Poll: Mass Effect 2, from satisfied to disappointed

[MisterShine]

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 think the general consensus is (and I agree) that while much of ME1 needed some tweaking (I'm lookin' at you, inventory system!), ME2 went a little too far with it.

As to how I feel they compare to each other... I love them both, and couldn't pick a favorite if you held a gun to my head.

Combat itself was better in ME2, as well as the classes diverging from each other in playstyle. That has added a TON of replayability for me. I'm murky on shared cooldowns, but at least they're much shorter now. Also, expansion of powers is great. Now tech specialists don't just have 4 explosions, but real abilities that make them stand out! But then, the lack of weapon mods makes me a sad panda. Not being able to conflagrate people or make them dissolve in a pile of goo is unfortunate. I actually like the ammo system, I feel it added a lot of tension to combat that was kind of missing in the first game, changed the fights from hurdles I had to jump over to get to the gooey story center, to events I could look forward to to break up the story of the second game.

Speaking of the story, this is where I feel the second falls a bit flat. I'm glad Bioware moving away from their "4 plot areas then finale" system, and trying to make the story a bit more original, but it was 1 step forward and 2 steps back. The players involvement was entirely dependent on how engrossing he or she found the characters, as there is no bedrock of plot to keep everything moving along, just the characters. If the player doesn't like the characters.. it feels weak. Also, 12 party members, while impressive, was too much. We didn't get to see much character interaction with other party members and that was a great part of the first game.

I hope ME3 makes takes lessons from the games and combines the strengths of both to make a superb finale, and from the sound of previews it seems they're doing just that.

 

[Snake Plissken]

People always complain about the mechanics system or the storyline in ME2 to show that it was the inferior game of the two. I don't need to get into all that fancy technical stuff to tell you why ME2 was worse. The one thing that made it worse was the

Spoiler: Endgame Spoiler

giant retarded terminator-looking thing with "shoot me" glowing spots all over it. Seriously, Bioware? SERIOUSLY?! THIS is our final boss? Our pinnacle of the second game?

 

[MetallicaRulez0]

I always used to say that Mass Effect 1 was the better game between the two, but I'm not really so sure anymore. ME2 unquestionably had the better combat, but I felt like everything else tipped in ME1's favor. I feel like maybe the combat from ME2 was so much better that it just about makes up for all of the other shortcomings compared to the first game. I really can't decide between the two now.

Obviously taking the better portions of both games (ME1: Story, characters, EXP and talents, inventory and items. ME2: Combat) in ME3 would make for the best game in the series.

 

[Conza]

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 think the general consensus is (and I agree) that while much of ME1 needed some tweaking (I'm lookin' at you, inventory system!), ME2 went a little too far with it.

As to how I feel they compare to each other... I love them both, and couldn't pick a favorite if you held a gun to my head.

Oh - yes you could! You'd lie or something, c'mon man, no ones going to say 'sorry, you'll have to kill me, I just can't decide'.

Combat itself was better in ME2, as well as the classes diverging from each other in playstyle. That has added a TON of replayability for me. I'm murky on shared cooldowns, but at least they're much shorter now. Also, expansion of powers is great. Now tech specialists don't just have 4 explosions, but real abilities that make them stand out! But then, the lack of weapon mods makes me a sad panda. Not being able to conflagrate people or make them dissolve in a pile of goo is unfortunate. I actually like the ammo system, I feel it added a lot of tension to combat that was kind of missing in the first game, changed the fights from hurdles I had to jump over to get to the gooey story center, to events I could look forward to to break up the story of the second game.

Speaking of the story, this is where I feel the second falls a bit flat. I'm glad Bioware moving away from their "4 plot areas then finale" system, and trying to make the story a bit more original, but it was 1 step forward and 2 steps back. The players involvement was entirely dependent on how engrossing he or she found the characters, as there is no bedrock of plot to keep everything moving along, just the characters. If the player doesn't like the characters.. it feels weak. Also, 12 party members, while impressive, was too much. We didn't get to see much character interaction with other party members and that was a great part of the first game.

I hope ME3 makes takes lessons from the games and combines the strengths of both to make a superb finale, and from the sound of previews it seems they're doing just that.

