(2016 Discussion) Mass Effect 2

[Allar]

It's difficult to say, but I doubt ME3 would've had as much of an impact without it. It was the "smaller" story and focused on building your relationship with the characters, and those relationships payed off in ME3. It also did this a lot better than ME did. The firs game relied heavily on dialogue dumps, while ME2 integrated player choices, character quests and better animation sequences into the mix. I mean it's difficult to say for sure, and I love the cast of the first game as much as the second, but I think it had a big impact on building the emotional core of the series.

This is too often missed when talking about Mass Effect 2 I think. For me the real value in Mass Effect 2 was fleshing out the universe through the stories of a handful of people that lived in it. It also did a lot to lay the ground work for why some of the biggest issues in the series mattered on a personal scale. I thought the examination of the impact that the Genophage had on the Krogan socially was particularly important for providing a more intimate context to the problem. Likewise I thought the interplay between Tali and Legion and the raid on the Heretic base did a lot to make the Geth problem a deeper, more multi-layered story. This is especially true given the Geth's entire purpose in the first game being to serve as cannon fodder that show nothing but antipathy toward all organic life.

The first Mass Effect was excellent as an introduction to this big, crazy galaxy but the second actually made me care about the characters in their own right and I don't think that could've been done nearly as well if the story had had too wide a focus.

 

[votemarvel]

Wow, so you concede that it really is just the last frikkin' 30mins that make you say ME3 isn't a good game? That just seems bizarre and completely irrational, ergo the accusation that ME3 is poor just for that ending is absurd.

The endings over shadow pretty much all the flaws in the third game sadly.

How about the very beginning of the game and the face import bug. Sure they 'fixed' it but the removal of certain facial options in the character creator means that it'll never be quite right.

The comedy animations. The massive increase in passive conversations. The eavesdropping side-quests. The ruined journal. The further bias toward gun based classes. Cerberus going from a small rogue black-ops group to a galactic super-power in the space of three years......deep breath. There is hell of a lot wrong with Mass Effect 3 beyond the endings, they sadly have somehow convinced people that it is 'only the last few minutes' that is wrong with Mass Effect 3.

Back on topic. I'm on a trilogy run at the moment and am current halfway through Mass Effect 2. What I find amazing about it is that this is the only one of the trilogy where I don't want to mod the textures.

I can't play ME1 (especially) or ME3 without their texture overhauls but despite trying the ME2 version, I just don't think it needs it. There isn't the leap there that ME1 and ME3 get. Certainly not enough to put up with the increased loading times.

 

[Darth Rosenberg]

How about the very beginning of the game and the face import bug. Sure they 'fixed' it but the removal of certain facial options in the character creator means that it'll never be quite right.

Especially by 3; default Shep is best Shep. ;-) So I never encountered whatever that issue was.

The comedy animations.

Meaning?

The massive increase in passive conversations.

As above. What do you mean by passive conversations? As in basic cutscenes with no dialogue choices? If so, I'd say the more passives the better; ME was never a true role-player for me, nor was it a narrative of a fully defined character. ME3 was really the first entry to make her seem like an actual person, as opposed to a weird puppet being passed back and forth between player and scene director.

The eavesdropping side-quests.

ME2 had those as well, though (if you mean triggering misc-quests courtesy of talky NPC's). I'm fine with those. In fact, I'd much rather those kinds of miscellaneous tasks were picked up like that than have to sit through a few screens of back and forths (DA:I comes to mind as a particularly annoying offender). One I remember in 2 was that salarian on Illium who's talking about his families gene records on his, er, space-mobile. To me it felt quite immersive and efficient.

The ruined journal.

How? Okay, in 3 it was rather shite, but I actually found myself simply never using it (especially on subsequent runs) because I never needed it. There was an admirable focus of goals and tasks, and the galaxy map provided enough of a reminder.

The further bias toward gun based classes.

In what way? I'd argue ME3 freed up all choices and empowered all kinds of hybrid builds. You could roll with a single weapon and have insane cooldown as an Adept. Engineers were better than they'd ever been, too.

