Mass Effect 2 honest thoughts and opinions and gaming tips.

[ItsNotRudy]

each class felt very different and very capable.. well perhaps not the adept.

Lol wut. The Adept was an amazing class. Still is in ME3. The CC and bouncing people all over the place was great. Just know your place as a support early game and an unstoppable force in the end. If you time it right, you can even Dominate Harbinger units.

My Adept @ final mission:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LamjQCq-DNg

 

[Joccaren]

Mass Effect 2 is the second game in the series, the second best game in the series, and the second worst game in the series.

Its where the series hits its graphical and aesthetic peak IMO. 3 was... off. Very off. Some places looked fine, but faces looked terrible at times, animations were often awkward, and the aesthetic was an odd mix of both 1 and 2s where everything was clean but dirty. It was weird. Not bad, but I didn't like it.
2 on the other hand, looks great. The aesthetic is consistent, and almost everywhere looks pleasant. The lighting works well, and there aren't a lot of weird animations of facial features.
I personally disliked its combat, and its vehicle sections. The combat was boring and bland. It consists of sitting behind a wall, waiting for either the enemies to stop shooting or your health to regenerate, so you can look over the wall, shoot for 3 seconds, then hide behind the wall again. I prefered 1s over it, with different missions requiring different tactics [Some you would have to stay in cover, or get swarmed by 1 hit kill rockets or snipers, and others you could just run and gun through], as well as its inclusion of ranges greater than 10 metres, so I could snipe my enemies from 500m away if I so chose. 3 was good in combat too. You moved around more, enemy types were different so you weren't just facing the exact same enemy the whole game through [Fine, 3 types of enemies. Ones with just health, ones with health and armour/shields/barriers, and ones with health and armour and shields/barriers], and the weapon dynamic was more fun than in 2, where you were locked to only using your 'class weapon' types, whereas in 1 and 3 you could use any weapon, just your effectiveness would suffer somewhat for it [In 1 not all classes could train in every weapon, so an adept using an assault rifle would have reduced accuracy and such with it, whilst a soldier fully trained would be fine. In 3 heavier weapons meant longer cooldowns on abilities, so classes dependent on their abilities like the Adept could either carry 1 heavy gun like a sniper or assault rifle, or a couple of smaller guns, like pistols and SMGs, or have a +150% penalty to ability cooldown times].
Hacking and bypass minigames were the best in the series. 1's was... Meh, and 3's was non-existent.
Vehicle... Hope you like flying a tank made of tissue paper. No, really, this thing takes like 10 shots from a pistol and blows up. Slight exaggeration sure, but that's about it. Made gameplay in the Hammerhead terrible. The Mako was good. Some found it hard to control, IMO it was actually pretty easy, it had a lot of health and shields, a big gun and a machine gun, but it was still very vulnerable if you didn't take care of it. It meant you could go into a firefight and sit around shooting for a while, or driving in circles and gunning, whereas in ME2 you'd have to find a hill or cliff, shoot 3 times with your rapid fire low damage rocket launcher, then hide behind the cliff for fear of blowing up.
The story... Meh. It was alright. It did nothing in the slightest to advance the main plot of the series until the final 30 seconds, but it wasn't offensive and was generally enjoyable to playthrough.

Tips? Play Vanguard. No, seriously. In 1 the soldier was OP due to health regeneration. In 2 and 3 the Vanguard is OP due to charge.
If you're not playing the Vanguard there's only one tip that really matters; don't be an idiot, and don't get bored. The only way you can die in this game is if you leave your cover to fight an enemy either because you think you can take him and his 3 mates full clips of ammo [Hint, you can't, you have no health in ME2 for some reason], or you get bored of sitting in cover and decide to just screw it and pop up to shoot someone. Do that, and you'll die. Don't do that, and you literally cannot fail.
Oh, and note what each crew member is good at. You'll need to know at the end of the game. Or you could lookup a walkthrough, but that's no fun.

