Things that Mass Effect 2 did WRONG

[Crimsane]

The only place where enemies respawning could even potentially be a problem is in one of the side missions to shut down a production line on the hardest difficulty. Even so, the problem is easily avoided since the enemies only spawn three at a time, meaning once you've Leroy'd your way past those three you're home free to complete the mission.

The choice at the end, you're wrong, but I can't fully go into details on why without massive spoilers - which might should be included in the title, btw. Pay more attention to the dialogue.

My one complaint about ME2 is the scanning thing. Gets annoying on your fifth playthrough. Why on Earth did they give us so much bonus E-Zero, and so little bonus Platinum? t.t

On second thought, two complaints. Needs more vehicle DLC.

 

[archvile93]

Maybe it's because i was a soldier, but I don't recall ever running into repawning enemies. The reason the paragon blows the whole base to hell would be because it's tainted technology (obtained through massive amounts of suffering), not to mention Cerberus would obviously use it for its terrorist acts.

OT: I thought the thermal clips could've worked, but I think Bioware went about them wrong. Rather than have them be a conventional ammo system I think you should have a very limited number (maybe two) and what they do when ejected is immediately cool an overheated weapon. I think heavy weapons should stick with conventional ammo though. Some arenas would be nice too.

 

[Richard Hannay]

None of the downloadable armors seem to have a removable helmet, which pretty much ensures that I will never, ever, use any of them.

 

[David Bray]

Money system - i never have enough
The difficulty in seeing squad health
Ammo - This was one of the charms of the original
Lack of 5 minute quests

And accidental sex. Oh you heard me. Im on my second playthrough, trying to make the perfect save for later, and what happens; i have accidental sex with Jack. Fuck you Jack, i hate you and now i have to start all over again.

 

[Flamezdudes]

Mass Effect 2 did things wrong?

 

[Tears of Blood]

Respawning enemies

Not noticed it myself, even on Insanity difficulty. Sounds like a case of L2P.

The alignment... Still: Paragon means as per regulations. Renegade means an any-means-necesary zealot. The zealot would purge every evidence of the Collectors existence, regardless of cost, so why the hell is doing so the paragon ending?

Uh, no. The Renegade would use the Collector tech to fight the Reapers which are the real threat. The Paragon response is embodied by "I won't let fear compromise my ideals."

Yeah. I can't really say it better myself. Both of your gripes against it are just wrong. o_o

There are streams of enemies sometimes, but they do not last forever. (Alright, there are a few instances but there are good reasons for them.)

The only thing I would've done is have more weapons. Maybe bring back the old inventory system, just give me a new weapon every mission or two, would ya'? Maybe a real SMG and a burst-fire pistol as an option or maybe an assault rifle that is really powerful but shoots a bit slower or maybe the best shotgun is semi-auto with some serious firepower. That woulda' been really nice. But, instead, you have to live with only two handguns. =[

Really, though, that's a small enough gripe that I don't even know why this thread exists. The game rocks. <<;

 

[reg42]

Scanning was a bucket of balls.
Not enough weapons
I didn't care for the new armour system.
It could be pretty glitchy.
The teams health was tough to make heads or tails of.

Other than that it's great though.

 

[atol]

Why on Earth did they give us so much bonus E-Zero, and so little bonus Platinum? t.t

Can't scan Earth.

 

[Hybridwolf]

After finshing number 2, then going back to make my own storyline, (lousy hardrive muck ups meant I couldn't import a save) I found my biggest issue with the game

Too many squad mates, spread out throughout the game. In the first one you nearly had your entire team before you left the citidal. And it was a simple job to get the last one. This allowed for longer character interaction, whilst meaning you could set up your team quickly and effictivly. Not too mention their bonus missions felt like bonus missions, ones you did purely out of intrest.

In the newest one, you spend half the game recruiting a team, then you spend the next quarter making them loyal. It feels wrong that to get some of the best characters you have to beat nearly half the game e.g legion just to find out he couldn't work with your character (I was an inflitrator). It was annoying and it was a waste of gameplay time, in my opinion because after you recruited your team what was left? a couple of planet side missions, which were good, but the amount you had was barely a third of the first game and you jump straight into the action, and the final missions. The game's ending was more of a shock as to how quickly it felt like it had arrived.

Honestly, for a sequel, it was a disapointment for me. Good thing the bad company demo came about, or I'd have been bored stiff waiting for bioshock...