Cerberus going from a small rogue black-ops group to a galactic super-power in the space of three years....

Eh, we only really saw one cell in ME2, so there's not much to suggest they didn't have those resources even then. Even in ME1 they were an organisation who spanned the galaxy, and had fingers in all sorts of [space] pies. They also abducted a shitload of humans during ME2.

Granted, I found them a fairly dull stock enemy; they were clearly just there to give players humanoids with guns to shoot at, but beyond an initial disappointment it never bothered me. They were cannon fodder breaks from the Reaper forces.

There is hell of a lot wrong with Mass Effect 3 beyond the endings, they sadly have somehow convinced people that it is 'only the last few minutes' that is wrong with Mass Effect 3.

That's a tad unfair. Why would BioWare wish to convince anyone that anything was overly "wrong" with their game in the first place? I'm pretty sure it's an overreacting bunch of fans that have convinced The Internet ME3's finale is some kind of cultural atrocity/personal attack.

Apropos endings, though: I do think 1 and 2 have superbly staged endings which feel satisfyingly conclusive, whilst clearly building up and into the next game's confrontations. The suicide mildly harmful if you forget a brolly and a spare sweater-mission is my favourite finale of the trilogy. Well, ignoring the dopey Human Reaper who looked like a Mega Drive era shooter boss...

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

What I find amazing about it is that this is the only one of the trilogy where I don't want to mod the textures.

It's because of the lighting in that game. But it still looks pretty badass with ALOT mod: http://www.nexusmods.com/masseffect2/mods/68/?

 

[visiblenoise]

I think I preferred the story of 1 a little more, but it was much more of a pleasure to play 2. Planet scanning was more satisfying than driving on empty planets with toy-like physics. Running and shooting was more streamlined, which in this case was a plus for me since the shooting in the first game was barely passable. I did miss equipping items a bit, but it's not like there was great loot to begin with anyway - it was mostly just a lot of Roman numerals.

 

[hermes]

It was a good game, and had some excellent characters in it, but it is true that, in terms of story, it didn't advance the plot so much: You join an organization that is not really your allegiance at the end of the first game (Cerberus), and will not be at the beginning of the third; you fight an enemy that is not the main antagonist of the first game (Collectors), and will not be at the beginning of the third; you try to solve an issue that didn't exist at the end of the first game (human colonies being wiped out) and will be inconsequential at the beginning of the third. You even lost the ship you commandeer at the beginning of 2, only to stay as commander of a pretty similar one by the end of the game.

It was almost like those Agents of SHIELDS episodes where they have to make sure the status quo of the world resets to pretty much the same so that the movies can function without no one noticing all the events and threats happening outside of them.

If anything, it could have worked as a DLC or side story based on the impact it had on the narrative of the main quest. If anything, the Arrival DLC in 2 is more consequential to your status in the third game than most of the main quest. The saving grace and the only reason to justify it being essential for the trilogy, however, is in the characters it introduced and developed, which has a cast that is not only varied and colorful, but essential (for the most part... looking at you, Jacob, you adorable piece of blandness) in the story of the last game.

 

[votemarvel]

How about the very beginning of the game and the face import bug. Sure they 'fixed' it but the removal of certain facial options in the character creator means that it'll never be quite right.

Especially by 3; default Shep is best Shep. ;-) So I never encountered whatever that issue was.

It is difficult to describe if you kept Shepaloo as your default but I had a custom Shepard as my 'main'. To have someone who clearly wasn't her, well to be honest it was pretty game breaking.

Meaning?

DO I seriously need to give examples of this beyond Shepard's marvellous running animations?

As above. What do you mean by passive conversations? As in basic cutscenes with no dialogue choices? If so, I'd say the more passives the better; ME was never a true role-player for me, nor was it a narrative of a fully defined character. ME3 was really the first entry to make her seem like an actual person, as opposed to a weird puppet being passed back and forth between player and scene director.

Conversations such as with Zaeed after his meeting. Tali when she was drunk on the ship.

You know what I mean. The conversations where Shepard and someone else talks but you don't get to direct that conversation.