 

[CannibalCorpses]

lol, you've started with the worst game...the filler. Play the first 1 first...it's by far the best and actually has a story worth being a part of

 

[Maximum Bert]

Honest thoughts ok I will go through a brief list of what I liked and didnt like with the game bare in mind I didnt play all the DLC but ended up playing a reasonable amount over at a friends house for me if its DLC its not part of the main game because it wasnt included in the first place.

What I liked :-

Combat was decent

Tali was actually likeable in this one

Most crew member were better actually except Newt replacing Wrex

Conversations the first time round are usually fun.

What I didnt like :-

THE ATROCIOUS SCANNING MINIGAME good god that is one of the most tedious and least fun minigames I have ever played and you have to play it if you want to upgrade stuff and actually survive the main mission. Seriously this brought my enjoyment of the game right down it makes playing beyond a point an absolute chore and only exists as padding its like grinding only less fun. The trouble is without this annoying scanning shit the game would be completable in a few hours. I was glad they got rid of the stupid buggy from the first game but after playing this scanning shit I was begging for its return seriously it takes real effort to make something as bad as the scanning minigame.

Garrus...yup I hate that guy always have but at least you can kill him in this.

Locations are a lot smaller especially the citadel...why?

Conversations the second time, for a game that encourages repeat playthroughs the dialogue choices matter very little but you have to talk to people to get your points up hence just going through the motions.

Overall :-

I didnt like it as much as the first game I finished it twice this time once as a soldier (boring) and then as an infiltrator on insanity (ok) whereas the first one I finished 5 times. There is fun to be had here but it just didnt have the scope of the first game (which had its own problems) and for a game set in space that lets you travel between planets and clusters it massively linear. I dont mind linear games but here its so unfocused most of the places you can go do absolutely nothing so why let us? oh right so we can scan them er yaaay. After this game I was done with the franchise to be honest I got the 1000 points out of feeling obligation to myself more than anything due to getting 1000 in the last ME game but I had no desire to return and the story and crew members didnt have much hold on me to return again for the third installment I just didnt care what happened to anything TBH.

for Insanity playthrough I started at level 1 as an infiltrator and had the skill that puts enemies on your side (when it works sometimes they just get the buffs of being turned and still attack you and if that happens you are probably dead) I ranked up the turning one enemy as turning a group is useless.

With this set up I didnt have much trouble but in the end of the game change it to reap as harbinger is immune to the skill and will just mess up your plans or at least make the skill unusable anyway.

Oh and if you see some free DLC for it called firebird or something dont even bother downloading it as its terrible and not worth your time or the space it takes up on the hard drive.

 

[O maestre]

each class felt very different and very capable.. well perhaps not the adept.

Lol wut. The Adept was an amazing class. Still is in ME3. The CC and bouncing people all over the place was great. Just know your place as a support early game and an unstoppable force in the end. If you time it right, you can even Dominate Harbinger units.

My Adept @ final mission:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LamjQCq-DNg

More power to you, although that doesn't look like an insanity run. Any way if you read the context of my post I was comparing ME2 and ME1, and the Adept has definitely been nerfed in ME2 compared to the first game where the adept was an all powerful singularity wizard. In ME3 the adept was improved significantly, while the sentinel was gimped to uselessness.

 

[votemarvel]

Fair enough, no body has the same experience or interests and if anyone got hit hard by the gimp stick between ME1 and ME2 it was the adept.

No doubt about that. My big issue for the following two games was how the balance completely shifted in favour of the gun based classes, whereas in the first game each could be equally effective.

Most people however agree that the intention of ME1 was a cover based tactical shooter, since most of the other classes, at least on the higher difficulties had to get to cover one way or another.

And I think that is actually the problem. People went in expecting a shooter when it really isn't. It was a dice-roll game with a shooter skin. Kind of how Dragon Age II kept the dice-roll of its first game but on the consoles hid it under the coat of a hack and slash.

If you go in expecting a tactical cover based shooter, you're going to be disappointed.

