Would that fatal flaw be real time combat, or a third-person perspective?
SPOILER ALERT....BIG TIME
Okay, spoiler road: In your hunt to track down Saren, you can use any tool at your disposal, being good, evil, indifferent, or whatever. Your first mission finds you hunting him down to find a piece of technology from the Protheans, the race that supposedly built all the Mass Relays and such in the galaxy. When you get there, you're too late to stop him, but get sucked into the field of the Beacon, showing you a bunch of random images.
On Feros, you find out that Saren's interested in the mind control properties of a sentient plant there. After defeating it, one of his former allies helps you unlock the visions the Beacon showed you, showing somewhat clearer the first pictures you saw. They tell you that the info is useless without extensive knowledge on the Protheans, however.
On Noveria, you find out he's resurrected a dead race of alien insects, very similar to the arachnids from Starship Troopers. They were bred to be his shock troops, but have gotten out of hand. Turns out they've got a Queen in captivity, the only one still alive, and you can choose to release her, kill her, or let the Council decide. She tells you that her young are out of control because she was separated from them at the time of their hatching, and even asks you to kill them. Whichever you decide, you need to deal with Saren's top aide first. After fighting her, she tells you that he wants her to find a Mass Effect gate that was lost centuries ago when the star it orbited went nova. You also find out that the ship he's using to get around, Sovereign, has mind control powers. Coincidence? Read on.
On the third world, you find the daughter of Saren's ally who you killed on Noveria. She is nothing like her mother, and, indeed, can be romanced by male characters. When you rescue her, she is able to interpret the signals from the Beacon even more, but needs time to figure out what they mean.
The fourth world you come to, whose name escapes me at the moment, reveals something rather startling. Saren has discovered a cure for a bioweapon that was slowly killing the Krogan, (big, tough, badass, with a mercenary mentality) race. You need to blow it up. Problem is, your Krogan party member aint too happy about that. If you've been building your charm and intimidate skills, you can talk him down. Otherwise, you've gotta kill him. You have to split up your team to attack the facility, one person (one of your two human party members) goes with you, the other helps your allies with the distraction. Choose carefully.
When you reach the lab, you find out your nemesis is doing other work there as well. He's doing a lot of mind control research. When you get to the com tower, you find out why. His ship, Sovereign, isn't just the biggest dreadnought in the galaxy. It's a Reaper. A sentient machine, one of the thousands (millions?) responsible for wiping out the Protheans. You find out they built the Mass Effect relay system to make sure that advanced races spread out in directions they can easily predict and cleanse. Before long, Sovereign gets mad at you, and unleashes his minions. You rush to bring down the two AA towers so your ship can deliver a nuke, and just as the bomb gets rolled into position you get a call: The person you sent with the allied group is under heavy attack, and needs you to break them out or they're a goner. You get about halfway there when another call comes in. The bomb site is under attack. You need to choose who lives and who dies. Personally, I went back to the bomb site because my lady friend was there. The other guy died a horrible death. And you feel like straight shit after that.
Either way, you have to fight Saren. He expresses his concerns that Sovereign is controlling him, and has been conducting research here to prevent it. You may be able to talk him down, but I fought him. It's not to the death, and he leaves shortly before you do.
Back at the Citadel, you get stabbed in the back by the ambassador from earth. He relieves you of command of your ship, and keeps it locked down in port. Your former commander (having received similar treatment at the start of the game) offers to break into either the ambassador's office or the Citadel Security HQ to unlock the ship long enough for you to escape and finish the mission. Either way, you're gone, because your friend you rescued on the third planet realizes what the symbols from the Beacon were: A Prothean planet that's been lost for centuries. But you know how to find it now.
On the planet, you're confronted with a rather creepy jungle-infested cityscape, and you're in a desperate race to beat Saren to the controls. But you get stopped on your way by a Prothean AI. It tells you that Saren is indeed controlled by Sovereign, and that the artifact Saren has been hunting for all this time, The Conduit, was built by the Protheans to save the races that would inevitably rise up after them. The Citadel, the massive space station at the heart of the galaxy, was built by the Reapers as a giant Mass Effect Relay, able to teleport every single one of those robotic bastards into the center of civilization all at once. The Protheans on Ilos knew this, and shut their planet off from the rest of civilization while the Reapers depopulated every other planet in the galaxy. After decades of war, Ilos was the only Prothean planet to remain. Or so they assumed. On the off chance others survived, they sent a message through the Beacons, to other Prothean worlds, letting them know that Ilos survived, and they had a way to stop the cycle: The Conduit.
The Reapers created a race of beings to keep the Citadel ready for their return, aptly named the Keepers. When the other races found the station, they didn't much mind the Keepers, and let them go about their business, because they kept the station running. Turns out their primary function was to open up the Citadel Gate when the Reapers were ready to return. The Protheans on Ilos built their own Mass Effect Relay, The Conduit, and teleported back to the Citadel after the Reapers had killed everyone there. They were able to alter it in some way so that when the Keepers sent the next signal to open the Gateway, it would be ignored. The only way to bring the Reapers back is for a Reaper itself to couple with the station and initiate the process. Which is exactly what Saren is trying to do.
You jump through the Conduit, fight hordes of Geth, and get to the control room just as Saren hands over controls of the station to Sovereign. He tells you that the Reaper sensed his anxiety and implanted him with devices to keep him loyal. You can talk him down or fight him here, and I talked him down. He thanks you, and blows his brains out all over the place. You get a call from orbit: The Citadel fleet is getting the crap blown out of it. There's a massive human fleet standing by, but they're waiting on you to make the call: If they come in now, you might not have the firepower to destroy Sovereign and prevent the Reaper's return, but if they delay, the three Council members, the leader of the galaxy, all die. I waited. The Council were kind of douchebags, so I didn't mind.
Whatever you do, what's left of Saren's body has been totally taken over by Sovereign now, and he's not going to let you stop him. After the boss fight there, the Human fleet comes in, and Sovereign's shields go down. BOOOM! The Reaper dies, and most of the Citadel fleet is gone, leaving Humanity the biggest military power in the galaxy.
Afterwards, you're the big hero. Not only is a human going to be on the reformed Council, a human will be LEADING it. You get to pick, your former CO who stood by you through thick and thin, or the bastard of an ambassador who sold you out at the first chance he got. I think it's obvious who I picked.
IMPORTANT: THIS IS ONLY ONE PLAY-THROUGH. THE OTHER ENDINGS ARE VERY, VERY DIFFERENT. I'm in the process of my second go, and I'll let you know what happens then. Also, things will probably turn out differently depending on the order you play the planets in. This story review doesn't even begin to cover side missions, just main quest missions, all 30 hours worth of them. You can go at the planets in any order, except for the last one, Ilos. The first time through, I tried to be as good a guy as possible, ending with a very positive Karma, for the Fallout crowd. This time I'm doing the opposite, so we'll see how I end up. I'll make every choice differently come endgame, except who leads the Council. I hate the Ambassador so much. I think in the next two sequels to this game, you'll be able to have the choices from any completed game start you off (IE, if the Council survived, if you released the Rachni Queen, etc.) If I'm right, and I would put money on it, I encourage everyone to play the hell out of this game until you've got everything covered!
You won the battle, but the Reapers are still out there. They know what happened. They're trying to find a way back. And they're PISSED.
EDIT: Dude, Sorry to be an ass, but I had to remove the freaking size and color.
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