Everyone keeps saying combat was better, the only thing I can possibly think that was minorly better in ME2, was telling characters to move was now hot keyed to Q and E, but that threw me a bit because Q ust to mean 'get gun out' and E ust to mean use. but I should just change the bindings so ME1 and ME2 plays feel the same (using the ME1 controls).

Also, really? More replayability? ME2 is coming down (to me) to be a maximum of 4, probably only 2 or 3 play throughs, I'm going to replay on insanity once, maybe twice, and play it through once with my renegade character, but I might have to change her from sentinel to infiltrator, it depends on how good the 3rd gun is compared to the hand cannon (more rounds? Please tell me there's more rounds).

ME1, if I had the time, I would seriously consider doing it another 6-9 times (renegade + paragon x classes), I think 12 would be too many, but doing all the classes once would be nice, then again, not so sure about engineer or vangaurd, so after my 2 play throughs already, that'd probably limit it to just 6 or 7 more (max).

You like ammo? You like like ammo? It just pisses me off to no end, every time I want to snipe everyone, but instead 'now', in ME2? I need to use, not only 1 more weapon, but the pistol, the sub machine gun, and the assult rifle, and that's when it's only basic enemies (ok, ok, this is on insanity now, but still), when there's a giant mech or super geth or whatever, I sometimes need to use my heavy weapon to lower its sheilds ect, THEN, to top it all off, there isn't enough ammo to even fully stock my weapon/s again?!? Totally hate ammo in this game, if there were 3 times as much dropped by enemies, I might be able to forgive it.

You know, I think the story wasn't all that bad, yes it was a complete red herring, but I don't think they could've done much else, if they ate into the real story of the series any more, what would be left of ME3? I did actually prefer the 4 main missions thing, in ME2 its kinda like 'ok, lets get all the characters, and do all their missions, so that can all be just dealt with', and about a 1/3 of them were fun, the rest felt like work, but then I realise, that's about 3/4s of the game! So, I prefered it when there were less characters, all (basically) representing each possible class, then 3 chunks of a story you could do in any order, with 2 more at the end, I think that worked better. This game is much more linier.

Couldn't agree more with the combining of games, however, I get the distinct impression ME3 will just equal ME2 version 2.0, which is a part of why I started this thread, to test the waters a little. Then again, knowing EA, they'll just blatently ignore anything we have to say about either game, positive or negative and say to themselves 'this game will ride solely on its name sake, we don't need to care what they want'. It's EA, we know something like that will happen (too cynical?).

 

[MisterShine]

Oh - yes you could! You'd lie or something, c'mon man, no ones going to say 'sorry, you'll have to kill me, I just can't decide'.

Yeah, you're right. If I'm FORCED to choose, I would say the second game. While all the characters in the first game were above-average (for a gaming average) in interest to me, the only character who was exceptional to me was Wrex. And while I was ho-hum about some of the characters in 2 (Jacob, Grunt, Zaeed 90% of the time), there were several exceptional characters (Legion, Mordin, Jack, Samara) to more than balance out, and the returning squad mates took several levels in badass between games [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TookALevelInBadass].

Also, really? More replayability? ME2 is coming down (to me) to be a maximum of 4, probably only 2 or 3 play throughs, I'm going to replay on insanity once, maybe twice, and play it through once with my renegade character, but I might have to change her from sentinel to infiltrator, it depends on how good the 3rd gun is compared to the hand cannon (more rounds? Please tell me there's more rounds).

Classes in ME1 feel pretty much identical to me. Soldiers just take longer to die, any engineer mix just has explosions, with adepts or the adept hybrids being the only ones that change combat drastically. As opposed to ME2, where every class has its own defining ability and style. Maybe its just me, but they feel totally different, and each is awesome.

Also the hand cannon is the best pistol you get, just learn to aim better and conserve your ammo

You like ammo? You like like ammo?

I don't like ammo. I love ammo. Overheating was a cool mechanic and I appreciate Bioware trying to set its shooter apart from everyone else, but there were just so many times during ME2 where I'd be fighting a boss or a Krogan or whathaveyou and I was running really low on ammo and I'd be thinking "ohgodohgodohgod needclipneedclip this is EXCITING!!". ME1 combat never felt visceral or action-y to me, and while I did like it, the sequel just makes it leaps and bounds better.

