Flushed Away Final Battle With Healthbars

[Armanda Kicks]

Singleplayer Combat in Mass Effect 3 involves a squad consisting of the player character and usually two non-player character ("NPC") allies weapons in tandem with biotic, tech, and other abilities to defeat enemies and complete missions, enabling the player and allies to improve in power and advance the story. Mass Effect 3 maintains most of the general gameplay systems and mechanics established in the previous game, but with increased dynamism and a faster pace overall. Mass Effect 3 is also the first game in the Mass Effect series to introduce a multiplayer game mode.

The player is quicker and more agile than in Mass Effect 2, and there is less emphasis on sticking to cover at all costs. Indeed, with the return of grenades that many enemies can now use as well as the player, leaving cover is often a necessity; luckily, there are some acrobatic ways to navigate cover and terrain. Cover can even be used to ambush attackers, pulling them in and finishing them with melee attacks far more vicious than in any previous game.

The player and allies are still protected in battle by health and recharging shields and can wear armor for additional protection. Various types of other equipment can be found or purchased, including upgrades and research that can be used to modify weapons, armor, or player attributes directly. There is a vastly expanded variety of new weapons to choose from and even fewer restrictions on who can use them; this is fortunate, as enemies in Mass Effect 3 also come in an array of dangerous forms, some possessing unearthly toughness and truly deadly abilities, requiring players to have a good grasp of their adversaries' strengths and weaknesses to survive.

Finally, along with bigger guns and stronger punches, the ability system in Mass Effect 3 also has greater variety, most notably with the newly introduced technique of combining two different powers in sequence to produce devastating combo explosions.

Legendary Edition: Some of the gameplay mechanics in Mass Effect 3 work differently in Mass Effect Legendary Edition. On gameplay-oriented pages, Legendary Edition changes are usually marked with an orange notation.

Controls are mostly retained from Mass Effect 2 regardless of platform, but with some significant improvements in behavior. Many of these mechanics are introduced with tutorial guidance in the story mode during Prologue: Earth and the early parts of Priority: Mars.

Hold the RB (on Xbox 360), Shift (by default on PC), R2 (PS3), or R (Wii U) to bring up the power wheel. This pauses the game, and allows you to access all the available powers that you and your teammates have at their disposal. Powers capable of usage are blue, powers in cooldown are greyed out, with a visual aid to show how close they are to cooling down, and powers currently ineffective are red with a down arrow on them. From the power wheel you can choose to use up to three powers (one per teammate, and one for you), and when you exit the power wheel, you and your teammates will use the selected powers.

The Heads Up Display, or HUD, shows all the vital information needed during combat. The HUD shows the targeting reticule, which gun you are using, how much ammunition you have left (in the clip and in reserve), and your quickslots. It also shows which teammates are in your present squad while indicating their status (by means of colors), and the status of Shepard's shields and health. Moreover, when Shepard uses a power, a small pair of faint-red semicircles will begin moving from the left and right toward the center of the screen (see the HUD screenshot). When these semicircles meet at the center, Shepard's powers have cooled down, indicating that the player can use a power again.

If an enemy is within a certain range and in Shepard's present field of vision, a special indicator will appear in the HUD telling you the type of enemy and indicating the status of its health and any protections it may have.

Every class now has access to all weapons, although restricted by weight (see below). They can be upgraded up to the X (10) series. The first five upgrades are available in the Normandy Shuttle Bay on a character's first ME3 playthrough. The last five upgrades must be acquired by using the Import ME3 Character option when creating a New Game. This will carry all weapons, upgrade levels, and mod levels over, and allow you to purchase two additional upgrade levels in the Normandy. Picking up the weapon once more during the second playthrough will automatically upgrade the weapon by three levels. Spectre Office-only and DLC-only weapons will have all ten levels available for purchase on the Normandy (Legendary Edition: or at the Spectre Office at the Embassies).

Shepard can equip all five weapon types at once if desired. Squad Members are restricted to two weapon types (for example, Garrus can equip Sniper Rifles and Assault Rifles, Liara SMGs and Pistols). Multiplayer characters can equip any weapon type, but only up to two at a time. As in the previous game, clinging to cover grants an accuracy bonus to almost all weapons, especially sniper rifles, and firing sniper rifles "from the hip" (not scoped) severely penalizes not only their accuracy but damage as well.