 

[Axeli]

Actually, one thing that drives me crazy is that the characters (other than Shepard) tend to have 29 skill points when the hit the level cap... And of course it takes 10 to get one skill to maxed out, meaning you never can specialize in 3 out of the 4 available.

As if it weren't bad enough that you actually need to waste 3 skill points on a skill you might not even want to unlock another one which you want, but then you can't ever max out either one of them (unless you don't max out the loyalty and specialist skills, which you of course generally always should max out).

Not that you even could plan it that far on your first play through, when you just set them pretty spontaniously, since there's never real warning about how limited the points are.

I suppose I should be glad I could at least reset Shepards skill setup. Still sucks to find yourself a maxed out character with 3 extra points you can't even use anywhere.

 

[ddq5]

I also only ran into respawning enemies once, unfortunately, they were Krogan.

Yes, scanning is boring, but only if you feel you have to grind it. On my first playthrough, I tried to milk every planet dry and ended up only slightly better off and with a scar-free face. On subsequent games, I more or less ignored the whole nonsense and only scanned a few, rich planets every so often. Sure, my stats weren't maxed out, but I was too busy enjoying the actual game to care.

In regard to the number of guns and the lack of an inventory system, I'm so much happier for it. I was sick of spending so much time in the first game cleaning out ammo types and weak weapons to free up space and having to manage each party member's guns and mods as well. I also didn't enjoy having to give up the cool looking armor because another one had higher stats.

Thermal clips, I think, are an improvement. Instead of being able to prance about spewing my uber-shotgun like a madman, I actually had to put some thought into battle. Besides, now I play as Adept and ammo really doesn't matter when you have awesome powers.
Speaking of powers, in my opinion, they really took all the ones from the first game and improved them immensely. My original favorite biotic, Lift, got upgraded to the doubly useful Pull. The keymapping for Shepard and squad powers is also a major plus.

The QTEs in dialog at first glance seem a bit lame; on my first playthrough, there was almost never an occasion when I didn't want to use one. But later, I began investigating the different consequences of activating them or letting them flash. More often than not, there was another, just as interesting choice after it. One example would be when recruiting Mordin, there's a Renegade prompt to tell him to shut up, but I found that if I waited it out there was actually another Paragon prompt after to call him down. As far as QTEs go, I've definitely seen worse, because you can usually tell when one's about to happen from the camera movements and Shepard's eyes. I do wish that they had included some where both the Renegade and Paragon choices were available at once, though.

Of course, this is just my subjective opinion, and if you're looking for someone to critique the game, you should probably ask someone less addicted to it. I don't think I've ever had my expectations blown away quite as epically as by Mass Effect 2.

 

[Void(null)]

Why on Earth did they give us so much bonus E-Zero, and so little bonus Platinum? t.t

Can't scan Earth.

You can probe Uranus.

 

[Amnestic]

Why on Earth did they give us so much bonus E-Zero, and so little bonus Platinum? t.t

Can't scan Earth.

You can probe Uranus.

Really, Shepard?

Maybe a real SMG and a burst-fire pistol as an option

But...you have those. You've got the Tempest SMG and the burst-fire pistol which you get at the start of the game.

 

[teutonicman]

I didn't like all the grinding I had to do to get most of the upgrades. I've only encountered 1 instance with infinite enemies, but the game straight up told you why the enemies would be endless. Those are the main grips I had with the game. Some nit picks are; more weapon variety and custom classes. I wanted to be a vanguard originally but I didn't like the CQC.

 

[Irridium]

In general, it seems that they took criticism of Mass Effect 1 and went too far to fix the problems. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater... I think that's the right expression.

Exactly.

Fans: Inventory system is annoying
Bioware: Ok, lets get rid of it entirely.

- All they had to do was make it easier to organize, not remove it completely.

Fans: Mako is annoying.
Bioware: Ok, lets get rid of it alltogether.

- It was annoying because most of the planets you traveled to had giant jagged mountains and barren. And the Mako couldn't climb mountains all that well. Just a less mountains and a bit more variety and it would be a lot better.

Fans: The combat isn't very good
Bioware: Ok, lets remove the unlimited ammo and intuitive "walk-in, walk-out" cover system and go for a more generic shooter experience. And now instead of powers cooling off on their own, when you use 1 power you have to wait before you can use any other.

