The booming howl of the Reaper’s call thunders throughout the sky like an out of tune tuba. Beneath it all continues the constant patta-pat rattle of weapons fire, far enough in the distance that it sounds more like the tapping upon wood than a constant oppressive and percussive hammer piercing the air. To my right, Liara calls out the location of Husks crawling from the cliff side ahead. My eyes are momentarily drawn to the bright red streak of the Reaper’s beam, firing upon Turians out of my sight before leaving the dark, insectoid shape silhouetted against the bright light of a bombarded Palaven.

Anyone can make a game about shooting other people in space. The difficulty is crafting it so that the player gets into a very specific mood while playing. Will it feel like a video game? Or will you suspend your disbelief just enough to buy into the sound, the imagery, the sense of being on that moon fighting a losing battle?

Despite having already discussed the narrative of Mass Effect 3, it is still important in discussing the actual gameplay. Of all the missions in the game, those that are a part of the main plot tend to be the most enjoyable. Side missions are fun, sure, but often enough they just feel like any other shooter. That is, if you’re a numb skull Fighter class like I am and chose Soldier.

Which I suppose leaves this overview as being mildly inaccurate. I couldn’t cover all the bases, after all, playing as each class available to the player and thus being able to detail the experience each sort of player will have.

After all, Mass Effect 3 is actually more of an RPG than its predecessor, which simplified the experience to a bland and rather mediocre shooting game. Here weapons have different weights, a statistic that influences ability cooldown. If you want to load Shepard with a ton of weapons then you’ll find yourself barely using any special abilities. Even as a soldier this is a detrimental choice. The player is now forced to carefully select their inventory, often enough having to decide between the power of the weapon or how light it is.

Bioware has also taken an extra step in armor customization, making it more than a few aesthetic changes to Shepard’s appearance. Each armor type will affect different stats, forcing a player to choose between improving attributes such as health, melee damage, recharge rate and shields. Maximizing one attribute will often yield weakness in others, while trying to improve all of them will only ensure mediocrity across all spectrums. It forces the player to think about what sort of character they want to play, while also allowing room for customization. For example, building a Soldier with emphasis on shields and cooldown rather than health and armor.

All in all, while Mass Effect 3 is still a very action-oriented game, there is a lot of focus on customization and effective load-outs.

One of the major improvements from Mass Effect 2 is the variety of foes you face. Even amongst the usual humanoid foes you’ll find different roles performed. There are snipers, engineers that set up and repair turrets, regular foot soldiers and large mechs all working together to ruin your day. The player is thus forced to deal with different enemies with separate strategies that can change at a moment’s notice. Even the Reaper forces are split up into a variety of different creatures with separate behaviors.

In the end, however, the combat is nothing more than just a shooter with some additional touch-ups. Perhaps this is my fault for choosing a soldier, yet it did not feel as such in the original Mass Effect. In the first game I was frequently getting a feeling for the different powers by issuing commands to my A.I. partners. Ever since Mass Effect 2 this has largely felt unnecessary. I don’t know if the A.I. is that improved or if the foes are that simple, or perhaps something in me had changed. I just recall playing the first Mass Effect and feeling as if the game was stupid-difficult until I began telling my team to use certain abilities on specific foes. Then it was a lot less of a shooter and a lot more interesting.

In Mass Effect 2 and 3, even if I think about these abilities my team has already used them. Is there a machine out there worth hacking? Turns out that ability is already in cool down.

Perhaps this really isn’t the fault of the game. After all, playing as a soldier class you’d expect it to play like a shooter, correct? At the same time, it just seems as if more steps should have been taken to make the soldier class more interesting. There should never be a class that is less fun to play than the others in a role-playing game.

This is only detrimental in terms of the side missions, however. These were just planted throughout the game to give the player more to do, and as such no tone or theme is given them. They are merely cluttered with enemies to provide an obstacle to the player.

Jumping into the main quest yields a different experience. Maybe it is the care taken into the levels, constructing them to feel like an actual place with an actual event happening rather than some playground for gun nuts. Or maybe these were the missions that dropped several different kinds of foes in at once, thrusting the player into a conflict between Reapers and Cerberus at the same time. Or perhaps it was just those moments towards the end of the game, where the Reapers seem endless and the dice seem to be rolling against the player’s favor. You know, the sort of atmosphere a desperate last stand for Earth should have.

At this point it should be no surprise that I’m a sucker for this sort of thing, but I really do believe those “cinematic” moments are what set the main missions apart from the side quests. The optional missions feel like well-balanced environments with the intent to challenge, but you were always meant to win.

While the entire game is designed this way, it feels like there’s a lot more risk, as if the designer’s intentions are less transparent. The player becomes lost in the mood and tone of it all, and the risk of loss carries more weight than “Well, I guess I’ll just have to start over”.

Mass Effect as a whole seems to be at its best when they focus on telling a story. Once you get into the gameplay, however, well, it just isn’t strong enough to stand on its own. It needs those thematic elements, that mood and tone, to make it truly worth playing.

I find Mass Effect to be a testament to my belief that a lot of games could be better if more care is taken to the story, but at the same time, it demonstrates a story alone won’t make your game worthwhile.