(no spoilers below, just talking about game mechanics and such)
Been playing this for almost 8 hours now. I have to say, I'm very impressed with that they've done. Only thing I didn't care for was that some of the dialogue seemed a bit forced at the beginning.
Other than that, combat has been greatly improved (i.e. sprinting for as long as you want, rolling, melee that's actually useful, weapon mods and upgrades, etc.).
Powers are much more useful. They recharge much faster than in ME2, and with the upgrades where you have to choose between two, both are actually good (as opposed to ME2, where if you fully upgraded a power, one of the options was usually objectively better than the other). More power variety for all the squadmates as well.
The new scanning mechanic is kinda neat. You can now scan areas of the system for hidden "assets" (fuel, salvage, missions, etc.), but each time you scan, you increase the chances of the Reapers finding you if you're in a Reaper controlled sector. The scanning minigame from ME2 is still there, but is only used when you detect an anomaly on a planet.
Another thing I noticed is that they changed how dialogue usually works after doing a mission. As you remember in ME1 and ME2, you would always go into the conversation wheel when talking to someone on the ship, and after finishing a mission they would usually have new dialogue to choose. Now they seem to act like Zaeed and Kasumi did in ME2, where they just say a few lines instead of going into the dialogue wheel. I'm not that far in, so this may change later. Not sure what to think of this.
Sure he may have exaggerated how cut open the story was like I had explained, but day one DLC is unforgivable.
