Things that Mass Effect 2 did WRONG

[richasr]

I don't have too many problems with the game though I do agree with a lot of points on this topic:

Thermal Clips: That does feel like a big step backward for me, I used to love using the Sniper Rifle's in the first game, to the point where you fire one round, and you get the overheating sound straight away and for ages, even though it obliterates the target anyway, loved that, my Shotgun was like that too. I prefer that system

Story: Seems lacking in substance, it was good but seemed more like an episodic side mission than a main quest. Plus you spend a large amount of time recruiting and satisfying your team, and when you do finally get everyone, there's not a lot left to do really.

Weapons: Sure, there werent really many in the first game, but you did have upgrades for them, I liked that, for this one you can do research to improve the damage done and things like that, but you can't customize the add-ons unless your class gets Disrupter, Cryo or Incendiary rounds, even then that's pitiful.

Choices from the first game: I was expecting some bigger consequences to this game than what did actually happen, it seems aswell that no matter what you do with the council in the first game, the difference in results is a slight change of dialogue between Shepard and Anderson, and you don't actually ever speak to whatever council members are there anymore. I'm hoping that some of those first game choices hit home in the 3rd game, otherwise what is the point in importing characters?

Despite this, I do really like the game, and think it is a lot of fun, i've been taking my time with the first playthrough, and now i'm on the second, but i'm enjoying it nonetheless, I just hope that they do make up for the piss-poor DLC from the first game, Zaeed was quite cool and the crash site was interesting, for free DLC they were good anyway, looking forward to the game being expanded significantly.

 

[Jenova65]

The only things I hated was that the game was too short, the economic system had been screwed, there were not enough side-quests, and my biggest complaint is that your partners in this game did not have much dialogue. (you only can get like 5 facts or stories out of each character which sucks)

Also I never did find unending waves of enemies, I wish I had though because it is near impossible to reach level 30 in one playthrough.

I respectfully beg to differ, it is pretty darn easy to reach level 30. Are people not scanning planets for N7 missions?

 

[mushroomyakuza]

Some of you are (ok, most of you ) seem to have issues with the more technical aspects of the game ie. looting, weapons systems, and so on. I didn't mind any of that. In fact, it was far preferable and far more manageable than the over system in ME1.

However, the game, while amazing, is not perfect. The majority of the game is spent recruiting members of the team. Now don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed the recruiting missions, but the problem was, this took up the bulk of the game. The recruiting itself is not really part of the core storyline. If you strip away the recruiting and the loyalty missions, you have once hell of a reduced game. What am I getting at? This: the game needs more main-quest plot mission. If memory serves, the only missions you have to complete outside of recruitment are: the prologue, Sherphard's awakening, Freedom's Progress, Horizon, the IFF mission, the suicide mission. Not a whole lot when you strip it down like that.

On the other hand, with ME1, you had to do Eden Prime, the Citadel, Therum, Feros, Novaria, Virmire, Ilos and the final Citadel mission - they don't look like much on paper here, but actually those missions generally took longer, and you had to do them as part of the core quest.

I may be contradicting myself a little here: I love that we have the choice of recruiting who and how many, but realistically, won't everyone just recruit everyone? Why would you leave someone out? This is great as character development and interaction, but I couldn't help feel a little jipped in the overall story progression of the game in terms of the main quest.

Another complaint: there was no "big decision" moment when you have to make a decision there is no coming back from. In ME1 of course, you had to choose between sacrificing Kaiden or Ashley, in ME2, there was no such dilemma. I think they missed out with this. The biggest decision in the game ultimately was whether or not to destroy the Collector base, but even this felt somewhat lacking compared to choosing between saving the Council or letting humanity take over. I think what ME1 so great for me was it was all about the hard choices - I didn't find myself having to make any really tough decisions in ME2 - the one I wrestled with most was whether or not to hack the Geth (I did) and also who to take sides with between Miranda and Jack (I chose Jack), but even here I was able to get Miranda's loyalty back.

