(2016 Discussion) Mass Effect 2

[llsaidknockyouout]

While the first Mass Effect was promising though unpolished and the 3rd Mass Effect game found no meaningful ways to build on the franchise, Mass Effect 2 was the stellar middle ground.

One can make criticism of its binary moral system, but the depth of the story and characters reaches far beyond a renegade/paragon binary. Like in a college class, the material is deep and meaningful, but for the sake of the grading the class, it has to be reduced to a multiple choice exam (but that doesn't mean the whole experience was shallow).

I think Mass Effect 2 was a brilliant game. Aside from having robust production values, lots of content and refined gameplay, it also gave the player lots of choice, freedom, variety and content overall. It's a smart game that succeeds on an artistic level while also appealing to the mainstream market.

Like Nolan's Inception, there were a few artistic compromises to appeal to a wider audience, but when all's said and done, Mass Effect 2 is perfectly well rounded.

 

[Glongpre]

It is a good game.

But I didn't think it was a worthy successor to ME1. I was very disappointed.
It got rid of too many things like the mako, inventory, weapons system, and the main story was really lackluster. The things it got rid of only needed some refinement. It also lost a lot of it's scale.

So disappointed.

 

[Asita]

If there's one major criticism to be made of Mass Effect 2, it is that it ultimately didn't advance the plot in any meaningful way. If the script leak for Mass Effect 3 was to be believed, its main contribution to the series would have been establishing points that would later form the basis of the Reapers' motivations[footnote]Solving the problem of Dark Energy, which was a very long term but accelerating and ultimately catastrophic problem[/footnote] and methods[footnote]To lift a line from the Borg, "we will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us."[/footnote], but this was ultimately thrown out in favor of...well a sloppy attempt at echoing Asimov's Zeroth Law, which brings us back again to ME2 ultimately not contributing to the plot in a meaningful sense. It had excellent character focus, and the suicide mission remains one of my favorite climaxes in gaming (oversized terminator notwithstanding), but ultimately it probably should have had Shephard cultivating allies (ie, most of the priority missions from ME3) before getting sidetracked by the Collectors instead of being left out in the cold and focusing on the collectors for the whole of the game.

All that said, it's also probably my favorite installment in the Mass Effect franchise because of that character focus, gameplay and suicide mission.

 

[MysticSlayer]

Mass Effect 2 is sort of odd for me.

It was a fantastic game. I loved the characters and drastically improved combat. And the Suicide Mission is unquestionably one of the best moments in all of gaming.

But at the same time, it is my least favorite of the trilogy. Tonally, it isn't quite as strong as the first or third games. It doesn't have the same sense of awe the first game had at exploring the galaxy and watching a story slowly develop, but it also doesn't have the crushing weight that Mass Effect 3 threw on us. Even with the Suicide Mission, there is sort of understanding that this is only the second game in the trilogy, making it seem less hopeless than the Reaper invasion of the third game. It also is probably the least...meaningful (for lack of a better term)...game in the trilogy.

That said, being the worst in the Mass Effect trilogy isn't saying a lot. As a standalone game, it is phenomenal and one of the best of last generation. And I hardly regret having to play it whenever I'm replaying the trilogy. It is just that, in the scope of the trilogy, it is probably the weakest to me.

 

[DefunctTheory]

Good Points
---
1. Gameplay was fairly solid
2. Writing was pretty good
3. Some of the choices from the first game payed off
4. A lot more focused then the first game

Bad Points
---
1. Hilariously bad but fun driving is gone
2. Probing can go suck a lemon
3. Somewhere between ME1 and ME2 a reaper sneaked in and fooled the galaxy into thinking retro-mags were a good idea
4. The ending of the game was pretty weak

Points That Make All Of The Above Meaningless
---
1. Got to nail some sweet quarian tail while they were still mysterious and not revealed to be lame looking

 

[sanquin]

Funny thing, I just finished a playthrough of ME2 again. (And just started ME3.) The game is still pretty amazing to me. The rp elements and levelling are better in 1 and 3. (even though 1 had a lot of bloat and boring stuff) The combat is more polished in ME3. 1 has the best story. And 3 gives a nice balance between the bloated inventory of 1 and minimalistic, dumbed down inventory of 2. And looking purely at the plot, ME2 could have been left out entirely to be honest. Plus, who really thought going from heat slowly building up to 'heat sink' ammo clips was a good idea?

But ME2 has it's own things it does very well. If you look at them in order, ME2 improved on the combat immensely. Comparing the two should show anyone why people saw ME1's combat as clunky and a bit lack luster. It's loyalty missions are pretty damn good as well if you ask me. And of course the suicide mission at the end was stellar. I even see the planet scanning as a good idea. Just very...VERY poorly implemented.

I would say I play all three games for different reasons. ME1 for the story, ME2 for everything surrounding the story and the characters, and ME3 for it's combat and visuals.

 

[Danbo Jambo]

A very good game, but well overated for me. Funnily enough I'm just trying to get through a 3rd playthrough, but it's just such a slog I can't be bothered. Out of the series ME1 was head and shoulders the best for me personally.