I may not have a picture perfect recall of ME1's combat gameplay but I do remember it being more of a chore than actual fun. Adhering to a chest high wall or a wall sometimes failed miserably in ME1, but often enough you didn't even really need to protect yourself, all you had to do was min-max your equipment and let the numbers do the work for you.

I'm playing through the first game now and I confess that I'm loving it, combat included. Just finished Feros and then I'm off to Noveria to shoot Liara's mum in the face.

Perhaps the reason I prefer the first game is the numbers. I fully confess I am the type of guy who looks at the numbers for ages in these types of game, is the loss of a stat here worth the gain there.

ME2 brought player skill to the combat and the adrenaline of being vulnerable at every engagement. What I miss about ME1 is the exploration aspect and the illusion of not being linear and giving you some choice in where and how to approach combat. In ME2 and 3 you don't get rewarded for exploring, instead it rewarded you with tactical thinking as enemies actually used the environment for protection or tried to flank you collectively, in ME1 enemies just wandered around like a shooting gallery unless they got glitched on a wall. ME2 was also faster and more fluid in accessing your powers and executing them, despite the awful global cool down.

I enjoy shooters but Mass Effect didn't need to become one.

For me there was no adrenaline to being vulnerable because I knew it was a forced one. You were vulnerable because of the enemies perfect accuracy and that your shields did nothing to protect you. For me there was a horrible sense of inevitability, one that meant I'd be stuck behind that chest high wall again for the majority of the fight.

As I mentioned before, enemies do try and flank you in ME1, they back away if they are getting a beating. I swear there are two versions of the game out there. Nor have I seen enemies glitched on the walls, now I got that with Shepard but not the enemies. I got stuck on a rail in Feros and had to save and reload to free myself.

How was accessing powers faster more fluid? The only way I can think of is that you could map more powers to controller buttons, rather than just one in ME1. Something that doesn't matter in the PC versions since you can just use the hot-keys.

In the end it is all opinion, and most people agree that combat was not as enjoyable in the first game, and if you are bored than something is wrong. I feel for you man the Sentinel got the gimp stick in ME3 as well due to changes, and the changes to the adept between 1 and 2 was the worst,since the adepts powers were not "adapted" to being useful for a shooter.

Very much indeed, it would be a boring world indeed if everyone liked the same things. As I said, part of the enjoyment in the first game for me is the numbers.

Just some of my Mass Effect collection. I own three more copies of Mass Effect 1 alone.

 

[ItsNotRudy]

each class felt very different and very capable.. well perhaps not the adept.

Lol wut. The Adept was an amazing class. Still is in ME3. The CC and bouncing people all over the place was great. Just know your place as a support early game and an unstoppable force in the end. If you time it right, you can even Dominate Harbinger units.

My Adept @ final mission:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LamjQCq-DNg

More power to you, although that doesn't look like an insanity run. Any way if you read the context of my post I was comparing ME2 and ME1, and the Adept has definitely been nerfed in ME2 compared to the first game where the adept was an all powerful singularity wizard. In ME3 the adept was improved significantly, while the sentinel was gimped to uselessness.

I think it was insanity, I remember the suicide bombers in that mission 1-2 shotting me if they came close.

 

[votemarvel]

each class felt very different and very capable.. well perhaps not the adept.

Lol wut. The Adept was an amazing class. Still is in ME3. The CC and bouncing people all over the place was great. Just know your place as a support early game and an unstoppable force in the end. If you time it right, you can even Dominate Harbinger units.

My Adept @ final mission:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LamjQCq-DNg

More power to you, although that doesn't look like an insanity run. Any way if you read the context of my post I was comparing ME2 and ME1, and the Adept has definitely been nerfed in ME2 compared to the first game where the adept was an all powerful singularity wizard. In ME3 the adept was improved significantly, while the sentinel was gimped to uselessness.

I think it was insanity, I remember the suicide bombers in that mission 1-2 shotting me if they came close.

I doubt the content in that video is on Insanity.

On that difficultly level even the lower tier enemies have layers of protection. In the video the Collector Drones just had health bars.

