Poll: Mass Effect 2, from satisfied to disappointed

[Conza]

Let me make something clear before you read my rant, I still love Mass Effect 1 & 2 dearly, and some may think I'm splitting hairs by writing this, but I think it deserves being said.

Originally, I played Mass Effect as an Infiltrator, beat it and loved it, then immediately imported my character into Mass Effect 2, beat it and loved it (February '10 or something is when I started playing this series).

I've just gone back and beat Mass Effect on Hardcore, with a Sentinel character, and I re-fell in love with the game, even just the Spacebar over the Right-Shift and E and Right-Shirt over... both Spacebar.

Ok, hair splitting time.

Mass Effect 1 (from here on in M1 and M2 to shorten), Unity was a power, and Medigel was separate, now it's one and the same (a power that uses the Medigel), and there's less of it! Powers in M1 also had much longer, but 'individual' recharge times, which was wonderful, now, they all have varied recharge times, but use one and block the rest, so if I use tech-armour, it takes ages before I can use anything else, which is just unnecessary.

There's also less powers per class, and the powers themselves are less effective. Weapons, now, M1 had a ridiculous amount yes, (and since it was just the same fours weapons with different stats, M2 can be seen to have more in a way), M2 adds the auto-sniper, which I love, however, the powers to equip/use different ammos I think doesn't really work, they should bring the mods back (in a more limited capacity than M1s 20x10 mods).

The levelling system sucks in M2, M1 it might've been a bit much, but there was a 60 lvl cap, which was great, and you could spend 1 point at a time on a certain power, M2 its 1, then 2, then 3, then 4, and that's it? There's also less powers and options to upgrade.

Now, powers on shields and armour, that's just all wrong, I should be able to tell Jacob to lift up an entire group of shielded enemies, then have Miranda Overload all their shields, then in slow motion (+1 for M2), snipe out the enemies. What happens instead? I have to snipe the shields off the enemies first, using overload on 'one' enemy at a time, then when it doesn't seem worth it anymore, lift the enemy/ies without a shield, and then snipe/pistol them out.

Infiltrators and Vanguards have been nerfed, power wise anyway, I feel, Infiltrator basically gets the Sniper and only retains a few tech abilities, in M1 he was a perfect combination of Engineer and Soldier, sacrifice the shotgun and assault rifle and receive most of the tech powers instead, now I think it's probably one of the harder classes.

Oh, and planet scanning, we all hate that I hope. I know many of us didn't like the car thing, but c'mon, it was just an enabler for combat, so what if it got stuck on 80 degree mountains but not 79, and had a tendency to oversteer? You got to hunt Geth.

Geth! I loved killed Geth, all sorts of Geth, the giant walkers, the mini ones that'd snipe you, the Destroyers and the Prime, all of them, great great enemy. Mechs? What the hell? No, I hate Mechs, they were okish, but nothing on Geth (Geth will probably come back in M3 anyway).

The ending [SPOILER ALERT STOP READING NOW AND FINISH THE GAME IF YOU HAVEN'T AND PLAN TO] where you had to either keep the awesome technology (Renegade), or destroy it (Paragon) is a bit irritating, since this character was Paragon, so I was forced to give it up.

So, was 'everything' improved in M2? Only some bits and others made worse? Or was it all worse? I hope the five options are enough.

I actually don't know my current answer, at the moment "kinda worse" but I'll have to see what you think and whether or not I can beat the game on Insanity with my re-imported M2 Infiltrator will persuade me somewhat (suggestions on which character out of the first 3 are easiest to get would be helpful).

I'm hoping some people will dissect certain portions of my rant and say to me why (I'm just wrong ) they disagree/agree with me, but I'm hoping this gives attention for M3, in the vague hope that M3 will turn back to be more like M1. Feel free to add anything I've missed that you dis/liked from either game, regardless of whether it was improved upon or not in M2.