Weapons can be customized further in a manner similar to Mass Effect, although more streamlined using Weapon Mods. Each weapon has two slots for mods, with every weapon type having a different variety of mods that can be equipped once acquired. Each mod can be upgraded in a similar fashion to the weapons themselves and used in as many weapons as desired. Some mods exclude each other.

Common types of mods include scopes (higher accuracy), barrel extensions (higher damage), ammo capacity upgrades (either a larger magazine or more total ammo depending on the weapon type), melee combat enhancements and piercing mods (allowing shots to penetrate cover). Other mods are only available for some weapon types, such as the Concentration Mod for Sniper Rifles.

Unlike in Mass Effect 2, players cannot carry Heavy Weapons in single-player. However, they can be found in some places to help out with difficult fights. If the player switches weapons, the heavy weapon is automatically dropped and cannot be carried far from where it was found, especially not between missions.In a few situations, special weapons that could be considered heavy weapons are available and Shepard will automatically equip them for those segments.

In Multiplayer, the only heavy weapon available is the Cobra Missile Launcher, of which every character carries a limited supply of into each mission (up to six). Because of these limitations, heavy weapons cannot be modded and are unaffected by ammo powers.

Mass Effect 3 uses the same system as Mass Effect 2, where weapons fire a certain number of shots and then the current Thermal Clip must be ejected and a new one inserted. If you do not have any Thermal Clips for a specific weapon, then you cannot fire that weapon. Unlike in Mass Effect 2, there are more ways to increase reserve clip capacity and even increase the amount of rounds that a weapon can shoot before a replacement clip is needed through weapon mods. There are also ways of increasing reserve ammunition through Rank Evolutions in any ammo type, provided your character class has access to it. If you run out of spare clips, a loud beeping can be heard indicating the weapon has overheated, and cannot fire due to lack of thermal clips.

A few weapons use a heat system more like the Mass Effect system, recharging their "ammo" when they aren't being fired. However, they have no reserve clips and if depleted entirely, they have to be "reloaded" via lengthy cooling animation before they can fire again.

Unlike previous games in the series, any class can carry any weapon in Mass Effect 3 and use it with full effectiveness. Instead of limiting what kinds of weapons each class can carry, the game assigns a weight to each weapon, and imposes a weight capacity on the player. Each class can carry up to their weight capacity without penalty, with Soldiers possessing the highest capacity, and Adepts and Engineers the lowest.

Exceeding the weight capacity of the character will incur a penalty to powers' recharge speeds. Staying below the character's weight capacity provides a bonus to powers' recharge speeds of up to 200%, while vastly exceeding it may result in a penalty of up to -200%. Carrying below capacity greatly helps all power-reliant character builds, such as combo-chaining Engineers and Adepts or charge-spamming Vanguards.

At very negative recharge speed values, power cooldown times can be severely increased, up to 3 times the base cooldown time value. At very positive recharge speed values, there are diminishing returns for extra cooldown speed bonuses approaching the maximum of 200% increase. Thus, striving for extremely high recharge speed provides only marginal improvements, which may nonetheless be worth it.

Upgrading weapons also reduces the weapon's weight slightly, and weight can be reduced further with Ultralight Materials mods. Certain mods increase a weapon's weight in exchange for more powerful or unique effects than other mods.

In multiplayer, different classes have different default weights, and maximum weight capacities. Some classes also benefit more or less from their respective skill trees. For example, Alliance Training and Asari Justicar grant 10 weight capacity from rank 1 of said trees and 20 on rank 4 evolutions, whereas Turian Veteran grants 15 weight capacity with the first rank and 25 from the rank 4 evolution. Many classes also have a rank 6 evolution in their passive that decreases the weight of one, some, or all types of weapons by a certain amount.

While each character in multiplayer can equip two weapons, power-focused characters might prefer only having one (though it is possible to retain 200% and still equip a weapon or even two with Ultralight Materials mods).

Most enemies possess weak spots (usually their heads) that take increased damage from weapon fire (locations of the less obvious weak spots). This extra damage applies regardless of any protections the target may possess.

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