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After reading Adeel's excellent review of Mass Effect 2, I thought it worth my while to write a short piece highlighting my feelings on the game. Rather than repeat statements made by the good man himself, I will purely concentrate on the areas I feel let the game down. For the record, I consider Mass Effect 2 to be a great game, and would have scored it 8. But praise is less fun than criticism, so let´s pick on the little niggles that marred my experience. Firstly, the story - Yeah, it was great, and we really got to know the squad. But why build up a great squad, with depth to the characters, only to send us on ONE mission? The completed squad should have been the halfway point, after which we took our new friends across the galaxy fighting the good fight. We actually could have gotten more story pertaining to the collectors, and felt as if we had invested a lot more into the final conflict. Second, the missions themselves - The action sequences quickly became repetitive, with a lack of notable sequences to distinguish one from the next. A simple formula was followed - fight through a few rooms, quick cut scene, few more rooms, boss fight, end. Rinse and repeat. The newer fighting model was great, and the combined attacks were very interesting, but to drop in such uninspired levels took away a lot of the shine. I also hated the loyalty quests. Although they did a great job of fleshing out the characters (mainly via the cutscenes), I didn´t feel they generally warranted me earning the full respect of my team mates. Why couldn´t loyalty be gained through battle? Lose points when you give bad commands, or get your teammates knocked out. Gain kudos by pulling them out of danger, or setting up effective attacks. Surely better than running through yet another few corridors, and making a couple of narrative choices. Heck, the only truly great moment was the decision at the end of the Samara quest - WHY didn´t we get more of this? The final mission itself - I lost two teammates at the very end of the last quest purely because my choices for the team leader and biotic were not the correct ones. Cheap, but acceptable. I then proceeded to fight a two part end boss that was easier than nearly every other battle in the entire game - HOW could this be a threat to the galaxy when I beat it without taking a hit (and I was playing on veteran difficulty!)? The "new, improved" planet scanning - tedious, boring, and actually even less fun than the tiresome driving about from the first game. Not being able to land also made the universe feel a lot smaller this time around. And finally, the Cain heavy weapon - gamebreakingly powerful. One hit from this wipes out nearly any boss in the game, and there is always plenty of ammo for it just before a big fight. Tactics and powers become completely wasted with this puppy, so why even bother taking a squad with you? Anyway, before the comments section fills with flame - I loved Mass Effect 2. I felt the individual tales were good, the improved combat was excellent (although, take Adeels advice and DON´T GO SOLDIER - the powers are too much fun!), and the reappearance of previous characters was excellent. I also felt that the tie-ins with the previous game were fantastic, and added further depth to an already believable world. It is definitely a purchase recommendation, although do yourself a favour and invest in part 1 if you haven´t already, as this will just increase the epic tale even more.
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Comments
The reaver at the end was very far away from reaching its true potential. I think they mentioned that they would need many millions more humans to be harvested in order to get the reaver running properly.
As for the Cain, I only ended up using it twice, it is powerful but I felt that BioWare implemented it well by giving it very limited ammo. That meant that it could only really be used once per mission, a trump card if you may.
@Dan: I was really happy they took away the loot system. Too much useless downtime with that.
I do respect your criticism and I like the fact that someone is hosting a second opinion, I don't see them very often when it comes to games that are rating 9 or above.
Although I do agree with the fact that one mission is a little bit cheap when you have to spend around 15 hours of the game recruiting, I believe that the collector's threat was enough to gather a squad of powerful galatic soldiers. They were attacking human colonies after all and no one was doing anything about it.
Also, allowing loyalty to be gained through combat would be frustrating. When I played the game, I found myself in several where the death of my teammates was almost a guarantee. This would have really annoyed fans seeing as the game can be very challenging.
Overall, had I reviewed ME2, I would have awarded the game a 9 out of 10. I loved every moment of it, bar some of loading times which were quite irritating.
I can´t help but feel that the "gather your squad" stuff felt more like a load of side quests (which they likely would have been in another game!) as opposed to a main storyline. Also, after a little more retrospect, I actually get a horrible feeling the paid DLC packs may contain stuff we should have received with the retail copy of the game (we will have to wait and see on that one).
The loyalty arguement, from my point of view, would go a little like this: Too many times it is easier to blow through a level leaving your teamates to their own devices, living or dying without any player input. There should have been more reward for actively commanding your team, as ME2 did allow you to set up effective tactics. I would also argue that for a soldier, a skilful tactician would commandeer far more loyalty than, say, helping them find a family member (although I do think that Jacks loyalty quest made sense, due to the nature of the character).
Anyhow, I agree you make very valid points, and I accept how hard it is to tell the middle tale of a trilogy (no definitive start or finish, leaving strands open for further games). Let´s hope I am wrong about the DLC too, eh?
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