I think a balance between the two games would be the perfect happy medium, a dozen of each weapon, bring back the mods in a smaller way (including the inventory system), shoot the planet scanning in the knee caps, and yeah, just be a beater all round game.

EDIT 1: Big thing I forgot, I also hate the heat clips, bring back the heat bar, that was so much better! My pistol in M1 had infinite ammo (Frictionless Material x2, oh yeah), but in M2, I'm constantly running out of ammo (and no, I'm not a bad shot! ).

 

[number2301]

I went for 'kinda better', meaning to me mostly better. The majority of your complaints are basically the streamlining done between the two games. Personally I was happy with the less micromanagement but would have very happily kept the Mako and the more indepth leveling system.

 

[Jordi]

I went for 'kinda better', meaning to me mostly better. The majority of your complaints are basically the streamlining done between the two games. Personally I was happy with the less micromanagement but would have very happily kept the Mako and the more indepth leveling system.

Streamlining is the exact same thing as "dumbing down". It's just reducing complexity. People who like the complexity that is taken away call it "dumbing down", people who didn't like it call it "streamlining". So to say that something is good, because it is streamlining, kind of seems like circular reasoning to me.

Personally, I mostly like how they streamlined the inventory/looting, but I don't like how they dumbed down the classes and skills. The story in ME2 was worse, but if memory serves the environments were less repetitive. Overall I enjoyed ME1 a little more, but I thought both were awesome.

 

[The Wykydtron]

The Infiltrator was nerfed? Lol what? How much of a powerhouse was he in ME1 then? Cuz the ME2 Infiltrator is fucking awesome!

And the whole sheilds armour health thing is just to stop you powering through the entire game as an Adept (apparently) like ME1

Yeah i've only played as a Solider and Engineer on ME1

But the real victim in all this was the 'nades in ME1 yet strangely absent from ME2...They were awesome!

And I don't really want to go back to mindless Geth slaughter after Legion...

 

[kayisking]

I went for 'kinda better', meaning to me mostly better. The majority of your complaints are basically the streamlining done between the two games. Personally I was happy with the less micromanagement but would have very happily kept the Mako and the more indepth leveling system.

Streamlining is the exact same thing as "dumbing down". It's just reducing complexity. People who like the complexity that is taken away call it "dumbing down", people who didn't like it call it "streamlining". So to say that something is good, because it is streamlining, kind of seems like circular reasoning to me.

Personally, I mostly like how they streamlined the inventory/looting, but I don't like how they dumbed down the classes and skills. The story in ME2 was worse, but if memory serves the environments were less repetitive. Overall I enjoyed ME1 a little more, but I thought both were awesome.

It is not the same. One of the most complex games in the world is chess, a game with very few rules. To take away the things that are redundant is streamlining, but that does not necessairly make it less complex, just less complicated.

 

[AndrewF022]

I agree with everything you said, except that I don't believe that the Infiltrator was nerfed, for me it was the easiest class to play as, cloaking, the scope bullet time mechanic, the SMG almost made up for the lack of an assault rifle, with the right party members you could handle anything the higher difficulties threw at you with ease.

But don't get me started on them taking away my mako and sticking me with that god awful planet scanning bullshit, luckily on the PC I could just alter my mouses sensitivity the insane levels to make it faster, still no less boring, its just over faster.

 

[Idsertian]

It was kinda worse for me. Allow me to rant in conjunction with your rant, sir.

Ammo. What the hell Bioware? This is a retrograde step. Why in the hell would anyone who has the technology for basically limitless ammo (ME1), suddenly change that technology to what is basically an ammo based system? Shit design choice, end of. Only saving grace is that the weapons didn't all use one ammo pool.

Planet scanning. Yep, it's detestable. The only thing I liked about it was reading the planet descriptions. BRING BACK THE MAKO!