 

[Ticklefist]

lol, you've started with the worst game...the filler. Play the first 1 first...it's by far the best and actually has a story worth being a part of

Contraire mon frere. If you're only going to play one Mass Effect game then you're playing the most fun, least frustrating one of the bunch.

Mass Effect 1: Underdeveloped from a gameplay perspective. Great story.
Mass Effect 2: More developed on the gameplay front. Great story, much more interesting characters than the first.
Mass Effect 3: Further improves upon the gameplay however... Imagine yourself as a basketball team. You score the most points. Only you don't win the game. You lose. And scoring the final basket makes the basketball court explode. Every basketball court ever. Nobody can ever play basketball again. But you ended the reaper threat and can buy DLC.

 

[Lovely Mixture]

In terms of gameplay, it's simplified but fun.

In terms of story presentation it's very good. In terms of character development it's good enough.

The actual story isn't very interesting, but the way it's told keeps you interested.

 

[votemarvel]

The over-arching story of the collectors is rather dull to be honest but it is the recruitment and loyalty missions that are fun. It feels like a TV show where there is a big bad in the background but most episodes don't have much to do with it.

I love Tali's loyalty mission. The voice acting from Ash Sroka (credited as Liz Sroka in the first two games) is absolutely superb, you can really feel the pain in her voice at a certain part.

Thane's loyalty mission is also great, no combat but you get brilliant character moments.

 

[Jynthor]

Play Mass Effect 1 first, it's definitely the best. Great story, different but fun gameplay, etc.
ME2 on the other hand, is a mediocre 3rd person shooter with one of the most retarded stories in video games, the plot has absolutely nothing to do with ME1.
And let's not even mention ME3.

 

[Another]

1. Play the first game. Not just because its good, but the bonus paragon/renegade score from importing a character helps immensely with some decisions and dialog options in the first half of the game, plus it will carry over some decisions that are not available in the opening comic.

2. Try a couple of different classes. I started with an infiltrator and thought it was alright. Then I tried vanguard and had a blast. The classes do feel quite different so play around a little.

 

[votemarvel]

The classes do feel quite different so play around a little.

Then realise you needn't bother with anything other than a Soldier.

I've doggedly stuck with an Adept throughout most of my runs through the trilogy but the Solder in two and three is simply the most effective.

You are never stuck without an option thanks to having a weapon and ammo power for every situation and enemy type. Combined with Adrenaline Rush and you may as well be Neo in the Matrix, nothing will get close to you.

Three made this even more obvious with the weight system. Simply apply an ammo power to each weapon before you start and cool-down doesn't matter.

 

[Gone Rampant]

Mass Effect was released as a trilogy package for PS3, 360 and PC this year- PC gets the most DLC, but PS3 users got a package of all of the DLC.

One thing to note is if you get DLC weapons- give them to your squad, no matter what. Due to an oversight, DLC weapons do as much damage with your squadmates as they do for you (Normal weapons do half damage), making Zaeed and Garrus game breakers early on with a Mattock and an Incisor.

 

[Another]

The classes do feel quite different so play around a little.

Then realise you needn't bother with anything other than a Soldier.

I've doggedly stuck with an Adept throughout most of my runs through the trilogy but the Solder in two and three is simply the most effective.

You are never stuck without an option thanks to having a weapon and ammo power for every situation and enemy type. Combined with Adrenaline Rush and you may as well be Neo in the Matrix, nothing will get close to you.

Three made this even more obvious with the weight system. Simply apply an ammo power to each weapon before you start and cool-down doesn't matter.

Effectiveness has nothing to do with it for me. I didn't find solider all that fun really, but kick ass biotic powers? Yeah, that was good.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

The fact you don't recognize what mood and tone are only proves that you don't understand what my complaints are in the first place.

I recognize what the are; however, you did not provide any example of difference in tone or mood. Nor did you describe how that difference was a net loss. Ergo, your argument has no basis.