Yes others in the series may not have had much difference from their interactive conversations but they helped maintain the illusion of choice. Something ME3 fails to do.

ME2 had those as well, though (if you mean triggering misc-quests courtesy of talky NPC's). I'm fine with those. In fact, I'd much rather those kinds of miscellaneous tasks were picked up like that than have to sit through a few screens of back and forths (DA:I comes to mind as a particularly annoying offender). One I remember in 2 was that salarian on Illium who's talking about his families gene records on his, er, space-mobile. To me it felt quite immersive and efficient.

The bad eavesdropping quests are those where you don't have to talk to the person to pick it up.

You mention the Salarian family records in ME2. Yes you could hear it but it never became an active quest until you picked up the item in Dantius Towers. If you wanted to turn it in, then you actually had to talk to the person.

How? Okay, in 3 it was rather shite, but I actually found myself simply never using it (especially on subsequent runs) because I never needed it. There was an admirable focus of goals and tasks, and the galaxy map provided enough of a reminder.

You just admitted that it was bad in ME3, why do you feel the need to argue for its defence? That you never used it does not forgive how 'shite' it became.

In what way? I'd argue ME3 freed up all choices and empowered all kinds of hybrid builds. You could roll with a single weapon and have insane cooldown as an Adept. Engineers were better than they'd ever been, too.

ME2 introduced shields and armour to the enemies that Biotics would not affect. An Adept, as you mention, would have to stick behind a chest high wall spamming biotic combos. Also the new global cooldown removes the squad selection freedom. In this game at least you could pick up a decent gun (at the Collector Ship) and make up the difference.

Mass Effect 3 on the other hand maintains the armour and shields penalty to the biotic classes but now introduces a weight penalty with the weapons, and keeps the global cooldown. So you can have either an effective gun or have low cooldowns, which since biotics don't do much against the protections forces you to prioritise the guns.

Tech based classes have actually improved I would say, thanks to the changes to powers such as Hacking and Overload. However a Soldier with Disruptor Ammo is far more effective against shields and mechs than a tech based class.

Eh, we only really saw one cell in ME2, so there's not much to suggest they didn't have those resources even then. Even in ME1 they were an organisation who spanned the galaxy, and had fingers in all sorts of [space] pies. They also abducted a shitload of humans during ME2.

Granted, I found them a fairly dull stock enemy; they were clearly just there to give players humanoids with guns to shoot at, but beyond an initial disappointment it never bothered me. They were cannon fodder breaks from the Reaper forces.

You forget the information we found out about Cerberus in ME1. Where they were an Alliance Black Ops group.

Somehow between ME1 and ME3, they became a power capable of assaulting the seat of government during war time. That's hell of a leap in power.

That's a tad unfair. Why would BioWare wish to convince anyone that anything was overly "wrong" with their game in the first place? I'm pretty sure it's an overreacting bunch of fans that have convinced The Internet ME3's finale is some kind of cultural atrocity/personal attack.

I don't think Bioware did anything deliberately. I do think however that they wanted to tell a grand epic ending but in doing so forgot why people wanted to get there in the first place.

ME3 was the final game in the trilogy, obviously, yet they didn't bother to give the slightest bit of closure to the characters we'd spent five years with. And no, closure is not conversations that take place before the ending.

Which is why I like the Extended Cut so much. It added the personal back to the grand.

 

[Pyrian]

Wow, so you concede that it really is just the last frikkin' 30mins that make you say ME3 isn't a good game?

That's not really fair. When you invest a large amount of buildup into something that turns out bad, you don't just lose the bad ending, you lose all the buildup. When things that would be great if they held up, don't hold up, they're no longer great.

 

[-Dragmire-]

Mass Effect 2 is... fine. My expectations were through the roof due the situation around my experience with the first game. It wouldn't have been impossible for them to have made a game that met my expectations, but they didn't even try. I'm not saying they were lazy or incompetent, I'm saying they shifted direction and tone harshly from what I expected based on the content and ending of the first game.