The leveling system. Don't even get me started on the leveling system. I was severely disappointed in the blatant dumbing down of leveling up in ME2. I enjoyed ME1 immensely for its KOTOR-ness, in part due to the leveling system. It was great. Now it's just a hideous mess of a thing, with (if you're lucky) half a dozen skills/powers to improve. I enjoyed having to pick what core skills I wanted my party to have, now all you have to do is pick which one or two of the skills you want to sacrifice by the end of the game to have the others maxed out. Bah.

Powers. Agree with you on every point there. Utterly pointless way of doing things. Absolutely loved hitting enemies with multiple powers at once in the first game, was one of those "fear me mortals, for I am a god" moments.

Medigel. Another pointless "streamlining". Took a little while to get used to it actually, particularly as Bioware instigated that stupid regenerating health malarky. No, our health should only regenerate if we have EARNED IT. i.e. installed armour mods or earned the achievements that do that. Even then, the gain from those was pretty small (like 1 health a second). Using Medigel to revive fallen team members makes sense within the universe, just I miss the overall health system from the first game.

Inventory. I'm a bit torn on this subject. On the one hand it was awesome to finally find enough stuff to sell to be able to get enough credits to finally buy all the Spectre X gear for everyone. Plus the various mods were awesome, reducing heat, adding this kind of damage, protecting from this, etc etc. Everything I loved about KOTOR was there. On the other hand, the streamlining gives you a nice concise weapons cache to use and means you can save credits for buying the various upgrades in the game. Conversely you could just argue "well put more credits in the game so you can buy both". Put a gun to my head, I guess I prefer ME 1's inventory.

N7 missions. My god these felt un-satisfying for some reason. I don't know why, but all the side missions in ME 2 lacked the impact that they had in ME 1. Possibly because there didn't seem to be any work up or reason for them. Felt tacked on maybe.

The only things I felt improved in ME 2 were the characters (they're all pretty well developed and fun to talk to), the graphics (nuff said) and the story which developed nicely out of the first game, even though it's just as short as its predecessor.

In short, Bioware basically sold their souls to the EA devil and don't give two shits about it. Stupid move on their part really.

EDIT: As The Wykydtron pointed out, grenades are absent too. They were awesome, I loved the grenades.

 

[manythings]

Oh my fucking christ. We have nine hundred of these threads already. It'll only get worse when The Old Republic and ME3 come out, so how about stopping for just a few months? Please?

 

[Conza]

I agree with everything you said, except that I don't believe that the Infiltrator was nerfed, for me it was the easiest class to play as, cloaking, the scope bullet time mechanic, the SMG almost made up for the lack of an assault rifle, with the right party members you could handle anything the higher difficulties threw at you with ease.

But don't get me started on them taking away my mako and sticking me with that god awful planet scanning bullshit, luckily on the PC I could just alter my mouses sensitivity the insane levels to make it faster, still no less boring, its just over faster.

Wow, amazing to see someone so similarly polarized! That's kinda cool.

Well I've maxed out the cloak now in my second play through of M2, but it just doesn't seem to last long enough, and I think I selected the option for length not damage reduction, or something.

And key statement you made there, with the right party members it might be a different story, I haven't gotten any of them again yet! But I'll perservere.

I went for 'kinda better', meaning to me mostly better. The majority of your complaints are basically the streamlining done between the two games. Personally I was happy with the less micromanagement but would have very happily kept the Mako and the more indepth leveling system.

Streamlining is the exact same thing as "dumbing down". It's just reducing complexity. People who like the complexity that is taken away call it "dumbing down", people who didn't like it call it "streamlining". So to say that something is good, because it is streamlining, kind of seems like circular reasoning to me.

Personally, I mostly like how they streamlined the inventory/looting, but I don't like how they dumbed down the classes and skills. The story in ME2 was worse, but if memory serves the environments were less repetitive. Overall I enjoyed ME1 a little more, but I thought both were awesome.

It is not the same. One of the most complex games in the world is chess, a game with very few rules. To take away the things that are redundant is streamlining, but that does not necessairly make it less complex, just less complicated.