- Simply take ME2's combat system as it is now, make it unlimited ammo (Hell if you play smart anyway you will never run out of ammo anyway so why they implimented it is confusing. It seems pointless) and remove the snap-to cover system and make it "walk-in, walk-out" and you have a great combat experience. And just make the recharge times faster for each power.

Also bring back medi-gel and a health bar that doesn't regenerate so combat is more challenging.

 

[Tears of Blood]

But...you have those. You've got the Tempest SMG and the burst-fire pistol which you get at the start of the game.

The M-3 Predator (your starting pistol) is semi-automatic.

If you mean the Shuriken, that's an SMG that looks like a pistol. The Tempest is a step up, but it still fires in bursts. Just, longer bursts.

 

[Amnestic]

But...you have those. You've got the Tempest SMG and the burst-fire pistol which you get at the start of the game.

The M-3 Predator (your starting pistol) is semi-automatic.

If you mean the Shuriken, that's an SMG that looks like a pistol. The Tempest is a step up, but it still fires in bursts. Just, longer bursts.

I'm pretty sure the Tempest is full-auto. Will go double check that.

Yeah, Tempest is full-auto. Held down the button and blew an entire clip. If it was long bursts, there was such a small interval between each burst that it appeared to be full-auto just like the Assault Rifles.

 

[Zacharine]

My gripes with ME2:

Lack of replayability value: After playing trough it once (with all side-missions I could find) the plot is known, the characters are known, the mission are known. The combat system functions but wasn't interesting enough to warrant a second playtrough. No plot-twists remain.

Planet scanning. Frustrating, generic and artificial way to increase game lenght.

Lack of weapon options. While I can certainly understand the changes done, entirely scrapping the inventory system was not a move I support. Instead of 2 or three choices for a weapon and two or three weapons max, I'd have made 6 or 7 clearly sequentially improved weapons for each category.

The upgrade system. While I loved the Normandy upgrades, they were ultimately underused: the armor, shield and weapons are checked once. On the same vein, the weapon upgrades were minor: 10% boost at a time. With those upgrades, it is essentially the same if you have two or four weapon upgrades. Thanks to the completely failiure of a 'heat-clip'system that doesn't work with the backstory, the only weapon upgrades that mean anything are the clip size increases.

Which brings me to: Heat-clips. I actually liked the the first ME combat as far as weapons were concerned: fire as fast as you like (within the RoF limits of the weapon), watch the heat-bar. Go over and you get punished by a 'reload' cooling-cycle. And now, suddenly, I'm supposed to believe weapons that work on magnetic fields, electricity and Eezo produce more heat than a modern-day gunpowder driven assault rifles, while simultaneously having less effective heat dissipation system? Not a chance. A standard 9mm pistol with a 12-mag would be far more efficient against unshielded targets than the handguns offered to us by the game: headshot still equals kill, equal accuracy, larger magazine capacity. Only inferior aspect is the recoil. Aiming is also a non-issue as you can hunker down behind any knee-high obstacle for minutes at a time with no penalty.

Shared cooldowns on all powers. At least put Biotics and Tech powers on separate cooldowns, as it is they are halfway useless on any fight that doesn't end within 5 seconds or last under a minute: that is to say, on almost every single fight. Headshotting with the heavy pistol does more damage than a biotic that doesn't have full cooldown reductions, doesn't suffer from cool-downs and can take on more targets. In fact, on my playtrough I eneded up killing 9/10 of all enemies with the pistol rather than my biotic or tech powers. There is also no in-game reason to sahre the cooldowns: biotics are handled by implants, tech powers by the hand-wielded 'external' omnitools.

Fuelling. According to the Codex, the Normandy Tantalus-drive system is a reactionless drive. As in, no exhausts, no expended mass due to movement. The only fuel required would have to be for power sources, which assuming Fusion, is almost a non-issue with a reactionless core considering they can fit a power-source effective enough to create a mass-effect field on a handgun with heat being a greater concern for the soldier than recharging... Also considering fuel costs practically nothing, this is again another asinine method of extending gaming time for no reason at all for the player.

 

[Kavachi]

All this seems pointless. I only heard one good argument, wich was about the scanning. The combat is good, the ammo-limits make it better I think, you need to actually aim now. And the inventory is just a love it/hate it kinda thing, and that isn't a good argument. So the thing they did wrong is the scanning, the rest of all this shit here is because people can't play a game harder than easy so they just start blaming everything.