ME2's a good game. I liked it's story; I LOVED the fact that you joined Cerberus to see the crisis from a different perspective; I thought the Illusive man and grey areas of moral choice were brilliant; the new characters were great; and I though the way the the characters from ME1 made a return or were included was handled brilliantly.

But there was a lot which hindered the experience for me. It felt WAY more Paragon/Renegade based, with the whole game feelt setup to play in one way or the other; I didn't think the combat was that good (i didn't like the new cooldown system, much prefered not having ammo, and my character pulled to the left for no reason a lot); the mining mini-game was awful and total removed the element of feeling like a "space explorer" which the Mako provided; and the classes felt less balanced too.

It felt as if the game had held my hand way too much throughout too, and - whilst I enjoyed the story in isolation - it came across as more of an ME spin-off, like the Rogue One film, as opposed to a genuine continuation of the story.

I'd rate it 8/10. A very good game, which pleasantly ticked over and had some cool moments. But I won't be going back to it again, whereas I'll return to ME1 many times over yet.

There was a definite lack of soul and feeling of being "processed" as I played through ME2.

 

[llsaidknockyouout]

Bad Points
---
1. Hilariously bad but fun driving is gone

Fun until the Mako gets stuck in a wall and you have to repeat an hour long segment again.

 

[sanquin]

Fun until the Mako gets stuck in a wall and you have to repeat an hour long segment again.

Can't say I ever got stuck with the Mako.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

SNIP

Don't forget the throw away line from Tali on Haestrom, about Dark Energy causing a star to age millions of years in on a few hundred years.
Early ME3 drafts had Dark Energy playing a big part in defeating the Reapers.

But yeah, looking back, Mass Effect 2 was utterly inconsequential.

 

[Michel Henzel]

I just can't bring myself to agree. Personally I found it to be the worst of the three games in terms of characters and story. Mordin was probably one of the few good things to come out of that, and really one of the only characters who's name I actually remember from the second one as the rest of the new characters were terribly forgettable. Most of the recruit and loyalty missions felt way too short, not to mention horribly underwhelming.

Now gameplaywise there was plenty of good, the combat was greatly improved, though I did miss getting loot, and the suicide mission was pretty amazing, but it was just too little for me to make up for the bad. It felt far blander than the other two. But that is just me.

 

[Maximum Bert]

I got it finished it on insanity and (mostly) enjoyed my time doing so but thats about it I cant say its an experience that stayed with me. Some of the characters were pretty fun as well.

Really though it killed my investment in the series I just found I did not care what happened after 2 and so never got 3 and then I heard all that stuff about how fantastic the ending was but missed out since I wasnt very invested anyway.

Things I disliked about it was the change to make it more like a 3rd person shooter (arguably more a shooter than RPG now), the massive linearity of it which was felt even more due to the lack of a strong central driving story and the setting. I loved that they got rid of the rubbish Mako sections but could not believe that they had replaced it with probing which was somehow even worse (that must have taken a lot of effort to make something even more tedious and boring than the Mako sections) and lastly the retconning of the ammo system to make it more like a 3rd person cover shooter just made no sense on anything other than a gameplay level.

In all it just felt like a step back from the first entry with smaller areas and less things to do. The core gameplay was satisfying if you like shooters but it lost the charm of the original imo and marked a turning point in the series that was unwelcome for me.

 

[TheVampwizimp_v1legacy]

Well, it is my favorite video game I've ever played, so call me biased, but I think it's a good game. A great game. A superlative game. A prime example of what video games can be, and what they can mean to us.

I quite liked ME1 when I first played it, but by the end of ME2 I was OBSESSED. I played it 7 or 8 times in the year before ME3 came out. The series has been a big part of my life ever since, and it makes me happy just to think about it sometimes. Whatever the arguments about strengths and flaws and it's relation to the overall story (arguments I would gladly have again), the important thing is that ME2 is one of my favorite experiences of my entire life.

 

[meiam]

My first time playing trough, I did so on normal difficulty and though it was a decent but unimpressive game. I then went trough and played on insanity and it was an entirely different experience. The gameplay was so much better since having almost every enemy have either shield or armor really make team composition and the various classes stand out and make for an infinitely richer gameplay experience compare to 1. Despite having less gameplay customization aspect the game had far more interesting choice, yeah maybe it only had 2-3 different weapon for every type, but the difference between them was far more interesting than the stat stick gun from ME1.

But more than that, the gameplay reinforced the story on higher difficulty, you want to have a wide variety of character because you want to have access to a bunch of different power to be able to deal with the tougher enemy. And the middle section of the game (invading the collector ship) really reinforce that you need to be prepared since its a really tough part of the game, appreciably more so than the other fight around that level which elevate the collector above the usual riff raft you usually fight.