Fair enough, streamlining is usually seen as removing unnecessary processes, and to some, the mods, inventory, ect, were all unnecessary, but I feel they really added the game, so I'm more on Jordi's view of it being 'dumbed down' rather than simply process improved.

 

[A Username Not In Use]

I hated it. I loved Mass Effect 1 byt 2 just seem so disconnected from it that there were times when I wondered if anyone who worked on it had ever heard of the first game. I'm not even going to bother with the third one when it comes out.

 

[Not-here-anymore]

I replayed ME1 fairly recently. The stripped-down inventory in 2 works, trust me. All you're doing in 1 is replacing ammo types/weapon parts with an upgraded version of same. And there is an absolute best weapon in every class (the spectre ones), which means there's no real stat comparison.

Whilst I did like the overheat mechanism over the heat sink reload, it was far too easy to exploit. By the end I had a sniper rifle that simply could not overheat courtesy of its rate of fire.

The planet scanning was bullshit though. Even if I did find the 'probing Uranus' bit far funnier than it should have been...

 

[AndrewF022]

As for party members, as long as you have a Biotic your sweet, I used Miranda the whole game (on insanity), and then just subbed in people who I needed for specific missions. Garrus is a solid second, having two snipers, and an assault rifle is a huge bonus, have him hang back and rush up with your biotic, thats pretty much how I played it.

But I suppose opinions are just that, you play differently to me, so experience it differently, I despise the Vanguard, but a mate of mine swears by them, so I understand where you coming from.

 

[Conza]

It was kinda worse for me. Allow me to rant in conjunction with your rant, sir.

Ammo. What the hell Bioware? This is a retrograde step. Why in the hell would anyone who has the technology for basically limitless ammo (ME1), suddenly change that technology to what is basically an ammo based system? Shit design choice, end of. Only saving grace is that the weapons didn't all use one ammo pool.

Planet scanning. Yep, it's detestable. The only thing I liked about it was reading the planet descriptions. BRING BACK THE MAKO!

The leveling system. Don't even get me started on the leveling system. I was severely disappointed in the blatant dumbing down of leveling up in ME2. I enjoyed ME1 immensely for its KOTOR-ness, in part due to the leveling system. It was great. Now it's just a hideous mess of a thing, with (if you're lucky) half a dozen skills/powers to improve. I enjoyed having to pick what core skills I wanted my party to have, now all you have to do is pick which one or two of the skills you want to sacrifice by the end of the game to have the others maxed out. Bah.

Powers. Agree with you on every point there. Utterly pointless way of doing things. Absolutely loved hitting enemies with multiple powers at once in the first game, was one of those "fear me mortals, for I am a god" moments.

Medigel. Another pointless "streamlining". Took a little while to get used to it actually, particularly as Bioware instigated that stupid regenerating health malarky. No, our health should only regenerate if we have EARNED IT. i.e. installed armour mods or earned the achievements that do that. Even then, the gain from those was pretty small (like 1 health a second). Using Medigel to revive fallen team members makes sense within the universe, just I miss the overall health system from the first game.

Inventory. I'm a bit torn on this subject. On the one hand it was awesome to finally find enough stuff to sell to be able to get enough credits to finally buy all the Spectre X gear for everyone. Plus the various mods were awesome, reducing heat, adding this kind of damage, protecting from this, etc etc. Everything I loved about KOTOR was there. On the other hand, the streamlining gives you a nice concise weapons cache to use and means you can save credits for buying the various upgrades in the game. Conversely you could just argue "well put more credits in the game so you can buy both". Put a gun to my head, I guess I prefer ME 1's inventory.

N7 missions. My god these felt un-satisfying for some reason. I don't know why, but all the side missions in ME 2 lacked the impact that they had in ME 1. Possibly because there didn't seem to be any work up or reason for them. Felt tacked on maybe.

