The Mass Effect 2 Insanity difficulty thread

[GloatingSwine]

When you get to the Collector ship, pick up an assault rifle, not the new sniper rifle. Your Mantis should still handle pretty much everything that comes at you (ammo is a *****, so save your snipes for the best guys). The assault rifle gives you a whole lot more stuff to shoot at your enemy, ammo-wise, and is a great compliment to your sniper rifle. You can fire at lesser enemies with your assault rifle from long range, and when the armoured guys come to play, nail them in the head with your Mantis.

Everything you could do with an assault rifle, you can do with the second SMG, which has a hilarious amount of ammo to boot. Take the Widow, it does somewhere in the region of twice the damage of the Mantis, and will happily kill a YMIR mech in three shots once you have the shields down (2 for the armour, 1 for the health, and then it's a big old boom).

 

[Amethyst Wind]

Well I'm actually on the final boss and am really struggling. My current save has me with only 1 use of Unity, and I always reach a point where Harbinger reaches my teammates and kills them. I'm having a hard time actually finding the time to inflict damage on the Reaper because of those fecking 'bingers.

I'm a Sentinel with Zaeed (for Pyro Grenade and Concussive Shot) and Miranda (for Warp), I don't have the nuke either.

The rest of the suicide mission was surprisingly easy on Insane, and the only characters to die did so in the most ironic of fashions (Thane, the assassin, went through the vents, and was assassinated. Mordin, the scientist tasked with stopping my crew from being carried off by seeker swarms, was carried off by seeker swarms, teach me to have Jacob doing a biotic field)

What I've discovered with Insane is that a large amount of luck is needed to progress, and now that I'm stymied right at the end I'm begging for that luck, hasn't shown up yet though.

 

[GloatingSwine]

If anyone has any tips at all for an infiltrator, please tell me.

If you really have trouble with Husks, do Zaeed's loyalty mission. The flamethrower you get on it makes short work of them.

 

[Tarkand]

Everything you could do with an assault rifle, you can do with the second SMG, which has a hilarious amount of ammo to boot. Take the Widow, it does somewhere in the region of twice the damage of the Mantis, and will happily kill a YMIR mech in three shots once you have the shields down (2 for the armour, 1 for the health, and then it's a big old boom).

The main difference between the SMG and Assault Rifle is that the Assault Rifle is actually good against Armor, while the SMG isn't.

And Armor is easily the most annoying thing to deal with on Insanity. I'm not at the point where I get to choose the new weapon, but I'm seriously considering the machine gun for that very reason.

Plus, I kinda suck at getting headshots... I'm afraid I'll end up missing and wasting bullets a lot without Adrenaline Rush (playing a Sentinel).

How is the soldier class on insanity? I remember the only way I beat insanity in ME1 was with a second-playthrough adept (I'll admit I felt a little cheap). However, upon trying out the adept in ME2, it feels like they've been gimped as they're powers only affect enemies once they essentially become non-threats anyway. Plus, I beat ME2 before with a soldier before, and it did not seem overly difficult.

I beat it on Hardcore with a Soldier and it didn't seem to difficult either.

Either Sentinel are a lot worse than Soldier or the game is way harder on Insanity (my guess is the later) because man... this stuff is hard.

Funny thing to me is that I know a lot of people who have beaten the game on Casual/Normal/Veteran and who haven't gotten the 'destroy 25 shield/barrier/armor with overload/warp/incendiary' achievement... there's no way you'll beat the game and not get those achievement on Hardcore or Insanity, because if you just try to plow through stuff, you will die.

Have spent hours trying individual battles on Insane. Either it's really f**king hard or I just really suck at the game.

One main trouble is my teammates inability to take cover on the side of walls that they are supposed to.

It might be a bit of both tbh, it is WAY more challenging on Insanity than Hardcore, no denying it. ME2 at Insanity does not fuck around.

But it should still be do-able... you need to analyse and break down what you're doing on every fight and you need to make sure you have the right team (people who say 'all team members are the same' have clearly not played on Insanity).

 

[Avatar Roku]

The rest of the suicide mission was surprisingly easy on Insane, and the only characters to die did so in the most ironic of fashions (Thane, the assassin, went through the vents, and was assassinated. Mordin, the scientist tasked with stopping my crew from being carried off by seeker swarms, was carried off by seeker swarms, teach me to have Jacob doing a biotic field)

Yeah, if you want no one to die, you need a leader (Miranda or Garrus) leading the strike team, a tech expert (Tali or Legion) in the vents, a strong biotic (Jack or Samara/Morinth) for the barrier and, due to a random glitch that means Mordin dies otherwise, you need to bring him with you or send him back to the Normandy with your crew. Also, whichever characters you select need to be loyal, but that goes without saying.

 

[DustyDrB]

God. I'm just thinking if there was a Mass Effect multiplayer, you would all slaughter me. I'm frightened of veteran..

 

[Altorin]

I don't know the enemies by name

Praetorians are those big collector things that have a huge amount of armor and constantly cast barrier while floating around?

and scions are the giant husks that throw shit at you?

 

[Cody211282]

Just finished Insanity with a soldier and I have to say it wasn't as hard after getting the LMG, only place it wasn't as useful as it could have been was during the biotic bubble part during the last mission, because once the husks get in there you have nowhere to run. Also the hardest part was Horizon for me, mostly because thous Scions on insanity areso much harder then normal. But biggest oh snap moment was firing the Cain at a Heavy Mech only to see it sheilds and 1/3 of its armor go down, never took it with me again.

