Look above and see the hours I put into this sink hole before continuing.

7 years of development and I still don't understand what this game actually is. It's not a game. A game is fun. A game requires some kind of strategy that doesn't revolve around exploiting it's own poor mechanics. Headshooting an enemy repeatedly at 50 yards while they peek my infrared sniper rifle just highlights why you'd be better off playing COD if you want a shooter. Space exploration is not exploration. It's a loading screen with a procedurally generated terrain, as many have pointed out. It's a glorified lootbox that just makes you go through the motions to get to it - and the prize at the end of the rainbow isn't even that good. Most of the characters are hardly memorable. The voice acting is fine, which is a shame. Staring at a stiff face where only the mouth moves, that's called "anime". Looking at people straight-on instead of any kind of cinematic angles, really boring. The plot choices are inconsequential, which kind of ruins the RPG element.

Even when the game attempts to offer mechanics that could make the game interesting, like non-lethal weapons, the game still treats people like they're dead You could non-lethal every one of the Crimson Fleet during Legacy's End, but they are basically killed off. The game forces you to be a murderer even though you painstakingly avoid killing during that story line. Or another hilarious oversight During the mission of the Constant (ship flying over Paradiso), they give you an option to blow up the ship. If you actually explored all the rooms on that annoying maze of a ship, you would know there is a literal classroom full of kids there. Bethesda let's you blow up a classroom. I have a very strong feeling they did not intend to have their players murder children but for lack of care, they give you the option.

It feels like every element of this game was rushed despite having all this time to make the game, so what gives? I am physically pained by slogging through this game trying to finish the main few storylines. A game should not feel like this. That's why this has so many negative reviews. The experience is not fun at all. Forget the loading screens, forget the fact there's no reason they put water in this game since they didn't actually do anything with it, forget that you have to walk behind slow npcs that waste your time going to a certain destination. Forget that the game has a plethora of bugs STILL unpatched from the start of the game to nearly the end of the game, which legitimately ruin the playability of the game. Forget all that. The real elephant in the room is that I have no reason to listen to these well-voice-acted dialogues. I want every single person I talk to - to die. They are getting in the way of me finishing this game and deleting it from my lightning fast solid state drive that didn't help jack **** with the loading screens. I'm glad I didn't pay for this game, it came with my UPGRADED, NEXT-GEN PC that I built which Todd said would be well suited for the game.

Having now finished the game with a couple hundred hours into it, the ending is not a reward, it is a punishment for not knowing when to quit. There's only 1 part of the main story that has any impact, everyone knows what it is, and the rest of it is punching up at Mass Effect's knees. If you're a kid, do your homework. If you're an adult, go spend some time with family. If you're by yourself, don't play this game with an unsecured firearm in the house. The best part of this game was uninstalling it and realizing this nightmare is over. Excuse me, the recurring nightmare of clearing the same 5 base designs 50 times, is over.