent, omniscient AI” that have a convoluted plan filled with gaping holes and solves the problem ignoring everything that Sheppard is, did or thought…
Come on, the AI let Sheppard take a decision because their “solution” didn’t work anymore… although they were winning and the Crucible didn’t do anything to them… For a superior AI, they’re pretty stupid…
Ah, and don’t forget the fact that according to the internet, you can only get the “perfect” ending by playing the multiplayer and buying the DLC? That’s bullshit… I bought the game for full price on launch, I want to finish it in my terms, not playing crap multiplayer or forking over more money for DLC, or even by having to finish the game over and over again… for grinding, I have MMORPGs, thank you…
“Mass Effect 3” might have been an amazing game, with a story that would be talked about in gaming for 20 or 30 years… This way, it has become as the “Matrix” movies: everybody knows them, everybody loved them, but due to a crap ending, nobody will care about them in 20 years…
But hey, Bioware/EA got to sell some more DLC…