 

[Cody211282]

I don't know the enemies by name

Praetorians are those big collector things that have a huge amount of armor and constantly cast barrier while floating around?

and scions are the giant husks that throw shit at you?

Correct on both or you can call Praetorians laser eyed bastereds, and Scions sheild destroying asshats

 

[Cody211282]

God. I'm just thinking if there was a Mass Effect multiplayer, you would all slaughter me. I'm frightened of veteran..

I went right from normal to insanity, after making the jump the game teaches you rather early on to up your game or die alot

 

[Turtleboy1017]

Doing insanity with an infilitrator, have to say the hardest part is def the collector ship. I got to that point and basically gave up, the part where you fight the praetorian along with 2 collectors and 2 husks at the same time is pretty much impossible minus some sort of incredible luck. Not to mention the flying platforms part which took me about 50 tries before that.

Same here. Did it, and OH MY GOD annoyance all around. Don't give up though! Use the Widow (You DID grab it... right?) to pick off the drones, and use SMG for harbinger and guardian. Ignore the Scions, you will get a chance to kill them after taking out the first 2 platforms.

I was playing on a friends xbox, he was playing God of War challenges in the same room, so we were just screaming bloody murder at the ceiling the whole night.

 

[Turtleboy1017]

Well I'm actually on the final boss and am really struggling. My current save has me with only 1 use of Unity, and I always reach a point where Harbinger reaches my teammates and kills them. I'm having a hard time actually finding the time to inflict damage on the Reaper because of those fecking 'bingers.

I'm a Sentinel with Zaeed (for Pyro Grenade and Concussive Shot) and Miranda (for Warp), I don't have the nuke either.

The rest of the suicide mission was surprisingly easy on Insane, and the only characters to die did so in the most ironic of fashions (Thane, the assassin, went through the vents, and was assassinated. Mordin, the scientist tasked with stopping my crew from being carried off by seeker swarms, was carried off by seeker swarms, teach me to have Jacob doing a biotic field)

What I've discovered with Insane is that a large amount of luck is needed to progress, and now that I'm stymied right at the end I'm begging for that luck, hasn't shown up yet though.

I would just restart the mission if you're having too much trouble. It always feels better to get a fresh start.

 

[TheRocketeer]

How insane is Insanity in ME2?

In the original mass Effect, Insanity difficulty was tiring more than it was difficult; as a max level soldier with Colossus X heavy armor, my damage reduction and health regeneration maxed out, and the at-that-point-redundant Immunity ability at its third level, I was never in any danger of dying. All the challenge in the game came from chasing individual enemies around the map, wearing down their extraordinary health bars as my massively-overpowered weapons blasted them around the room.

Heck, I fought every Geth Colossus and almost all Armatures on foot, just for kicks. It took three or four shots from a Colossus' main cannon to down me, which I tested just as an experiment. I never actually died doing this, amazingly, since you can easily out-turn them.

I'll quickly interject that I can't imagine it was like this at all for other, less overpowered classes, though.

But what about in ME2? With fewer customization options and a general shift more towards action than character building, Insanity must really live up to its name, right?

 

[Chrissyluky]

go biotic get warp up to max(dont get the dumb aoe) then go for the bastion to reduce cooldown on it and finnaly get the sniper rifle and barrier. i went through my first playthrough on insanity with that setup. barrier will save you in tough spots and you can use warp to spam spam spam anything down. along with this on big enemies like on horizon you can fire a warp around cover while standing out of it meanwhile shooting the big enemy between cds all from the safety of cover. really just whatever you do. dont go infiltrator(yes ive played on insanity as one it was a HUGE pain running out of ammo all the time). also my sqaud setup was tali and grunt because your main issue was a biotic is people getting close and grunt is the best meatshield in the game with impact shot and reinforced armor. and tali can use her droid to make an enemy a sitting duck while you chuck balls of death at it. plus the droid can really take the heat off you.(make sure to get the assault droid)

 

[Altorin]

How insane is Insanity in ME2?

In the original mass Effect, Insanity difficulty was tiring more than it was difficult; as a max level soldier with Colossus X heavy armor, my damage reduction and health regeneration maxed out, and the at-that-point-redundant Immunity ability at its third level, I was never in any danger of dying. All the challenge in the game came from chasing individual enemies around the map, wearing down their extraordinary health bars as my massively-overpowered weapons blasted them around the room.

you can't do that in Normal in ME2, so I'd imagine ME2 would be a LOT harder

 

[GloatingSwine]

And Armor is easily the most annoying thing to deal with on Insanity. I'm not at the point where I get to choose the new weapon, but I'm seriously considering the machine gun for that very reason.

The Widow goes through Armour like paper. So does the Carnifex. So does Incinerate. Armour might as well not be there from the point of view of the Infiltrator.

 

[whycantibelinus]

Geth Colossus, anyone?

Right here man. Fuck that thing.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

sometimes my health just doesnt regenerate at all sometimes so it may be a glitch for me.

Just so you know, it's an effect of the Scion attacks. They fire the blue shockwave-esque projectiles. If the slime gets on you, it temporarily disables health/shield regeneration.

As if that attack wasn't cheap enough already...