People just put up unhelpful dumb reviews with no verification of if they played either game and then it just gets to affect the score.
Steam definitely has its share of "anti-woke" rants and culture war nonsense, but at least there's some kind of bar to clear. If someone’s dropping a review after 7+ hours, even if it's unhinged, you can at least say they engaged with the game beyond the title screen or Character Creation
Plus, Steam shows:
Hours played (which helps you separate kneejerk takes from people who gave the game a shot)
Whether the review is marked helpful by others,
Whether the game was purchased or received for free,
It’s a way more transparent system than Metacritic’s “0/10 because woke” with no explanation and no way to know if the person even launched the game.
hell, almost all of BioWare's games on Steam are "Mostly positive" except for Dragon Age 2 and Veilguard which are both "Mixed"
That ending really stung a lot of people
I didnt like it either but its wasn't franchise or even game destroying
I understand how it could ruin the game/franchise though - the entire series was building up to a dramatic confrontation using all the resources and allies you gathered over three games. For all the effort to ultimately not matter and end up as a 3 color ending choice was disappointing to say the least
Honestly I remember back then getting through it and being like "oh that's it I guess" went online and people were just melting down. It is sorta hilarious that there's an entire mod dedicated to fixing the ending and to be fair I used it back in like 2018.
I think what disappointed me the most was when they released that patch that basically killed off the Shepard Indoctrination Theory. I loved how open ended it was, it was subversive, it explained so many bizarre things the game did for a far better payoff (that random PTSD chasing kid stuff is awful). It even ended up being subversive against the idea that doing all the side content will get you the best ending by making the special synthesis ending another dead end and the kill all reapers to be the best choice and you were given a payoff for it.
not just the ending, all that star child shit was dumb as hell too
they pulled some writer off of it to do the star wars mmo and it fucked over both series.
They made a whole theme of 2 and a half game and their associated dlc thar you cannot ever under any circumstances negotiate with, mislead, misdirect, cheat or circumvent the reapers, and your attempt to do so is what they're counting on, as they will subvert such attempts, drive you insane and make you work for them. Then they present you with a magic mcguffin out of nowhere that tells you it's a secret tool to control tbe reapers through space magic, a fact it conveys to you through hallucinations.
And then you get to choose one of 3 colors of explosion. If you picked the control (Or synthesis really) option you should just get a "Game over you fucking dumbass" screen, like sleeping with the alien succubus. But instead they rewrite the entire universe.