Of course, these are minor quibbles about an otherwise great game: excellent characters, much-improved class system (like, MUCH better), great locations, much better inventory and battle system, the only thing lacking for me was the storyline. I needed more surprising punch-in-the-stomach moments - something genuinely shocking that changes how you look at things. The closest ME2 comes to this was revealing the Collectors used to be the Protheans - but that's it. I needed...more. I spent half the game convinced the Illusive Man (notice ILLUSIVE, not ELUSIVE) was actually not a man at all, but some kind of Geth program plotting to totally screw over humanity (which would have been freaking mind-blowing and worthy of the "Empire Strikes Back" tag that's been attached to the game)...but no, he apparently really is just a man.

Another minor quibble: I miss the Citadel, and strangely enough, the Council. Sure, running with Cerberus was cool for a while, but I hope Shephard returns to being first and foremost a Spectre in ME3.


Last but maybe not least: the squad. Okay, it was very diverse and I love that, but as I already pointed out, maybe too much too was spent recruiting for the mission rather than actually doing the mission. I think next time, you need only have a maximum of 8 squad members, excluding Shephard. And Tali and Legion are great, but why do they come into it so late? It would have been very helpful to have tech experts earlier. Thank you for bringing back Garrus and Tali - good move.

Finally, keep the Mako dead, but bring back elevators. I miss the humour.

 

[Bellvedere]

The only thing ME2 did wrong was the planet scanning. It's tedious and takes to long and having to continually jump back and forth to get more probes is... bad. That said it still wins over the Mako since both are just as tedious but you get less loading time with the scanning.

I didn't think the enemy re-spawned. As far as I can tell there is a certain number that come out and some will join in after the encounter starts but if you stay in a room forever you're not going to have unlimited enemies coming after you. At least that's my experience...

The recharge for powers as far as I can tell is much faster in ME2. I don't mind the regenerating health. I never ran out of medi-gel or got in trouble because the skill wasn't recharging fast enough in the first one. This way you have to wait for yourself to heal and avoid fire for a certain period of time which in my opinion is harder than using an instant full recovery.

I think the multiple NPCs are much more useful in this one since there's not as much overlap in skills. In the first one I used two characters throughout the whole thing. This time it's fun experimenting with what the different characters can do. Also major improvement in the party control. In the first one I can't remember a single time using garrus that he didn't just stand in front of enemy fire and die.

But yeah the planet scanning is going to completely ruin replays for this. I just don't think I can go through it again...

 

[Paralyze]

The key to the 'Infiltrator in close-combat' problem is roll a Soldier like everyone who remembered how crappy the other classes were in the first game.

 

[keithdrover]

Shepard's voice was just about the incredibly lifeless, boring, white-washed (not always a bad thing, unless the two previous adjectives are present), uninteresting, unemotional voice and immersion-splitting thing I've heard. I couldn't take ANY dialogue he/she said seriously.

 

[Leviathan_]

Loading screens.... So many friggin' long loading screens.

The cover system did some weird stuff while I played ME2, but that just always happens in any game with a cover system.

and ofcourse: The scanning. Very boring shit that takes too long.

Unlimited ammo and self regen was fine imho. But I wouldn't mind having the ME1 system back either.

 

[Bellvedere]

Shepard's voice was just about the incredibly lifeless, boring, white-washed (not always a bad thing, unless the two previous adjectives are present), uninteresting, unemotional voice and immersion-splitting thing I've heard. I couldn't take ANY dialogue he/she said seriously.

I couldn't stand talking to Jacob as female Shepard. Even if you turn him down as a romantic interest the way she starts the conversation just sounds so... terrible. Really flirty and juvanille. It's like you're 30 woman and you're the boss. Other than that the voice wasn't so bad though I don't know about man sheppard.

 

[Funkysandwich]

More shotguns.

Seriously, I only found one other shotgun besides the shitty starting one in the entire game, and I did all the major and I'm guessing most of the minor missions, since I didn't search all the planets.

Yes! In ME1 I had an awesome shotgun that could blow the head off a geth at 100 meters! It was near unstoppable, had about 30 shots till overheat.

I wish I could've taken that gun into ME2.

And I wanted more pistols. I only found two of those as well.

They should've just simplified the system a bit more, and made identical items stack.
You can't kill off weapons variety just because of sloppy design.

 

[Agayek]

[b/]Scrape the Paragon/Renegade System[/b]- I'm not meaning the whole idea. I like the way Mass Effect 2 handles alignment with the whole good cop/bad cop idea, and the way it's handled with the speech wheel is very clever and organic. But there are some serious problems.