I haven't expanded my points, because I didn't know if I'd have to. But so far, I'm the only one who has an argument. What are you trying to prove? All you're doing is going tit-for-tat, and I refuse to continue a conversation in that format. I have given you plenty of material, and you are well aware of my opinion. You know my thesis, main points, and conclusion. But all I have from you are counter-points. From my perspective, you're arguing for the sake of arguing. Sorry that I made false assumptions, but you have given me nothing to work with. So I ask kindly: What do you think about this topic as a whole?

I personally think that, on the balance, ME2 is a vastly superior game than the first. I think the reduction or elimination of certain elements produced a game that gave the player a greater opportunity to make a meaningful choice and drastically reduced the amount of busy work the game asked of me. I think it has a better cast of characters and has better character interactions across the board.

The one place where I think the game is truly deficient is simply that the overarching plot of the game undermined the franchise as a whole. The time Shepard bought after bringing the threat to light was shown to have been utterly wasted and the miracle the Protheans gave their last full measure for was squandered. It is what in large part convinced me that the ending of the series was going to be silly and, at least in some respect, what probably allowed me to better resist the ills of watching a beloved franchise end less gracefully than I would have wanted.

My disagreements with your position (even though we seem to at least agree on several broad points) are with specific details. For example, I do not view the loss of the Mako sequence as a loss for two reasons: first, they were a dreadful bore and shameless effort at padding what is actually a remarkably short game if you simply follow the main quest to completion and second because they had no real reason to exist. The strength of the game was in it's characters and replacing them with a tank that featured attrocious handling and asking you do nothing but navigate ruined hellscapes and engage in tedious combat directly undermines that. Likewise, I do not view the dramatic reduction in options for skills or weapons or armor as a loss simply because in spite of an overwhelming abundance of such things, you were only making a handful of meaningful decisions anyhow.

That one requires some explanation: In Mass Effect, the weapons really only differ when comparing different classes and while a pistol was a pistol and only differed in that newer models simply had higher stats a pistol was at least somewhat different than a shotgun. There was no choice between two models of pistol: there was simply a best one to use at any given moment and there was never a compelling reason to use another example until a better one is found. So you're only real choice was which weapon skill you wanted to put points into. Given that you needed to spend many points before you saw any significant change in performance this meant you were actually asked to choose which weapon you wanted to be useful with.

Mass Effect 2 instead selects which weapons you will be useful with by forcing all classes save soldiers to take a reduced set of weapons. But in each category of weapon you can carry, there were at least two (and usually three or more) weapons that operated differently. It allows the player to choose a weapon that best suits their style of play. So, while I might favor an ultra high damage shotgun as a vanguard, as an engineer I might generally favor the longer ranged model. This same theme plays out across lots of systems in the game. Mass Effect 2 is a much, much smaller game but that reduction simply culled illusionary choices and meaningless padding. In it's place is more character interactions, more missions, more people to talk to that actually have interesting things to say.

And sure the game loses out on lots of little side quests that Mass Effect 1 has but even here It would be hard to say it was a loss. While they helped flesh out the world greatly, once the stakes had been so heavily raised and the nature of the threat known stopping to deal with a "Big stupid jellyfish" would be insane. Shepard is a man (or woman) who is one of the only people in the galaxy in a desperate fight for the survival of the galaxy - not really the sort of man who'd waste precious hours tracking down information about a petty crook on the Citadel when there are thousands of perfectly capable C-Sec officers who could do the same. It is a loss from the perspective of the game, yes, but it also makes sense from the perspective of the narrative itself.

I do not regard Mass Effect 2 as perfect or beyond reproach of course; I simply seem to have a different perspective of the relative value and importance of a number of elements of the first game. In spite of the improvements, it is still a fairly mediocre shooter. Most of the combat set pieces are fairly dull and your AI companions still rely entirely on you to keep them alive and force them into being useful. And, as I have already said, while it tells a lot of small stories well, the grand story of the game as a whole really doesn't make a lot of sense and fundamentally undermined the franchise as a whole. Basically, it forced the final game to resolution by deus ex machina.

