Great question but I'm going to ramble on a bit I'm afraid.
The quick answer is ME1. I only played ME1 and ME2 as I was so disappointed with ME2 that I simply couldn't be arsed to play ME3. My rationale for not wanting to play it was born out in the bodged way that BioWare handled the original ending and then tried to retrofit it afterwards for some extra cash.
I've detailed below all the things that frustrated me about ME2. If you weren't as into the games, or get bored quite quickly, you might want to make do with my quick answer. For those who've got an hour or so to spare, here goes...
First up, let me establish how great I thought Mass Effect was, it was the best thing I?d played on the 360. I bought the two books, got the soundtrack album, the art books, the special edition of the 1st and even managed to lay my hands on the SE of Mass Effect 2.
I don?t say this to indicate that my opinion is gospel, far from it, but to at least justify that I am entitled to an opinion and aren?t some attention seeking troll. To be honest many won?t even get this far in reading my ramble but you can?t grumble about a game unless you are prepared to detail what you actually thought of it.
Okay. I have to say that I was disappointed. The first game packed an emotional punch and a resonance that I felt long after the game. There were choices, there were selections and favourites and note worthy moments to discuss with friends and relatives, who I?d encouraged to take up the game.
The second, although it had a fabulous start, a good level of surface polish and an intriguing opening premise seemed desperate to try and improve but ultimately lost what it had in the first but then couldn?t attain in it?s attempts to copy other action focused titles.
Number of crew members
There were just too many crew members to assemble and find. With more characters there comes more dialogue but ultimately less for each respective character. When I first met Garrus, to see a friendly face (after Tali) from the 1st one, it felt really cool. He was always my right hand man in the first game and thus when the banter started in the de-briefing room after he came aboard, I was excited at the prospect at that level of further interaction between us.
Unfortunately, apart from the brilliant ?reach and flexibility? story, we got little else magic. With so much content needed for the other characters, everything seemed to be spread thinly. Hence the most I learnt from Garrus is that he spent an inordinate amount of time ?checking those calibrations?. I can?t help but feel that if the amount of characters had been halved, there would have been more room for content to develop them further.
When you can only ever take two with you at a time, you didn?t need an ultimate tally or 9 or 10. A further disadvantage of having so many team members is that the lions share of your time was spent recruiting them or completing their loyalty missions. You spend more time recruiting them and demonstrating loyalty that the actual core of the game.
In ME2, the loyalty missions (which were deemed as side quests in the first one) become part of the primary mission structure it seemed. Where as in the first you seemed to pick them up on the main journey of the story, here they were the story and hence things had an air of inevitability to them.
It?s all very well having loads of friends but until you start doing things with them and sharing experiences then you aren?t going to bond and thus more time was needed doing the missions that propelled the story forwards rather than forcibly bonding with your crew. It seems the lesson from the developers is ?the more we chuck in, the happier everyone will be?.
You build an emotional connection to certain characters and the more they are fleshed the better it feels but with so many to choose from, you still ended up remaining with a core select and dismissing the others.
When it comes to characters, less definitely would have been more.
Game structure
You never feel like you are organically in charge of Shepherd, the missions or the crew. You select a planet, then it loads, you?re already on it, then before you know it, you?ve completed the mission and are back on the Normandy. Sometimes you don?t even realise you?ve triggered the return to the Normandy meaning your taste of these new worlds seems incredibly controlled. Like you don?t have the time or freedom to look round.
The mission where the collector ship has landed and has taken a lot of the colonists felt very rigid and structured. Sure you could see other areas but these were always behind crates etc meaning that you always felt very funnelled rather than having the time to look around. Always being pushed onto the next action scene.
I mean look at how restricted you are on the citadel. Illium was probably the closest that any planet came to the wonder of The Citadel or Feros.
This feeling of being bounced along is further compounded with the mission summary at the end. It felt so wrong. The game is meant to feel like your own story, your own journey but that felt like having a summation at the end of every chapter in a fictional book or having a ?previously on? moment that you get on so many series episodes.
The game is about your experiences, how you relate that with your crew and your growing stature. The mission summation is a heavy handed reminder that you are playing a game and have scored x amount of points.
The feeling of being pushed along on rails was demonstrated well when I started on Red Omega. I started to have a look around and try to take in the atmosphere in an un-hurried manner. I don?t dawdle but I like to get my bearings. Not wanting to miss anything I started by making my way round from the right. Without realising it, I ended up in the lifts and had started Mordin?s mission. Then with the confusing ?Do you want to wait for Mordin or leave? (indicating to me that you?d either remain in the surgery or head off to investigate the rest of the space station?, I ended up back in the Normandy, flying off.