Spoiler: My history with ME1 stuff, context for how I feel about ME2

I got Mass Effect 1 on a whim and for perhaps one of the first times, I was enjoying a shooter. I think it was the first shooter I chose to play on my own(as opposed to joining friends for Unreal tournament). Movement was simple and it didn't have the biggest gameplay drawback for me at the time that prevented me from having much fun with shooters, limited ammo. This, mechanically, eased me into the world allowing me to easily immerse myself into it's story, lore and characters. Once I was free to learn more about how this world worked, I dove right in(all my level upgrading prioritized social perks first before combat). Every time a new concept was brought up that peaked my interest, there was someone to talk to who could explain the hows and whys to me. Combat usually lead me to hubs of people who could teach me more about this universe. The character moments, for the most part, felt like I had earned the trust and respect of the people around me because how I had invested time and interest in them. Finally, the ending[small](pun?)[/small]. Endings are extremely important to me, it will color my memory of the game as a whole. It is what makes me feel like the time and effort I invested mattered and achieved my personal goal for the cast. ME1 had that for me, everything from Virgil's revelations to the rush to the conduit to the run up the side of buildings to get to the presidium while Sovereign looms overhead to the final Saren confrontation to the victory over Sovereign was amazing. While there were flaws in these moments, I was too exhilarated to notice. I severely wanted to continue where the last story note ended, trying to figure out how to stop a nearly unimaginable force that we knew were still trying to get into the galaxy to destroy us.

Mass Effect 2 released the day I completed Mass Effect 1.

Spoiler: ME2 gripes

ME2 threw me off wildly in the very first minutes, the destruction of the Normandy by a ship that didn't look like it was from the Mass Effect universe and death/revival of Shepard was extremely jarring. Adding to that initial awkwardness was the mechanical shift, ammo limits were introduced and the leveling system was changed severely(I can't say it was a bad change, I liked the new unique abilities and disliked the universal cooldown but the closest thing I could do to go for social upgrades first was boost paragon/renegade points...). Things didn't improve for quite a while. Dialogue weren't answering wtf was going on, people who could answer were either immediately killed or deliberately evasive. I felt my ability to learn about the lore and world stunted severely. The focus felt like the story bits were there just to get you to the shooty bits and no more. Story/character interaction at the end of missions were very bare. A good example of this is the abrupt End Mission Stats screen. I was being constantly being put in situations where upon completing my mission, all the affected people I was trying to help were in areas I couldn't go back to. There was one resident on Horizon I got to see, there were many more who were frozen but not abducted. Are they okay? How do they feel about the situation now? Will they choose to leave the Terminus system as a result of this attack? We had a situation like Zhu's Hope where we went to save a village of people from a horrible situation and the payoff is a single villager's viewpoint(about me, nothing interesting to learn from him) and an awkward semi confrontation with a former squadmate using a dialogue wheel that doesn't let us state the facts of our situation[small](again)[/small].

Spoiler: More ME2 stuff and I'm getting tired

ME2 did have good squad character moments, and there was new interesting things to learn about the universe like the free Geth. Like the first game, the parts I enjoyed did shade issues with the game but because I kept faltering in areas I felt the first game excelled in, I was more prone to being critical as I played ME2. I can't say I saw all the weaknesses in the plot of ME2 when I first played it but the way the plot was given definitely irked me. I like feeling like I'm on the same page as the people I'm working with. Give me a lead, I'll investigate and bring back info. What I do not like is being sent somewhere for recon and finding out the info I brought back "confirmed suspicions". If you had info that pertained to my mission and didn't tell me for unconvincing reasons, that gets to me. By the end of the game, The Illusive Man felt like more of an antagonist than Harbinger(The lack of personality in Collectors didn't help matters either).

...I've spent too much time on this.

ME2 is not a bad game, I just feel it's a bad sequel to the first game.

 

[Darth Rosenberg]

That's not really fair. When you invest a large amount of buildup into something that turns out bad, you don't just lose the bad ending, you lose all the buildup. When things that would be great if they held up, don't hold up, they're no longer great.