 

[votemarvel]

The classes do feel quite different so play around a little.

Then realise you needn't bother with anything other than a Soldier.

I've doggedly stuck with an Adept throughout most of my runs through the trilogy but the Solder in two and three is simply the most effective.

You are never stuck without an option thanks to having a weapon and ammo power for every situation and enemy type. Combined with Adrenaline Rush and you may as well be Neo in the Matrix, nothing will get close to you.

Three made this even more obvious with the weight system. Simply apply an ammo power to each weapon before you start and cool-down doesn't matter.

Effectiveness has nothing to do with it for me. I didn't find solider all that fun really, but kick ass biotic powers? Yeah, that was good.

Kick-ass biotic powers? You mean those abilities that did next to nothing to enemies with protection...like all of them on Insanity.

The only game in which biotics have been kick-ass was the first.

 

[Bocaj2000]

I personally think that, on the balance, ME2 is a vastly superior game than the first. I think the reduction or elimination of certain elements produced a game that gave the player a greater opportunity to make a meaningful choice and drastically reduced the amount of busy work the game asked of me. I think it has a better cast of characters and has better character interactions across the board.

The one place where I think the game is truly deficient is simply that the overarching plot of the game undermined the franchise as a whole. The time Shepard bought after bringing the threat to light was shown to have been utterly wasted and the miracle the Protheans gave their last full measure for was squandered. It is what in large part convinced me that the ending of the series was going to be silly and, at least in some respect, what probably allowed me to better resist the ills of watching a beloved franchise end less gracefully than I would have wanted.

My disagreements with your position (even though we seem to at least agree on several broad points) are with specific details. For example, I do not view the loss of the Mako sequence as a loss for two reasons: first, they were a dreadful bore and shameless effort at padding what is actually a remarkably short game if you simply follow the main quest to completion and second because they had no real reason to exist. The strength of the game was in it's characters and replacing them with a tank that featured attrocious handling and asking you do nothing but navigate ruined hellscapes and engage in tedious combat directly undermines that. Likewise, I do not view the dramatic reduction in options for skills or weapons or armor as a loss simply because in spite of an overwhelming abundance of such things, you were only making a handful of meaningful decisions anyhow.

That one requires some explanation: In Mass Effect, the weapons really only differ when comparing different classes and while a pistol was a pistol and only differed in that newer models simply had higher stats a pistol was at least somewhat different than a shotgun. There was no choice between two models of pistol: there was simply a best one to use at any given moment and there was never a compelling reason to use another example until a better one is found. So you're only real choice was which weapon skill you wanted to put points into. Given that you needed to spend many points before you saw any significant change in performance this meant you were actually asked to choose which weapon you wanted to be useful with.

Mass Effect 2 instead selects which weapons you will be useful with by forcing all classes save soldiers to take a reduced set of weapons. But in each category of weapon you can carry, there were at least two (and usually three or more) weapons that operated differently. It allows the player to choose a weapon that best suits their style of play. So, while I might favor an ultra high damage shotgun as a vanguard, as an engineer I might generally favor the longer ranged model. This same theme plays out across lots of systems in the game. Mass Effect 2 is a much, much smaller game but that reduction simply culled illusionary choices and meaningless padding. In it's place is more character interactions, more missions, more people to talk to that actually have interesting things to say.

And sure the game loses out on lots of little side quests that Mass Effect 1 has but even here It would be hard to say it was a loss. While they helped flesh out the world greatly, once the stakes had been so heavily raised and the nature of the threat known stopping to deal with a "Big stupid jellyfish" would be insane. Shepard is a man (or woman) who is one of the only people in the galaxy in a desperate fight for the survival of the galaxy - not really the sort of man who'd waste precious hours tracking down information about a petty crook on the Citadel when there are thousands of perfectly capable C-Sec officers who could do the same. It is a loss from the perspective of the game, yes, but it also makes sense from the perspective of the narrative itself.

