Mass Effect 3 Completed for the Second Time

I finished my second playthrough of Mass Effect 3 tonight, this time on Hardcore Difficulty.  Personally, I don't care what all the bandwagon hoppers say, this is a great game and a great story.  While there's certainly some plot holes, the Mass Effect trilogy is the single greatest video game story telling experience I've ever played.

For this playthrough, I imported my FemShep from Mass Effect 2, though I don't think it got her face quite right.  I had used the default female Shepard provided by Mass Effect 2, but she just looked wrong, so I went with the new default from Mass Effect 3 itself.

My Class was an Adept and I went Renegade, choosing "Destroy" as my ending option.  Interestingly though, this is the first playthrough of any Mass Effect title where I didn't romance anyone (officially), though not for a lack of trying.  Jacob was my romance in Mass Effect 2 and as I expected, he rejected me here.  Prior to that though I had chosen not to pursue both Liara and Vega, as I intended to pursue Kaiden, but he rejected me!  I should have known better since BioWare seemed to have retconed his sexual orientation, but it still annoyed me.

I hit on Joker and he rejected me to, I hit on Traynor but didn't seem to get anywhere there, so I just sorta-romanced Allers, even though I didn't like her character.

For the bulk of the playthrough, which took me 57 hours, I used Vega and EDI as my squadmates, as being combat and tech specialists respectively they complimented my biotic skills.  Typically I'd lay down Singularities or Lifts and then spammed Warp like crazy, while I had EDI use Overload or Incinerate to bring down any Shields or Armour quickly.  James I pretty much let do his own thing, save when I needed to do high damage to Armoured targets with Concussive Shot; very handy.

This is also my first playthrough with the Extended Cut, and I liked how it properly shows your Squad Mates leaving the final battle.  Both the evac and departure have some real meaning now.  Otherwise though, while I have no issue with the Extended Cut, I personally feel it's not necessary as everything else it elaborates on was implied just fine in the retail ending.

Regardless though, Mass Effect 3 is a great gameplay and storytelling experience, and I've got one more Shepard to do an Insanity run with soon.