Couldn't agree more with the combining of games, however, I get the distinct impression ME3 will just equal ME2 version 2.0, which is a part of why I started this thread, to test the waters a little. Then again, knowing EA, they'll just blatently ignore anything we have to say about either game, positive or negative and say to themselves 'this game will ride solely on its name sake, we don't need to care what they want'. It's EA, we know something like that will happen (too cynical?).

This I would not be too worried about. The reason why so much of the RPG elements for ME2 were cut was directly BECAUSE so many fans and reviewers stated that certain elements in the game were just too obtrusive and didn't add anything to the game proper. They went overboard in fixing this issue, but they did so mainly in reaction to what everyone said about it, and with the same consensus about ME2 being that they went too far in the opposite direction, it seems certain they will try harder to strike a balance.

Also, while someone made the decision to rush a Dragon Age sequel just to see if it would sell (I won't blame EA out of hand), they certainly have noticed the fan and critical reactions because of this, and they'd be damn fools not to listen. And of course they already have, pushing back ME3's date to early 2012 instead of shooting for end of '11. What I felt held back ME2 the most though was that it tried too hard to attract new people into the series and not enough reaction to what old players decided in the first. I didn't get too annoyed by the fact that most decisions only got a nod in their direction rather than changing the experience, my main fear is that they will once again do this for the third game, rather than making it totally reactive to what you did previous. But I will hold the faith!

 

[Danceofmasks]

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.

Infiltrator is the most powerful class in ME2.
Ok, I may be biased, but then I also have video evidence.

Here's a playlist of me facerolling everything in the game (insanity difficulty, of course) as an infiltrator ... while dicking around with crazy combinations nobody else uses.

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?p=PLF5E40DE56CCD792E

 

[pearcinator]

ME1 has the better story

ME2 has the better gameplay and characters

in ME3, they should combine them together to make something truly epic.

 

[Netrigan]

I thought Mass Effect 2 was a much better game. If you're doing an Action RPG, the fighting has got to be spot-on and the first game's shooting mechanics were just sub-par (the vehicles were even worse). Without the first game having more involved inventory and leveling systems, I think most people would have been happy with ME2. It's that they moved the system so far from the original that gives so many pause, but ME1 was on the wrong path for an Action RPG.

My basic thoughts on how the two stack up.

1) The shooting controls need to be there from the start. Assume the player has the skills to use these weapons effectively and don't level up basic shooting ability. The upgrade system does it right, although there should be more basic information on the load-up screen. Limiting the weapons by class is also a pretty good move. And God Almighty, a clip system is far better than the Hide Behind A Wall Until My Gun Cools Off mechanic of the first game.

2) Health... I would prefer to see something along Dragon Age: Origins in which you need to manually heal up during battle, but you and your party are auto-healed between encounters. I think this is actually a pretty good compromise between the health pack system and recharging health. ME1 did it better, but ME2 is so utterly normal as to not annoy me.

3) Level Design... ME2 was much better. For the most part, a good solid linear progression in a shooter is preferable to dumping the player down into a maze of a horribly build compound (although you need to recognize when to mix it up). But ME2 continues to over-do the correction. The settlements should be a well developed hub (preferably with a fast travel system) that the player can explore at his/her leisure. Too often I had to trek through the entire compound to get to the shop all the way at the end... that's just bad design. And I would prefer the final objective that auto ends a level be clearly labeled as such. Too often, while still exploring, I accidentally hit my objective and got kicked back up to the Normandy.

4) Leveling system... I actually like the ME2 system with the higher level upgrades costing more than the lower ones. With most of the basic combat stuff smartly removed from the mix, there's not going to be as much here, so no more specializing in Shotguns. Seriously, point and shoot short-range weapon... why would anyone consider this a level-up ability is beyond me. I would like to see more elements and powers in the mix, but over-all thumbs up. The ME1 just tossed way too many options at you that should have never been anywhere near that list.

5) Biggest mistake ME2 makes is not letting players see more information. When doing a squad load-out, you can't even tell if someone is a tech. By all means, hide the information on the load-out screen, but let me get detailed specs at the touch of a button. Same thing with weapons. There's a decent amount of complexity here, but the game's sparse descriptions make it seem dumber than it actually is.