The only things I felt improved in ME 2 were the characters (they're all pretty well developed and fun to talk to), the graphics (nuff said) and the story which developed nicely out of the first game, even though it's just as short as its predecessor.

In short, Bioware basically sold their souls to the EA devil and don't give two shits about it. Stupid move on their part really.

EDIT: As The Wykydtron pointed out, grenades are absent too. They were awesome, I loved the grenades.

Thank you, you've added heaps of great stuff there, I agree with everything, except, did you really think the story was better? I felt M1 was more complete, even though the impending Reaper threat remained by the end of the game, there was a definitive objective and it was achieved, in M2, it was kinda, 'yeah we killed that giant human reaper, thing (or not, or whatever), but that didn't help much' - maybe that's just me.

I hated it. I loved Mass Effect 1 byt 2 just seem so disconnected from it that there were times when I wondered if anyone who worked on it had ever heard of the first game. I'm not even going to bother with the third one when it comes out.

Dude no! Give it a chance, I actually gasped when I read that - there's still a chance man, even if you wait till it drops below 50 bucks, eBay or something, you gotta atleast give it a go.

 

[kayisking]

I agree with everything you said, except that I don't believe that the Infiltrator was nerfed, for me it was the easiest class to play as, cloaking, the scope bullet time mechanic, the SMG almost made up for the lack of an assault rifle, with the right party members you could handle anything the higher difficulties threw at you with ease.

But don't get me started on them taking away my mako and sticking me with that god awful planet scanning bullshit, luckily on the PC I could just alter my mouses sensitivity the insane levels to make it faster, still no less boring, its just over faster.

Wow, amazing to see someone so similarly polarized! That's kinda cool.

Well I've maxed out the cloak now in my second play through of M2, but it just doesn't seem to last long enough, and I think I selected the option for length not damage reduction, or something.

And key statement you made there, with the right party members it might be a different story, I haven't gotten any of them again yet! But I'll perservere.

I went for 'kinda better', meaning to me mostly better. The majority of your complaints are basically the streamlining done between the two games. Personally I was happy with the less micromanagement but would have very happily kept the Mako and the more indepth leveling system.

Streamlining is the exact same thing as "dumbing down". It's just reducing complexity. People who like the complexity that is taken away call it "dumbing down", people who didn't like it call it "streamlining". So to say that something is good, because it is streamlining, kind of seems like circular reasoning to me.

Personally, I mostly like how they streamlined the inventory/looting, but I don't like how they dumbed down the classes and skills. The story in ME2 was worse, but if memory serves the environments were less repetitive. Overall I enjoyed ME1 a little more, but I thought both were awesome.

It is not the same. One of the most complex games in the world is chess, a game with very few rules. To take away the things that are redundant is streamlining, but that does not necessairly make it less complex, just less complicated.

Fair enough, streamlining is usually seen as removing unnecessary processes, and to some, the mods, inventory, ect, were all unnecessary, but I feel they really added the game, so I'm more on Jordi's view of it being 'dumbed down' rather than simply process improved.

I disagree with you there as well, but everybody has the right to their own opinion. I'm just glad that you acknowledge that there's a difference between streamlining and dumbing down.

 

[ZehMadScientist]

he leveling system of ME2 sucked, I'll give you that, but ME1's was even worse. Sure there were tons of powers in comparison with ME2, but every upgrade giving a 1% power bonus is just ridiculous.

Also liked ME2 more because the characters were deeper and more fun to talk to, even though I didn't really felt like using that damn elevator everytime I want to speak someone (this goes for both ME1 and ME2, but in ME2 you had three fuckin floors with 30 second loading times each, really got on my nerves after a while)

 

[WouldYouKindly]

Too much shooter, not enough RPG. I can get space marine shooters a dime a dozen. I can't get a good sci-fi RPG AAA title every day. Also, mineral scanning needs to go die, same thing with ammo powers, waste of a skill.