It seems there was a rather worrying amount of invested "buildup" by fans susceptible to hype and false expectations, going by the runtime of the offending material relative to the toxic, over emotive fallout. BioWare didn't come around to each player's house and personally punt their dog/cat/favoured hamster over the neighbour's wall. It was just an ending to a game they didn't like. That's it.

Am I being harsh? Perhaps, but I think such an over-identification with a single piece of media is plainly just outright irrational. I don't think it exactly cast the gaming community in a particularly favourable light.

 

[votemarvel]

As I continue this play through of Mass Effect 2 I'm actually beginning to think I prefer Mass Effect 3 more.

Mass Effect 2 feels so inconsistent in tone, at times it can feel as I am playing completely different games. ME1 and ME3 for all their sins manage to keep a far more consistent tone and keeps you ingame.

I've been using the Ghost command to skip through many of the duller side-missions. Damn my completionist nature.

 

[Idsertian]

Don't forget the absolutely stellar soundtrack, too. By far and away, the best music in the entire trilogy.

Spoiler

2. Probing can go suck a lemon

> Acquire Gibbed's ME2 Save Editor
> Load up save of your choice
> Edit resource amounts
> Save edited save file
> Open game, load save
> Never have to probe again

Feels good, man.

 

[K12]

If there's one major criticism to be made of Mass Effect 2 is that it ultimately didn't advance the plot in any meaningful way.

Thank you for finally helping me realise the reason why I don't like Mass Effect 2 as much as I feel I should have done. It's generally considered the best of the three overall and I always struggle to agree with that and couldn't pin down why. It may well be the best anyway but it still feels like an "interim story".

I kind of feel that I should have been able to work this out on my own by now...

 

[Potjeslatinist]

I can't say I hated the total of it. I did complete the whole trilogy and enjoyed it. But there were quite a few aspects of ME2 that I didn't like.

1) The story, mainly the ending. The plot is that the Reapers are stranded in dark space, because space is really really incredibly big. They're a gazallion space miles outside the Milky Way and must worm their way in via cheating portal-things. To this end, they have a guy inside to open the door, but he gets blown up.
So they try something else. They get the Collectors to build a Reaper inside the Milky Way so that he can activate the Citadel and buzz the space machines in. They get blown up too.

So, you know, fuck it, they're just gonna fly in, suddenly it's not impossible anymore. I face-palmed so hard when I saw that dumb-ass last shot. And ME3 is set how much time after this? Few months? They only needed a few months to fly in, apparently they were right out in the front yard the whole time, so why all that crap in the first two games?

I loved ME1's story, especially that reveal on Virmire, and the exposition on Illos. But ME2 just undid all that.
I hated that ending far more then ME3's (EC), weird deus ex machina in that one notwithstanding.

2) Inventory. Okay, I wish everyone would calm down a bit on ME1's inventory. It was a product of its time, it was still an rpg, so things were a little more clunky, but only unbearably so if you're an impatient little teen hopped up on Monster. I mean, come on. What we got in ME2 was just...nothing. Instead of refining it they just threw it out, reducing it to shooter-simplicity.

3) The planet scanning. Beating a dead horse, I know, but holy fuck, does it bear repeating. Again, no refining the previous system, just throwing it out in favor of the most boring shit they could have possibly thought up. And I know, you really didn't need to do all of it to have enough resources, but then, what's the point, right?

The Mako had a real sense of adventure. You were actually in spaaaaaace getting into all kinds of crazy space adventures. The fact that people are being so dramatic over its mechanics also drives me nuts. It's not a car, it handles differently. Once you got the hang of it, and stopped using your boosters like an idiot while on a near vertical slope, it handled quite consistently and you could traverse some crazy terrain with it. I'm sorry, just "get gud".

And the Hammerhead was just stupid. One incredibly linear mission, which somehew managed to feel like a platform game. Not even remotely adequate compensation.

So all in all, it was the first game in the trilogy that started squandering the setting's huge potential. I don't have high hopes for Andromeda.