Whereas in the first you always felt you could control when and what you did and thoroughly investigate a location, here I became wary of ?triggering; the return to ship and space section. And with the loading screens seemingly just as long, if not longer, than the first one, it?s something you didn?t want to do.
Scanning of the planets
Now I know many used to grumble about going down to the planet in a Mako but at least if made you feel there was a difference between space and a planet. You felt like you actually saw the universe a little more because you got to go planet side and visit different terrains and scenery.
Ok, it might have been simple driving around but you witnessed different vistas, you had a sense of freedom and took a greater involvement with the planets. You were more likely to read the description of a planet because you wanted to know what to expect when you touched down and who can forget some of the views you saw. Double moons, planets with rings or even trundling up the side of a hill on the moon and Earth coming into view.
In Mass Effect 2 every planet is just another scan. It was fun to fire off the probe at the beginning but after a time you realise it?s about exciting as metal detecting on a tidal river bank. Roll forward a couple of hours and seeing a cluster of planets fills you with dread. You don?t bother reading the planet info because it?s ultimately irrelevant and feel the scanning is just a burden to get your numbers up.
Granted, you don?t have to do it but then you feel you are missing out which makes you feel dis-enfranchised from the emotive connection to the story as well as not being able to upgrade. In the old game, you?d enter a new system, read up on the planets and there might be one or two to land on. In ME2, you enter a new system, see four planets and think we?ll there?s an hour or two of gameplay gone there.
The reloading of the pistol
I know they wanted to make the action more fun but this became a real bug bear of mine. In ME1, especially when a vanguard you could get in a lengthy scrap with your foes. You could pace your shots with an endless steady stream or run in hard with a short lived flurry but understand that your gun would overheat.
Utilising future technologies and the ideas of the mass effect it seemed another great example of sensible logic and futuristic design. You never run out of ammo because you are just shearing off ?slugs? of metal from a clip. Having to endlessly reload and worry about the small size of the clip doesn?t make it more fun, just more frustrating. I know some will say it makes you think more strategic but to me it didn?t.
Instead of taking in the battlefield, the view, the nature of combat, you seem concerned with finding the next clip so you don?t run out and be forced to use another weapon that you might not like. It might be more realistic but one minute it seems we are, then next minute we aren?t. It?s like when Bungie decided to reduce the size of AR clip. It might have seemed a small change but you just didn?t have as much fun in the combat anymore. GOW managed to exploit this by having the Lancer come with a 60 round clip.
The music
I?m sorry but it was nowhere near as good as the first one. I?m quite adept at noticing soundtracks, whether in films or games. I own a fair chunk and this one had very little, apart from the track Suicide Mission and the load up screen that was memorable.
The first soundtrack was out of this world. So many different themes, so evocative of that late 70?s sci fi vibe. It really was something else. Even to the point that when I played the OST album to a recent newbie to ME, who?d only put in like 10 hours he still was beaming like a cat when each different tune would come on and he could relate a scene or an emotion to a piece of music.
The music in Mass Effect 2 might have been epic but it wasn?t spacey epic. You could have been in a fantasy world or a sewer under London. The music in ME1 felt futuristic and other worldly, which added hugely to the general atmosphere.
Vigil for me stands as inspirational a piece of music for Mass Effect, as the Gregorian chant is for Halo but there was nothing similar to this. We didn?t even get a similar belter to that of Faunts M4 Pt II that we got over the final credits. I don?t know if it was laziness or there was just nothing left in the bank.
Sacrificing story for action. Mood for boom, boom
I can?t help but feel like the game was prepared to sacrifice the strengths of story telling and mood generation through sweeping vistas and a haunting, evocative score by pandering or attempting to impress those with short attention spans or who only want action.
If I wanted a full on action game I?d play Halo, COD or GOW. Why does ME2 feel it has to directly compete? When it tries to, it suffers in the comparison but has then lost the forgiving consideration that story outweighs the shooting. So although the first one was clunky in its action, it didn?t matter when the reason for what you was doing was more important than how you were doing it.
Adopting the reload, employing a cover system so every battle is telegraphed by the sudden appearance of boxes to hide behind or using the screen blurring when you are getting wounded.