6) Resource Mining... man, this game still hasn't figured out how to do this properly. First game made it a scavenger hunt, second game made it a really boring mini-game. Treat it like a business. Explore planets to open them up for development (and hunt for landing zones), then let players purchase mining rights from the Normandy. It'll take a bit of effort to find the right mix of currency and minerals, so as not to instantly break the game's economy.

7) And the Hamerhead from the ME2 DLC is so much more fun to use than that fucking Mako. I would like to see vehicle sections return to the game, but only if they're the right mix of fun and challenge.

 

[Netrigan]

Mass Effect 2 was a game worse in almost every way from its predecessor. It had worse combat both from the retcon on the guns and the fact biotics now do not work on people wearing simple armor or shields. The plot was pointless (this was before the Arrival DLC made it even more pointless with more retcons) with many a plot hole in addition to the Cerberus retcon and being able to bring Shepard back from the dead is mind blowingly stupid. Then add to the fact Liara + Ashley\Kaidan getting new personalities seemingly and not wanting to follow Shepard made little sense. Only Wrex sadly had a legit excuse to not be on your team in ME2. This game's only good point was the Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC. The only thing better it had than ME1 was toned down streamlined inventory. But then they fuck that up by getting rid of gun upgrades. And speaking of upgrades they replaced them with Ammo powers which make almost no sence with the exception of Warp Ammo I suppose.
Only reason to play ME2 was to get my characters ready for ME3. Note I said was not is as the new ME3 is gonna be streamlined like ME2 does has me thinking EA is gonna force Bioware to gut even more of the series making 3 even worse than 2 (if that is even possible) and most likely @ least itself not a good game either. Hell the news of the Illusive Man turning on Shepard even if we did help him has my confidence in ME3 and in fact Bioware @ an all time low as it makes little sense for him to turn on those that gave him the base.

If any of y'all hadn't I'd recommend looking up Smudboy on Youtbue. He brings up many good points on why ME2 fails as a game in a much more eloquent way than I am capable of.

Everytime I play an RPG, I have to turn off that little part of my brain that says "this doesn't make sense", especially when they start moving from that traditional fantasy settings into other areas.

Take Alpha Protocol for example. It's a pretty good game, but the way guns operate buggers belief. If I take a shotgun, point it at someone at point blank range, it takes me two or three shots to kill them. If I take the same weapon, back up 15 feet, and hold the fire button... it magically charges up and kills him with one shot.

It's a shotgun. How can putting stats into shotguns make the same weapon *more* powerful?

Yeah, the thermal clips are a serious (dare I say it) dumbing down of typical weapons handling in shooters, but it works pretty well. The over-heating weapons in ME1 tended to be either frustrating (sucks when your go-to weapon stops functioning in the middle of a major firefight) or too easy to stick to one weapon since you can hide in between shots.

And if you're going to have a game that lets you take cover behind objects, for the love of God make sure it works well. The cover system in ME1 was one of the clunkiest I've ever used. ME2 is too dependent on it, but at least it works pretty well. Combat isn't super smooth, but its within normal parameters.

 

[Netrigan]

I am going to save myself typing out a huuuuge list of problems with ME2 and just stick to the main one.
The story.

In the first you were just trying to figure out what the fuck happened and stop this asshole from fucking with everything. Along the way you found other things wrong and picked up some interesting characters who chose to help you. And at the end you found out your entire galaxy was fucked. That you had these megahuge robots coming for you so you were now on a mission to save everything.
ME2, pick up these social misfits, deal with their issues then take out these aliens who will have no impact on the universe outside of their set missions.

Saving the galaxy to dealing with your teams family issues and emotional baggage.

I went from a intergalactic James Bond to Dr Fucking Phil.
I shoulda sent my crew to do a episode with Oprah while I got on with the real work.

Yeah, the story is a pretty major comedown from the first game. I pretty much hated the first game. I thought the gameplay fell down in just about every way it could possibly fall down... but that story kept me going. I picked up the second game because I knew the combat was improved and I wanted to see what happened next.

... and I'm still waiting.