First of all, the more Paragon and Renegade you are, the more speech options it unlocks, some of which are vital to get the best result out of your game. That right there destroys the whole concept of the decision making. If I see an option I should be able to choose which one feels right to me. Instead I find myself sticking with one option though out the game rather than making decisions so I can get the benefits later on. Key dialog moments should not be decided though how often you picked the high or low option in conversations. You should have too look at the situation, the characters and the options and pick one that seems right to you.

Also the Scaring system in this game was just tacked on. It makes very little sense in a game like Fable, even less in more believable world like Mass Effects. No tacked on explanation that makes no god damn sense is going to change that. It's also another factor that effects decisions you should be making on your own terms.

Meh. I kinda like the alignment system. I do basically what you describe above, and have run into dialogue options I can't take all of like 4 times, over the course of 4 playthroughs. Maybe I'm just weird, but by the end of the game I end up with full, or close enough, Paragon and ~40% renegade, and I can still take almost all of the conversation options I want.

On the other hand, I couldn't agree more about the scarring. The scars should stay exactly as they were at the beginning of the game, with the option of healing them with the surgery upgrade you can research. The way it is now, it just feels shoehorned in, and aggressively unnecessary.

 

[Agayek]

Yes! In ME1 I had an awesome shotgun that could blow the head off a geth at 100 meters! It was near unstoppable, had about 30 shots till overheat.

I wish I could've taken that gun into ME2.

And I wanted more pistols. I only found two of those as well.

They should've just simplified the system a bit more, and made identical items stack.
You can't kill off weapons variety just because of sloppy design.

Haha, yea, shotguns are badass. If you want a third shotgun, play the game as a Vanguard.

Spoiler

On the Collector ship, where you choose new weapons to get, you have the option to either use Assault Rifles or Sniper Rifles, or be able to use the M-300 Claymore Heavy Shotgun (ie. The Krogan Shotgun). It annihilates basically everything at any difficulty below the one below insanity (Hardcore I think) in one shot.

Edit: I'm really bad at spoiler tags tonight.

 

[ChipSandwich]

I actually prefer the new inventory system, the old one was essentially just "4 guns with different numbers", as someone else in this thread has mentioned. Although I agree that the custom mods should be in. Make them one-time purchases (or finds), like the armor mods, and make them available for everyone.

In ME1 I absolutely hated having a ton of useless crap to sell off at the end of each mission and then ending up with 9999999 credits, or "you are near the 150 item limit". The new system is simpler, but emphasizes choice. And anyway, there's more variety in the weapons in ME2, although I do think they should have 2 options for each weapon class available early on. Using that goddamn 3 round burst SMG for half the game gets annoying, but at least it's better than being stuck with only a pistol in ME1, for the whole game. Luckily, the AR and Pistol do this already, and there's a new free DLC shotgun which is available at the start.

Health regen is a bit of an iffy issue, I don't particularly care either way, but I do think that it tends to make games too easy on default difficulties, and higher difficulties having to rely on overwhelming force (i.e. CoD: WAW's grenade spam), which tends to present a risk of fake difficulty. But like I said, it doesn't really bother me which system a game employs.

I really don't understand why they couldn't have just given you minerals as rewards for quests or for exploring. I suppose it makes sense in a space exploration context, but true 100% realism isn't always fun. Still, I prefer it much more than driving in the Mako.

The thermal clip system really only bothers me with snipers and the Vindicator Battle Rifle. Everything else has enough ammo to last.

Shepard's voice was just about the incredibly lifeless, boring, white-washed (not always a bad thing, unless the two previous adjectives are present), uninteresting, unemotional voice and immersion-splitting thing I've heard. I couldn't take ANY dialogue he/she said seriously.

I noticed this at times as well.

Still, despite the game's shortcomings, I'd probably give it a 9/10.

 

[RenegadeRed]

Here are ME2's flaws:

 

[Amnestic]

The key to the 'Infiltrator in close-combat' problem is roll a Soldier like everyone who remembered how crappy the other classes were in the first game.

Lolwut? Vanguard, Infiltrator and Adepts were absolute demons in ME1. Vanguards have been nerfed a fair bit in ME2 (though the new shotgun with DLC helps rectify the issues somewhat) but Infiltrators are still all kinds of awesome.

Engineers are pretty powerful too.