Story wise it was a lot more grey in idea (sadly not in practice with the paragon/renegade system being really flawed). Cerberus and the illusive man were really interesting character and the final decision was by far the most interesting one in the franchise (sadly they kinda cheated with it since you should have been able to just keep the station but give it to someone else). But sadly ME3 just refused to build up on any theme from ME2, cerberus/illusive man were just evil because they were evil, no interest in exploring the notion of necessary evil (they didn't even bother rejecting it, it's not like cerberus is lead astray by there wrong ideology, they were just mind controlled from the beginning). Overall the game felt like you were just running around in circle and nothing you did mattered that much. Now in some way I liked that idea, if I had one crack at making a new mass effect it would be an alternate reality where Shepard was made Specter, but the reaper threat never existed, instead you'd just deal with smaller but still significant problem, a bit more a la star trek, but at the same time the scale were just too small. Dealing with the problem of some backward asteroid station just doesn't cut it.

The character were kinda all over the place but it felt like bioware didn't really get what made a character popular. The advertisement and story really made it seems like they though Jack was gonna be the most popular character, but she's one of the less interesting one (just barely above Jacob) and similarly with Miranda and Grunt being heavily advertised but being not all that interesting.

Overall I think it's the best in the series, slightly above ME1 in story but light year ahead in gameplay while being slightly below ME3 in gameplay but far above it in story.

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

It is a good game.

But I didn't think it was a worthy successor to ME1. I was very disappointed.
It got rid of too many things like the mako

Which was shit.

inventory

Double shit with a side of bacon.

weapons system

I can never decide what was more annoying: not being able to use the weapon at all, or using it and being so fucking hopeless without sinking precious points into it that it made no odds. Removing customization was a terrible idea, but the customization in ME1 was honestly kind of shit to begin with since it was based on RNG created items.

and the main story was really lackluster.

It probably would have been better if they hadn't changed their proposed endings for ME3 that related to Dark Energy - should have just rode the leak.

The things it got rid of only needed some refinement. It also lost a lot of it's scale.

Scale. This is a thing that honestly baffles me with the list of complaints levied at ME2 and ME3. The scale is preventing galactic extinction, so no while you're on the ticking clock it would be highly inappropriate to shuffle down to random planets to do doughnuts in the world's worst IFV while whole colonies of people are disappearing, even more so while the Reapers are setting fire to whole planets.

 

[Asita]

SNIP

Don't forget the throw away line from Tali on Haestrom, about Dark Energy causing a star to age millions of years in on a few hundred years.
Early ME3 drafts had Dark Energy playing a big part in defeating the Reapers.

But yeah, looking back, Mass Effect 2 was utterly inconsequential.

That's what I was referring to with the first footnote.

 

[Risingblade]

I loved it. It got rid of that annoying mako and the horrible combat system in ME1. It's practically superior in every single aspect.

 

[Arina Love]

It's was pretty much meh imo. Well maybe I'm to harsh, let's say ME2 was definitely not as good as Me1 in my opinion. Bioware you are supposed to expand and polish RPG elements and make some more complex, more demanding to person's ability to comprehend game mechanics , but you've gone and cut the whole shebang and made ME in to a near dudebro shooter. AND you pulled the same approach with Dragon Age 2. DA3 was ok but i just don't believe Bioware can bring back ME.

 

[madwarper]

It's an OK Gears of War clone, but an utter disappointment as a successor to Mass Effect 1.

a) FUCKING. THERMAL. CLIPS.
They spent the first game establishing how their weapons get their projectiles, and that they don't need "ammo". Then, they threw that out the window and included "ammo" that was incredibly sparse (if appearing at all) on a mission. And, if you are so fortunate to find them, they only restore a portion of the ammo to your weapons, which makes weapons with limited amounts of ammo (ie. Sniper Rifles) unplayable.

b) Inventory
Sure, ME1 had inventory bloat and needed to be addressed. But, what happened in ME2 was way too many bridges too far. You could only change your armor by going up to (LOADING SCREEN) your cabin, then returning to (LOADING SCREEN) the ship before going onto the next mission. Your "weapons" can only be switched out at the beginning of each mission... But, the largest problem with the inventory is that it lacks...

c) Numbers
How the fuck are you supposed to compare whether you should take Sniper Rifle A or Sniper Rifle B on a mission? Which deals more damage? Which holds more ammo? And, the armor only tells your percentages. These gloves gives me +10% spare ammo. Is that good? What's the amount of spare ammo without the gloves? With it? Would it be better to use the +5% weapon damage gloved? What's the amount of damage without the gloves? With them? Not having that information immediately available in inexcusable.

d) Infiltrator class
In ME1 it was a sniping god. In ME2, because of the lack of ammo (due to FUCKING. THERMAL. CLIPS.), they're regulated to being mere fireball hurling wannabe wizards.

e) Agency
I'm not surprised ME3 turned out the way it did, considering as though all the major decisions made in ME1 amounted little more than the slight head nod in ME2. "Hey, remember that time we did the thing in the place?"

I was so disgusted by the direction that ME2 went, I checked out of the franchise then and there. So, I no longer had anything invested when the whole ME3 kerfuffle erupted. I just sat back and enjoyed my popcorn.