Okay, people who wanted your actions in the previous game to mean something, to make a difference, you got that. Or did you forget the Tuchanka and Rannoch missions (especially the Rannoch missions)?
1) The romance arc
I've finished Mass Effect 3 twice. Once as a female Shepard (Soldier) who dumped Kaidan in the second game for Garrus, and once as a male Shepard (Vanguard) who stayed loyal to Ashley all the way through. Now maybe it's just because Ashley doesn't even get a dialogue wheel when she gets back to the Normandy that made me find the DudeShep/Ashley arc unsatisfying. Or maybe it's because even the FemShep/Garrus arc doesn't hit enough beats, and it's considerably more fleshed out than DudeShep/Ashley.
No, seriously, the DudeShep/Ashley arc in the third game is this: "So, I worked for Cerberus and you almost shot me when Councilor Turncoat staged his little coup, are we good? Okay, cool." The FemShep/Garrus arc at least goes from what was obviously casual sex in the second game to something deeper in the third, but even so you can run through it in three conversations total, and there's no obligatory confrontation with Kaidan. After Kaidan rejoined the crew, I just left him down in the observation room and never gave him the time of day.
2) The linear plot
I mean, I get that this is a war and doomsday is here and we're all gonna die. But for the first time in the franchise, you've got to do every main story mission in a specific order (except "From Ashes," and that's DLC). And there are no random side-quests to discover by exploring the galaxy; everything is either flagged for you by Traynor or else given to you as a quest on the Citadel. Frankly, this seemed like the smallest game of the three, even though it was the longest in terms of play time.
3) The insane plot
Things happen in this game because it's the last game and so things have to happen. Everything smacks of desperation, except the things that don't. Let me explain: on the one hand, the turians are willing to help cure the genophage if it means bringing the krogan into the fight, and Councilor Backstab is willing to work with Cerberus in exchange for... something. On the other hand, the salarians and the asari are pretty content to sit back and let the other races burn. I know that the fall of Thessia is supposed to be the big sad moment, and having Liara there kind of sells it, but honestly, those elves had it coming.
So there's this thing on Benning where there are these rogue Cerberus agents, but that never comes up again. There was this thing with Dark Matter in 2 that was apparently supposed to tie into the ending and make it less of a Battlestar knockoff, but that got scrapped.
And then there's the ending. No, not the Star Child, not Those Choices, but the rest of the plot. Okay, so the Illusive Man set up a facility on Horizon to study indoctrination, so he could control the Reapers. The Reapers find out about it and gate-crash his party. Oh, and Henry Lawson is in charge of the facility, because Miranda's been reduced to a one-note character and that has to pay off somehow. But then Kai Leng is there for some reason, to do something, because he has to lead them back to the Cerberus base somehow. Then it turns out that everyone's indoctrinated and the Illusive Man told the Reapers about the Citadel so they moved it to Earth for some reason which grr argh. How about you cut the crap on Horizon, let us track Leng back to the Cerberus base from Thessia, and get a more coherent understanding of the plot at some point?
If you think I'm being too harsh, let me ask you: at what point did the Illusive Man become indoctrinated? It had to be after the Reapers hit Horizon, right? But right after that, he tells them about the Citadel. So that doesn't make sense. And why did the Reapers move the Citadel to Earth?
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