 

[Jordi]

I went for 'kinda better', meaning to me mostly better. The majority of your complaints are basically the streamlining done between the two games. Personally I was happy with the less micromanagement but would have very happily kept the Mako and the more indepth leveling system.

Streamlining is the exact same thing as "dumbing down". It's just reducing complexity. People who like the complexity that is taken away call it "dumbing down", people who didn't like it call it "streamlining". So to say that something is good, because it is streamlining, kind of seems like circular reasoning to me.

Personally, I mostly like how they streamlined the inventory/looting, but I don't like how they dumbed down the classes and skills. The story in ME2 was worse, but if memory serves the environments were less repetitive. Overall I enjoyed ME1 a little more, but I thought both were awesome.

It is not the same. One of the most complex games in the world is chess, a game with very few rules. To take away the things that are redundant is streamlining, but that does not necessairly make it less complex, just less complicated.

Maybe complexity is not exactly the right word. I just mean that streamlining and dumbing down are both just the act of removing "stuff" from a previous game. It seems to me that streamlining is just removal gone right, and dumbing down is removal gone wrong. They are just different words to express a personal value judgment on the same process.

Whether the stuff that was removed is redundant completely depends on who you ask. So if streamlining is "good removal", then saying "it was streamlining, therefor it was good" is like saying "it was good removal, therefor it was good". Which is circular and meaningless. You still have to say why you think that whatever was removed was good/bad/redundant/essential/whatever.

 

[Ascarus]

i was all better in my opinion. i was able to forgive the lack of RPG depth and plot related quests since the game play was such a massive improvement over the first installment in every other way.

 

[Confidingtripod]

There was way too much loot in ME1 but I still think the three main problems were:

1. Exploration: ME1: driving around a massive area and there was at least one of these per sector, ME2: land, linear box-fight, leave.

2. Leveling: ME1: each class comes with srengths and weaknesses, ME2: All the classes differances were purely asthetic, you had one real power top's and the rest was shooting.

3. Enemies: ME1: The geth and a rouge specter, pirate's, hitmen, rachnai, thorian creepers,thresher maw's and the introduction and direct confrontation of a reaper where you fight a losing battle. ME2: Collectors, mercs, those wierd exploding things, dumbed down geth... what the hell? I understand that there was already a large portion of the mystery taken away but god damn there could have been some element of mystery.

Let's face it, there was only a story for two games, not three, the middle one was just filler, they're great games just... not as much effort was put in.

 

[kayisking]

I went for 'kinda better', meaning to me mostly better. The majority of your complaints are basically the streamlining done between the two games. Personally I was happy with the less micromanagement but would have very happily kept the Mako and the more indepth leveling system.

Streamlining is the exact same thing as "dumbing down". It's just reducing complexity. People who like the complexity that is taken away call it "dumbing down", people who didn't like it call it "streamlining". So to say that something is good, because it is streamlining, kind of seems like circular reasoning to me.

Personally, I mostly like how they streamlined the inventory/looting, but I don't like how they dumbed down the classes and skills. The story in ME2 was worse, but if memory serves the environments were less repetitive. Overall I enjoyed ME1 a little more, but I thought both were awesome.

It is not the same. One of the most complex games in the world is chess, a game with very few rules. To take away the things that are redundant is streamlining, but that does not necessairly make it less complex, just less complicated.

Maybe complexity is not exactly the right word. I just mean that streamlining and dumbing down are both just the act of removing "stuff" from a previous game. It seems to me that streamlining is just removal gone right, and dumbing down is removal gone wrong. They are just different words to express a personal value judgment on the same process.

Whether the stuff that was removed is redundant completely depends on who you ask. So if streamlining is "good removal", then saying "it was streamlining, therefor it was good" is like saying "it was good removal, therefor it was good". Which is circular and meaningless. You still have to say why you think that whatever was removed was good/bad/redundant/essential/whatever.

So you're saying that removing the Mako sections was not a good idea?