http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/zeropunctuation/2738-Sero-Punctuation-Mass-Effect

HOWEVER…

How is it allowable that a game could let you get that deep into a mission (and it’s a long one) with almost no hitches before suddenly slamming you with death? I’m totally okay with admitting that I’m not ready to tackle a level, but some warning would have been nice. Maybe instead of putting those cupcakes right at the front door of Peak 15 they could have put some dudes more level appropriate. I had no problems at all with that level right up until the matriarch; the puzzles, the combat, nothing posed a problem until that one encounter totally destroyed me. Basically this means I’m going to have to burn three or four hours of game time just to have found out that this mission was too tough for me. That’s just bullshit. It’s just poor design. What makes it even worse is that when I come back to this mission after having gained some levels it’s going to be even more trivial. I worked over everyone in there as I stand, when I come back more pimped, combat is going to be even more pointless. At no point in a video game should the difficulty curve go “trivial-trivial-easy-easy-impossible.”

As for having gone after the matriarch first, pull up your galactic map and highlight the three missions given to you when you leave the Citadel. Guess which one is closest to the citadel. That’s right, “Find the Matriarch.” I’m okay with them giving me free reign to choose my missions, but the least they can do is put the high-level one a little further from where you start. I don’t need my missions spoon-fed to me, but use some goddamn sense. “Well, our best lead to Saren is the Matriarch - she’s the woman standing over there in the corner - but you’d better go to the edge of the galaxy first before you talk to her.”

One other point I wanted to address regarding my squad choosing their own weapons.  I spent their development points on assault rifle, I modded the best rifle I had for them to use, and for some reason they pull out a pistol in the climactic battle.  Maybe they know something I don’t.  Maybe ugly sluts are vulnerable to pistol fire, but get this: I micromanage my squad because they’re dumb.  Garrus keeps stepping in front of my lines of fire and I’ve killed him on several occasions because he steps in front of me as I’m pulling the trigger.  Williams will use her shotgun to fire down a hallway at an enemy when there’s a Rakni warrior attacking her from the side at point-blank range.  This gives me no encouragement to think they know what they’re doing.  No one has ever developed a squad AI that I found useful.
As for “harbor[ing] malice for the game development industry,” are you kidding me? Seriously. That insults me. Stop trying to tell me I’ll like Oblivion. That worked the last five times I tried to play that game and guess what? I thought it was lame five times in a row. Once I even suffered through it for ten hours of game time just to see if it would get better. The answer is still no. Stop shoving that shit down my throat. I’m not playing that game again and the more you bring it up the less I want to.

“Shake,shake,shake
Shake,shake,shake
Shake your large scale epic RPG with some flaws that can be overlooked unless you harbor malice for the game development industry”

http://www.eatmybomb.com/archives/985

That’s my reaction to a crying baby on a plane. I get right in it’s face and cry back at it louder and louder until it becomes pulp. But anyway, let’s address some of your issues:

Which encounter are you up against exactly? I came across some that took multiple attempts, but none took quite as many as you describe.

Talking Points

1. I agree that some of the autosaves are placed poorly. And given the information you’ve presented, I’m going to guess that you went after the matriarch first and if so, I’m not surprised that you got served. I’d go after some of the other objectives before tackling that one. I am also in agreement that Bioware should have given some hint that this would be the toughest battle.

2. The initial sniper loadout is pretty unstable, but as you increase your skills and add stabilization upgrades, you can get it to damn near still shooting every time. This is not a mechanic specific to Mass Effect.

3. Unskippable cutscenes. Amen, and this issue has honestly come up time and time and time again in industry discussions and polls of biggest mistakes in game development.

4. Soldiers swapping their loadout automatically is a setting which you would have seen in the initial game setup. This actually works very much to your benefit for the most part, but if you want to micromanage them, you can still do so.

5. I’m in agreement with you on this one as well.

6. The gun upgrades are definitely not useless, but you may have gotten very lucky with a good roll from the slot machine early on. You’ll remember that in games like Diablo, a good enough early-level item can outweight higher-level items for a long while.

Give Mass Effect another chance, and don’t start with the Matriarch. I completely agree that Bioware dropped the ball here by allowing enough freedom of choice to effectively hang yourself. You should be able to keep your existing crew (I also created an Infiltrator and he’s a pimp) and work your way through the other 2 large objectives before moving in on the big score. I find the combat in Mass Effect rather frustrating (no mouse + shooter = screaming rage), but I did manage to get a better hold on things once I learned to use my team properly.

I went through what is likely the same experience that you did, exploring and becoming lost in the story and missions on The Citadel and then heading out to get my ass served by the Matriarch. There are several stumbles along the way in this game but the overall experience has been my best since Oblivion.