There's maybe about two hours worth of story in Mass Effect 2. To make matters worse, too many of the main missions happen when you don't want them to. First game, the gathering of your allies is an integral part of the main story. In the second, they're just a bunch of fetch quests arbitrarily given to you by a character you don't trust.

One thing that annoyed me (when I know it shouldn't) is the whole Cerberus stuff screwed up the Paragon/Renegade balance. First game, it's really the difference between being trusted and feared and I stayed in character from start to finish (only time I ever did that). In ME2, my natural distrust of Cerberus has me scoring all sorts of Paragon points, making the system a bit on the retarded side. Being a renegade is all about taking the short cuts and being brutal with people you don't trust... and they certainly weren't acting in a trust-worthy manner. I was teaming up with them, knowing that I'll probably have to put them down like a dog at the end of the mission... and I wasn't about to be shy about admitting it was a marriage of convenience.

Whole thing is pretty poorly written.

 

[Netrigan]

Mass Effect 1 had some better in it but Mass Effect 2 seemed to be more forward than backward, it just seemed to have some backward stuff in it and there were people who liked the stuff from ME 1 more so they didn't like ME 2.

I'm hoping ME 3 will be able to find a balance but it's not going to please everyone, there will always be people out there who like a different combination of things.
("I liked ME 1 and ME 2 but not ME 3, I liked ME 2, but not ME 1 and ME 3, I liked ME 3 but not ME 1 and ME 2" etc.)

I hope ME2 was more of a re-tooling of ME1 and they'll use it as a foundation to build upon. It's not perfect and its not as ambitious as the first, but it achieves everything it sets out to do in terms of gameplay. I want to see vehicle levels back in, I want to see impressive city hubs, I want to see combat that doesn't revolve exclusively around hiding behind walls.

Having a rudimentary inventory system would be a good thing. The upgrade system works well, but there's no reason you can't put a weapon mod system on top of that. It would be very easy to do from the weapon load-out screen. They should look at all the stuff they took out of ME1 and figure out how to put it back in the game in a way that works much better. Excluding more fundamental chances like the thermal clips.

 

[Kahunaburger]

One thing that annoyed me (when I know it shouldn't) is the whole Cerberus stuff screwed up the Paragon/Renegade balance. First game, it's really the difference between being trusted and feared and I stayed in character from start to finish (only time I ever did that). In ME2, my natural distrust of Cerberus has me scoring all sorts of Paragon points, making the system a bit on the retarded side. Being a renegade is all about taking the short cuts and being brutal with people you don't trust... and they certainly weren't acting in a trust-worthy manner. I was teaming up with them, knowing that I'll probably have to put them down like a dog at the end of the mission... and I wasn't about to be shy about admitting it was a marriage of convenience.

Whole thing is pretty poorly written.

Haha this was such a Bioware thing to do. They design a non-traditional morality system (like Open Palm/Closed Fist, party approval ratings) and then someone on the design team doesn't get the memo and assigns the ends of the compass to good/evil.

And then you end up with something like this:

 

[Netrigan]

Combining them would have been cool. Not sure how that would work exactly, but there's probably a way of doing it.

I'm not really annoyed by ret-cons. The almost always happen near the beginning of a franchise. The Fantastic Four origionally lived in Central City and it was changed to New York City with no indication that they ever moved. Series go through a bit of a shake-down early on as characters are defined and the back story gets nailed down. Anything that doesn't work (or if they simply come up with something they like better) will be quietly be worked into it. Siblings are constantly disappearing from sit-coms. It's only when very well established lore gets written over that it becomes a problem.

 

[Still Life]

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.

I see where you're coming from, but 'dumbing down' is a term which has a negative connotative effect, and it is regularly used by histrionic whingers in their textual tirades on the changing nature of modern RPGs. I agree with people who argue that Bioware went a little too far in removing certain game-play elements. However, on the whole, Bioware took away or improved the RPG elements that didn't work as intended, or work at all in the first game. The result was a game that played better, though still had room for improvement. Judging from all the info coming out on ME3, it will be the amalgamation of the lessons learned in the first two. Seeing that the first two ME games are some of my favorite -- this is a good thing.

Therefore, I'm more inclined to say that Bioware improved upon, rather than 'streamline' or 'dumb down'.