[Spoiler Free]Reasons to be Excited for Mass Effect 3

The thrilling conclusion to the trilogy set in a near future filled with amazing aliens and unrelenting evils is coming to a close, for Shepard at least.  For those of you blissfully unaware of what Mass Effect is, it is a RPG centered around a character named Shepard.  This Shepard is one of your choosing, male or female, good or evil, a hardened Soldier who relies on his weapons or a powerful Adept that uses mass effect fields to control his/her enemies.  Made by BioWare, it was clear that they wished to capture that RPG essence, but with much more accessible type of game play.  The story basically centers around Shepard's struggle against the Reapers a ancient race of sentient machines who periodically wipe out all life in the galaxy.
Okay so now you're up to speed, lets get on with why this could be the best of both ME1 and ME2 without all the negatives of either of them.

• If you don't import a save game a 'Previously on Mass Effect' comic will allow you to make major decisions.
• Skill trees to be larger. 
• Powers to evolve more times than once.
• Weapon mods to make a return. 5 variants per part. (Modding is back; was terrible the way it was handled in ME2)
• Classes can wield all weapons, but only Soldiers can have all of them at once. The rest of the classes will have limited slots. (Very welcome change)
• Melee attacks will gain more focus
• Shooting specific armor parts can have certain effects, and the AI of the enemies will have them routing Shepard and will coordinate with each other.
• Enemy Weapons can be used.
• NG+ will be a hybrid of ME1's and ME2's. You can go back and finish some stuff in the post-game.
• The cover system has been improved.
• You start out with the basic powers from ME2. (Not going back to square one with no abilities is good for those that   import)
• Shepard can roll and alternate between cover.
• The Engineer can build turrets, which will distract but not 'decimate' the enemy.
• There will be more items to loot.
• Lighting Up is a new charged melee attack, Shepard uses his omni-tool to inflict a burn to the enemy.

This is just a small taste of the changes to expect out of the gameplay, for more in depth look at other facets of the game check out this thread.  ME3 will be out on PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 so everyone can now enjoy the series equally or disregard it if it's not their cup of tea.  I should also mention there have been a string of bad decisions about aspects of both ME1 and ME2, but it's all subjective to the person playing it.  Universally however, there is some pretty lazy modeling and additions and subtractions between ME1 and ME2 that are tenuous at best.  BioWare recently dropped the ball pretty hard with Dragon Age 2, so there is some worried fans out their that see a troubling trend from BioWare that perhaps EA is excreting itself to push out unfinished and unpolished products.  I guess we will have to wait until fall to find out if ME3 lives up to everyones expectations.