Why Mass Effect 3 is Incredible....

I loved Mass Effect 3. Don't need to be sold on it.

I'm not a big fan and I never finished it, but the soundtrack is nice and there are lots of great emotional moments between Shep, the crew and other characters. The Tuchanka and Rannoch storylines were really good, but the rest of the game didn't interest me very much.

Oh, and the multiplayer was really good. Probably the best co-op multiplayer there is.

roivas: I'd also heard about it but still started with ME1. It's just that I had a dislike of ME2 because of a lack of Kaidan. Over time, I came to love the entire MET. Also, now that we have a same sex romance mod for ME1, all is right in the world. ME2 is a good game regardless of the extremely small role of Kaidan Alenko (or Ashley Williams, if you prefer).

My "relationship" with ME3 is a bit more complicated. I think they did a lot of questionable stuff, even before the ending (such as the Cerberus issues, Kai Leng, the rushed start of the game, etc.), some of which however is also due to ME2's failures, which put the writers in a difficult spot. After all, they had to wrap up the trilogy in one game after ME2 didn't do anything at all to advance the plot.

But despite these issues, over all, I would agree that it is a fantastic game and it still is (like all the MET games) one of my all time favorites. I do remember, when I first played it and I first saw the scene with the fleets arriving at earth for the final battle, I was physically pounding my fist on the table and shouting at the monitor "Let's show them what we are made of!"
I don't think I've ever had a reaction like this to any story, in any medium, be it written, film or game. Sure, I may curse out loud if I die in a game but that's more gameplay related and me getting upset with myself more than the game. Sure, I may have laughed out loud at a joke but then, laughing is probably the most easy emotional expression to involuntary vocalize.
But to actually getting so worked up about a bunch of fictional characters that I talk to my screen, that never happened before and I am still in awe how the ME series pulled it off. The trick, I think, was the combination of - as the OP wrote - perfectly capturing and maintaining this feeling of peril, together - and this is IMO very important - with this profound feeling of friendship between the main cast that is so palpable it feels like you can almost touch it (huge kudos also to the VAs here, who surely played a large part in this).
That is what made this trilogy (and ME3 as the culmination of it especially) so special despite the flaws and I think this is also why the infamous ending backlash happened in the foist place. The fact that the fans (me very much included) got so worked up about the endings is more an expression of how much we got emotionally entangled with these characters rather than just hate for the game or anything like that.
Given BW's response at the time, I am not quite sure they understood this but I do hope that at least the writers and designers who weren't directly responsible for that mess got this notion that we were mad out of love for this universe and these fictional people rather than anything else.

So yes, ME3 - and by extension the entire trilogy, flaws and everything included - is and will always remain a masterpiece.

ME3 is getting closer to reaching its full potential with each new mod that releases.

Why not?

You can say everything you want about the ending but questioning the greatness of ME3 is just wrong

I've been doing an ME3 run and it's got all kinds of feels in it. You've got to have a heart of stone to not feel something when Mordin sacrifices himself to cure the genophage or when Thane breathes his last at Huerta. To me, those were some powerful scenes, and they weren't the only ones. A video game that can make me feel emotional must be doing something right.

Mass Effect 3 was a great game even with the endings mess. Funny thing is I think more people appreciate now. If the internet didn't throw it's hissy fit over the endings maybe the guys that made the trilogy would have made Andromeda.

It sure was incredible. Incredibly disappointing.