I do not regard Mass Effect 2 as perfect or beyond reproach of course; I simply seem to have a different perspective of the relative value and importance of a number of elements of the first game. In spite of the improvements, it is still a fairly mediocre shooter. Most of the combat set pieces are fairly dull and your AI companions still rely entirely on you to keep them alive and force them into being useful. And, as I have already said, while it tells a lot of small stories well, the grand story of the game as a whole really doesn't make a lot of sense and fundamentally undermined the franchise as a whole. Basically, it forced the final game to resolution by deus ex machina.

Thank you ^-^ Your opinion was very interesting and shows that we have more common ground than initially displayed.

I agree that "as a game", the ME2 is far superior than the first. It plays better, has better characters, and looks better. The game is at a faster pace and main quests consist of 90% of the game. So, yes, as a traditional AAA title, this is far superior in every way.

The reason I prefer ME1 is that it had stronger gesamtkunstwerk*. What that means is that every thing about the game perfectly fits together better as a whole. While, as individual pieces, Mass Effect is a weak game, as a whole, it is a masterpiece. A lot of the things that were taken out from ME1 detracted from the universe as a whole. For example, the changes to the Citadel: a lot smaller and no more integrated loading (aka elevators). These two things added a sense of space and largeness to the Citadel. The elevators specifically helped explore this. Also, the elevators would give opportunities for conversations between characters or news reels, which both gave depth to the ME characters and universe. The Citadel was a grandiose place, and helped establish the tone that the galaxy is a huge place.

Yes, making the Citadel smaller in ME2 was more efficient- once again better for a game- but it didn't have the grand atmosphere the ME1 did, and didn't leave any kind of impression on me. In fact, it was very claustrophobic much like Omega. Speaking of which, almost all of the levels in ME2 were claustrophobic, even when I was outside. This would have worked in Omega or the Collector base, but even on Illium I was feeling camped. With little to no spacial variety, I felt like the spacing was considerably weaker in ME2.

This is a complete inversion to ME1's abundance of spaciousness, something that you complain about. But it is one of ME1's defining traits, and one that is vital to the gesamtkunstwerk of the game. The planets that you explore on the Mako are HUGE and give the planet more depth than if you were to explore solely on foot. The Mako is to ME1 as Agro is to Shadow of the Colossus. You may have saw it as tedious padding, but I found the exploration to be engaging.

Another thing that I found very engaging in ME1 was the abundance of side quests. As you said, it fleshed out the world. To me, though, the some of the side quests were the most engaging parts of the game. I developed my character the way I saw fit. Did it fit the narrative? Yes. It fit the narrative that I, the player, created. In interactive media, the player's story is infinitely more important than the creators' narrative. It might not have fit your character to do side quests, but it fit mine. These side quests shaped my Shepard's character based on the decisions that I made. Contrast this to ME 2: the side quests were about developing the characteristics of your squadmates, not you. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but in interactive media the player should be the main priority, not the NPCs. The only three missions that I can think of off the top of my head that allowed Shepard to develop were Jacob's mission, the dog tag mission, and Arrival (my favorite mission of the game).

Admittedly, the plethora of similar weapons and armor in ME1 was bad game design and should have been executed better. With that said, I learned about various companies who produced these items. On Noveria, there were even political schemes executed by these companies. ME2 did a better job at explaining each weapon, and ME3 did a better job at showing variety within the companies. I'm not saying which is preferred, but it was nice to have a play through with characters who are loyal to a specific brand. Also, ME1 had my favorite sound effects for the guns; by that I mean that they sounded like rail guns... because that is what the guns are in ME.

Thank you again for telling me you opinion on the matter. It reminds me of the time my friend and I were discussing the differences between each Elder Scrolls game. He liked Morrowind the best but I found it unplayable due to the outdated mechanics. It's a similar conversation with Deus Ex: the Conspiracy and Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Etc. To each their own.

Spoiler: Gesamtkunstwerk*

The following video provides a more entertaining explanation of the word.