PS: I think the suicide mission is vastly overrated. It was a rather standard end game. Not bad, but nothing special, although that music was certainly epic.

 

[Glongpre]

So, you know, fuck it, they're just gonna fly in, suddenly it's not impossible anymore. I face-palmed so hard when I saw that dumb-ass last shot. And ME3 is set how much time after this? Few months? They only needed a few months to fly in, apparently they were right out in the front yard the whole time, so why all that crap in the first two games?

Lol, it is such bad storytelling. But to be fair, they lost the main writer, and frankly, the Reapers were a pretty impossible to beat threat. I feel like they should have been a one off in the first game, their only way in was destroyed so now they are stuck in dark space, the end.
Especially after chatting with Sovereign, I was like, no way we can do shit to these guys, minus finding kryptonite, or a magic space ghost...oh wait.

The Mako had a real sense of adventure. You were actually in spaaaaaace getting into all kinds of crazy space adventures. The fact that people are being so dramatic over its mechanics also drives me nuts. It's not a car, it handles differently. Once you got the hang of it, and stopped using your boosters like an idiot while on a near vertical slope, it handled quite consistently and you could traverse some crazy terrain with it. I'm sorry, just "get gud".

Thank you. I feel like I am the only one who liked using the mako. The hammerhead was fun, but it was only involved in linear DLC missions, and no where else. It was useless.

So all in all, it was the first game in the trilogy that started squandering the setting's huge potential. I don't have high hopes for Andromeda.

Do you mean, "it was the second game in the trilogy"? Hmmm, I re-read it, and I think I am just misinterpreting it.

PS: I think the suicide mission is vastly overrated. It was a rather standard end game. Not bad, but nothing special, although that music was certainly epic.

I don't think so, it was very well done. The only problem was that I always went in making sure no one could die, so that really took a lot of tension out of it. I think Garrus died on my first one because I didn't know the conditions, and that made the mission way better because it actually felt like a suicide mission.

 

[Kerg3927]

I like all three about equally. They each have their different pros and cons.

ME1: I liked the leveling system the best. Lots of points and skills to put them in. The constant dinging was fun. Also, the newness of it all can only be experienced once. On the other hand, the combat and AI was clunky, and while the Mako was cool at first, exploring planets quickly became tedious. In subsequent playthroughs I always pull up a map of each planet to speed up the process and minimize the wandering around.

ME2: Better combat. Character development was awesome. The whole Seven Samurai-style plot to assemble your team and then watch it pay off in the finale was done very, very well. Some of the characters are all-time RPG greats. The "load everyone into the shuttle" thing was heavily contrived and the Terminator reaper baby was certainly cheesy, but oh well, can't have everything.

ME3: The urgency and near hopelessness of the situation - on a galactic scale - just makes the plot more emotional and impactful than the other two. Lots of tearjerker moments. They broke the journal, the eavesdrop quests were kinda goofy, and Kai Leng space ninja was a little cheesy, but other than that, the first 95% of the game is pretty damn awesome. If the ending had been done better, it could have been in everyone's GOAT discussion. Instead, we just have to learn to accept/headcanon the ending the best we can, while remembering to appreciate how great everything was leading up to the star brat scene.

I rate each one 9/10.

 

[Trunkage]

Maybe I missed it, but I don't think anyone said Vanguard as being the best (or maybe second best after suicide mission) part of the game. I liked the combat of ME1 probably the best. You had to manage many cooldowns including your weapon. You generally had more aggressive enemies try to overwhelm you (although in later ones they used cover smarter) and this meant you had to be resourceful.

But Vanguard made the whole process fun. It was great slamming into enemies and make them fly offscreen.

 

[Trunkage]

Oh, I forgot. The worst part of the whole series is the fact that you are a planet hugging human fighting space faring Reaper. All fights were stupid as a consequence and I specifically blame this as the reason for all three endings being terrible. ME1 probably was the better but its still 0/10

 

[Asita]

So, you know, fuck it, they're just gonna fly in, suddenly it's not impossible anymore. I face-palmed so hard when I saw that dumb-ass last shot. And ME3 is set how much time after this? Few months? They only needed a few months to fly in, apparently they were right out in the front yard the whole time, so why all that crap in the first two games?

