Had to go with hated everything, because it came closest to describing my feelings, but did not quite capture them entirely.
As a Mass effect game, ME3 is a dismal conclusion to the trilogy. Mass Effect 3 is nothing less than an utter betrayal of every value, and evey choice and every consequence the prior two games exemplified and promoted as their core rationale. In the end no choice you made mattered, nothing you tried to accomplish mattered. Nothing mattered aside from setting up the next franchise sale.
Prior to the last ten minutes of ME3, there was a solution to every seemingly insurmountable difference between organic and synthetic life, and to every conflict between the organic races of the galaxy. In fact I resolved the conflict between the Geth and Quarians to the point at which they were assisting one another on the formerly disputed Quarian home world. Conflict between Turian, Salarian, Asari and Krogan were all solvable, not easily, but doable if you were reslutely trying to do so fairly.
There was no conflict between synthetic and organic on Rannoch, if anything there was the beginning of a genuine friendship. Krogan were assisting the Turians in retaking Palaven.
The same with EDI and Joker, even up to the level of a platonic romance.
But then, after every effort I'd made, and every hard won success, MacGuffin al Deus Ex Machina, aka as Starbrat, appeared and told me everything I thought I knew was wrong.
Apparently, synthetics always kill their creators, so Starbrat, who is a synthetic, created the Reapers, who are also synthetics, or some bizarre hybrid, to exterminate all advanced organic life before they could create advanced synthetics who would inevitably exterminate all organic life. Just like he was doing at the moment he was giving me this absurd explanation.
Worse, He said this with no apparent irony whatsoever.
This despite what was happening on Rannoch. This despite Joker and EDI. Despite everything I did, despite all the alleged agency i had to shape the destiny of the galaxy. I had three choices only, all awful and utterly absurd and as inconsistent as could be possible with everthing that was accomplished in the course of three games.
If that makes no sense to you, than you must be an idiot. If you don't agree, look at all the perfect and near perfect scores that ME3 has earned from incorruptible critical outlets like IGN, who just happened to have a staff member do a cameo in the game. An utterly pointless character complete with a conspicuously higher resolution model, at least compared with the much more blocky and crudely animated models seen elsewhere in the game, of their own reporter, Ms. Whatshername, was there occupying a room on the Normandy in place of any dozen characters from the prior games who would have made far more sense to have on board in her place. I'm sure ther's an explanation for this, but I just cant think of the word...Starts with a 'b' and ends in 'ribe'? Or maybe the other word, it also starts with a 'b' but ends in 'lackmail'? But, I'm sure Ms. Payoff's appearance was only a coincidence.
Still, maybe if they left out Ms. Kickback, they would have had the spare resources so that Liara could have had more than two expressoions. The same could be said of the rest of the crew. Ms. IGN got a great deal of attention from the character modelers and animators, but the regulars on board got screwed.
Most conversations are in the Zaeed/Kasumi discount dialogue mode rather than the cinematic mode that the prior two games used so effectively. Bioware was not just cutting corners in ME3, but cutting out whole structural elements of what made the games special in the first place.
In the end, I was given a choice of three diferent color variations of a bespoke nihilistic ending that made utterly no sense given the background the prior games had laid of self-determination and individuality, choice and consequence. It was dragon Age 2 all over again, and Bioware had clearly learned nothing from that dismal failure whatsoever.
A few quick additional points:
Origin is a fucking disaster. Bioware lied about only needing to log in once to register the game. You must,in fact, be logged in at all times or you get a pop up message stating that Origin has lost contact with the server, which freezes the game and will bypass any conversation you are in or leave you frozen during combat. This is a de facto constant online connection required DRM akin to Ubisoft's DRM.
The single player combat sucks: Extremely sloppy enemy hit boxes, crappy AI, especially teammate AI. Weapons stats bear no resemblance to actual weapon damage, etc, etc.
To put it quite simply, Bioware lied their despicable asses off about this game. They knew precisely what fans wanted from this game or they would not have actively carried out a deceitful promotion campaign promising to deliver just such a conclusion. They were very consistent in that message from it's formal reveal in Game Informer, to the multitude of statements made after the game went gold.
And every word of it was nothing but lies. I'll never even consider another game from EA or Bioware.