The proliferation of weapons removes the need for multiple play throughs. When I played ME1, I was a vanguard who got very proficient at the pistol. It was the weapon I excelled at and I made sure that my two squad mates always had the firepower of an AR with them. It made me think, well maybe I?ll play it again as a soldier someday.
In ME2 though, with a considerably weakened pistol and an annoyingly small clip when I?m given the AR that becomes my weapon of choice and once again the game and gameplay is affected by too much choice.
Not the same level of ?killer? decisions
I?m sorry but there weren?t really that many stop dead, think about it for a moment decisions to make, only really the one at the end about the Collector base. Unfortunately though the developers have revealed their hand and for all the talk that your decisions in the first would have such a big bearing, you realise that in reality, they don?t.
Whether the council lived or died is of little real consequence and hence when you are presented with the dilemma of destroying the collectors base, you know that it is something that will be addressed/corrected in maybe two lines of a conversation and that?s it.
I really feel for all those that played ME1 multiple times to have all the different saved versions of exterminating or not exterminating the Rachni, Ashley dying, Kaiden dying, Wrex dying, letting the council live or letting the council die because they must have discovered that it was all ultimately pointless.
When you consider how ME1 ended and for all the intervening time thinking have I made the right decision and it barely affected the new story, one just feels so short changed. When your mind is playing ?well by letting the council live, humans and the alien races can work together in better harmony against the forthcoming threat? you realised that, that level of thinking was pointless.
Because of this you know that any decisions made in the 2nd aren?t going to hugely affect the third. When you consider that ME made such a big thing of the different branching and how you could affect the story, there has been considerably less in the 2nd, to the point where they?ve allowed themselves to be thoroughly usurped by Heavy Rain.
The ending
I?m sorry but what a cop out. There certainly wasn?t the same kind of feeling that existed when I heard the full story behind the reapers, the keepers and the hidden relay. Turning up to see the Citadel being destroyed and under attack was truly incredible. The ending in this one, with the suicide mission having been built up so long was although entertaining as coming to the end of something might be, certainly wasn?t edge of the seat stuff.
No one died apart from Mordin (and I played it through first time on the one below insanity), though woefully this
wasn?t fully explained how, just a shot of his body and him no longer in the roster. There were plenty of rally calls but little emotional impact. You?re in a system that no one has seen, fighting a fabricated dumbed down version of the Reapers because the developers don?t want to reveal them until the 3rd one.
And why would the Reapers want to create a human looking ship? It?s well known that they looked down at all sentient life, what purpose would it be having a ship to look human? Why not have it shaped like a doughnut or a banana. It was just another example of lazy story telling.
?we don?t want anything too big because we want to double dip the punters wallets, so let?s give them a human shaped reaper to shock them. That?ll work?.
This none moreso demonstrated than with that final shot of all the reaper ships heading towards the star system. They clearly had some ideas but thought if we can hoodwink the fans with repetitive action and quicktime events they won?t realise that the Reaper/end of the universe story hasn?t really advanced at all.
The makers tried to claim that this was The Empire Strikes Back but at least things were revealed in that film. Darth being Luke?s father, the Empire on the ascendancy, the rebellion having taken a massive blow. At least that left you pumped for ??oh god, everything has gone to hell?. If ME2 was meant to be the dark one, I rue what the 3rd will be.
In summary
To me it?s like the game was play tested but not emotionally play tested. In the rush to seduce the COD fanboys no one took the time to stop and listen to the amazing, emotive music and think ?what will people be actually feeling?.
You want to return to a sequel to see new things but also to catch up. ME2 was on two discs as opposed to the one of ME1, so you assumed everything would be much bigger. How disappointing then that the Citadel was Access no areas, that Illium although great to look at wasn?t a snitch on the level of involvement of Feros or Virmire and that all we seemed to get was an endless stream of monotonous planets to scan.
When you consider that even if the makers hadn?t wanted to have you battling the reapers, how you could have been going round trying to drum up galactic support for the forthcoming war. The loyalty missions could then have been for the respective council members with trips to their homeworld to boot. This would have played into the necessity and continuity of you being Shepherd to galvanise forces but also could/would have played into your decision to let the council live or die or what you did with the Rachni.
At least also you would have finished the 2nd primed and ready to go for the huge bust up with the reapers with your actions directly affecting how many races, ships etc you went into battle with.
Such a wasted opportunity, such a disappointment compared to the first one and a real feeling that the core audience that made Mass Effect the success it was, was discarded in favour of the inconsistent vagaries of the shooter audience.
