Hurr Durr Derp said:
Personally I couldn't stand Mass Effect 1 (to the point that I decided I'd rather read a Wikipedia synopsis than actually finish it) and found that I MUCH preferred Mass Effect 2 when I gave it a shot. The micromanagement honestly didn't faze me; I'm a long-time RPG gamer and tabletop RPG developer myself, that just kind of comes with the territory; but a lot of the typical Bioware RPG trappings just didn't feel like they suited the first game to me and a lot of the systems, particularly Biotics, just felt broken. That said, I figured I'd chip in my two cents. I agree on some points and disagree on others.
1 - The Guns
Yes, it's impossible to completely run out of ammo, but depending on your play style you can run out basically for the rest of any given encounter. Personally I played an infiltrator and leaned on my sniper rifle for most of the game, the other guns in my arsenal being relatively weak in comparison. I didn't feel stressed by the ammo limitations, necessarily, but every so often I would find myself with only three or four shots, six guys left to deal with, and more waves of enemies on their way. I need only leave my cover and go grab some clips to refill and go back to kicking ass, but that's the beauty of it: it DID get me leaving cover and taking risks to continue using my favorite weapon.
2 - Inventory System
I was skeptical at first, but the streamlining felt welcome to me; a lot more realistic that I didn't have to buy my own equipment. As the most respected, most badass marine in the galaxy with your own ship, your own crew of engineers, your own armory, and tremendous backing from a major organization, does it really make sense that they'd make you buy your own guns on some backwater shithole planet? That'd be like if I were playing Rainbow Six or SWAT 4 and had to buy my own weapons in back alleys between missions. Inventory micromanagement just shouldn't be the challenge here when the game is limited to the comparatively simple task of squad-based shooting.
3 - Skills
Let's put into perspective what skills they dropped: all the ones that gradually removed artificial aiming/accuracy restrictions, which was just dumb; one of those aspects of the first game that I felt made it both a bad RPG AND a bad shooter. Instead of putting the special abilities on their tracks, they separated them out--making it a lot more clear what the player was upgrading to begin with--and made the upgrades less frequent but more significant. In other words, they narrowed it down to just the ones that actually mattered. As far as weapon skills go, you either CAN use a particular weapon or CAN'T, and that's how it should be if they're going to have weapon proficiency differences between classes anyway. In a tabletop RPG where you can fudge this in a thousand different ways over the course of 20 levels this doesn't make sense, but this is a video game, and it keeps the tactical differences between characters very clear and explicit, which is vital for keeping things well-balanced. OTHER upgrades come in the form of Shepard's armor pieces and various research-based upgrades, so you still get a lot of those elements, just in a different form.
I got no rebuttal towards the dialogue upgrading, though--I'd have actually preferred to have more control over that like in the first game.
4 - Minigames
Given all the other streamlining that's gone on in this game, how would you propose the player acquire Omnigel? You got it in the first game through the micromanagement that no longer exists in the second game, which is a lot more mission-based and refills most of your resources between missions. At best you could have it work like Medi-Gel or heavy weapons' ammunition, which DOESN'T refill between missions and has to be found in containers and stuff, but that'd feel a bit TOO artificial to me, and it would remove the pressure from a lot of the more important bypasses and hack-jobs. As it is there isn't much given how piss-easy these minigames are, but that would take ALL the air out of 'em.
Frankly I'd have preferred something with a bit more depth to it, something that could've been modified to be more or less difficult in more interesting ways; as it is, the only variable is whether you have just four dots to match on the Bypass screen or five, and I'll give you that it does get monotonous and annoying after a while. At least they go by quickly.
One last thing: let's remember that they didn't just replace the PC version of Mass Effect 1's "frogger" minigame. The Xbox 360 version was just a quick-time event-style prompt. The hacking minigames aren't great, but it's still better than that.
5 - Loading Screens
My loading screens went by in a couple of seconds each, so this made no difference to me. Can't say anything here.
6 - Non-plot-related planets
I don't think anybody is going to disagree with you here.
7 - Exploration
The first game at least came up with some surprises, like the Thresher Maw popping up on the random planet here or there unexpectedly. When you realize it's a common setpiece and that this'll happen on several planets it loses all its punch, but it was there. Never had a problem running out of gas, always had plenty of cash for that, and frankly, the resource consumption put a good amount of interest in it for me, making it a more relevant part of the rest of the game... when I actually bothered to do it.
Yeah, neither of these games are all that good at incentivizing exploration. The best they're able to do is throw around a bunch of semi-story-related side-quests and just make it convenient to go off to the side and waste time with the damn mining mini-game. This is the key problem with all the streamlining they did; the game's a lot tighter, more focused, and better-balanced, but there's a lot fewer surprises and a lot fewer opportunities to create fun.
. Particularly with the uber shotgun you get later on.