Lol, it is such bad storytelling. But to be fair, they lost the main writer, and frankly, the Reapers were a pretty impossible to beat threat. I feel like they should have been a one off in the first game, their only way in was destroyed so now they are stuck in dark space, the end.
Especially after chatting with Sovereign, I was like, no way we can do shit to these guys, minus finding kryptonite, or a magic space ghost...oh wait.

Actually, they really weren't and it really does boil down to "bad writing" starting with the arrival of the Victory Fleet. They would have been unstoppable in Mass Effect 1. But what made the Reapers so dangerous was that they were clever enough to min-max their advantages. They made sure enough advanced tech survived in the now-primitive galaxy to ensure that the advances in technology would follow familiar paths that they knew the advantages and weaknesses of, and kept an eye on the galaxy to ensure that its people didn't advance to a point where they could realistically fight back. They made the Citadel an ideal hub for the galactic community, and made it the master key for the Mass Relays as a whole. As aptly put by Vigil, when the Reapers spring their trap, the galactic community's leaders would be dead, communications crippled and systems effectively cut off almost before anyone could realize that they were under attack (ie, the perfect decapitation strike). And they kept out of everyone's awareness so they couldn't be prepared for, and no strategies could be devised to counter them.

By the end of Mass Effect 1, all but one of those advantages had been nullified. They were centuries past their intended culling date, meaning that technology had progressed further than intended, they had been locked out of the Citadel so couldn't decapitate the galactic community, and they'd actually fought a Reaper and would reasonably have been expected to start working out how to better fight them. The only advantage that they really maintained was their ability to predict galactic technology. By the end of Mass Effect 2, however, not only had technology become far more capable of dealing with Reaper tech (thanix cannons and kinetic barriers in particular stand out), but we also have potentially two factions who are technological wild-cards as far as the Reapers are concerned. Those two races would be the "True" Geth (who explicitly refuse Reaper tech because they're well aware of how being shown a path blinds them to alternatives) and the Rachni (A biotech race like the Zerg of StarCraft).

In addition to that, even the Codex in Mass Effect 3 goes so far as to have a dang entry on "Reaper Vulnerabilities" which noted how much concentrated fire each class of Reaper can take before being destroyed (before accounting for more effective weaponry), the fact that their defense is compromised when on-planet and when making high speed turns. It lays out vulnerability after vulnerability for the galaxy to exploit...when you're already throwing wild cards at them, with a strength of force that the Reapers had never had to face since the start of the cycles, with technology far more advanced and better and broader organization than they're used to.

Cue Victory Fleet arrival...and they decide to ignore all that in favor of what basically ended up being firing line tactics in space. They substituted tactics for a suicide rush...so basically bad writing to force the use of the Crucible.

 

[Darth Rosenberg]

DO I seriously need to give examples of this beyond Shepard's marvellous running animations?

I'd say some of ME's animations actually got much worse throughout the trilogy, sure, but none of the three were exactly highlights of the medium... It was all much of a muchness.

Conversations such as with Zaeed after his meeting. Tali when she was drunk on the ship.

...you're citing one of the best exchanges in the entire series as a negative?! Clearly you're off your nut. ;-) The "It's just a straw, Tali"/"Emergency induction port... " back and forth is a mini work of genius, and ME3's Citadel shindig brings back Drunk Tali to good effect.

You mention the Salarian family records in ME2. Yes you could hear it but it never became an active quest until you picked up the item in Dantius Towers. If you wanted to turn it in, then you actually had to talk to the person.

I don't quite get your criticism. Are there any misc-quests/tasks that can be be finished without talking to a single NPC? And does it really matter how those kinds of tasks are triggered? They amount to filler, but can be acquired without breaking the pace of the game, which I see as a great way to do things.

You just admitted that it was bad in ME3, why do you feel the need to argue for its defence? That you never used it does not forgive how 'shite' it became.

Well, to elaborate, I think the journal in all three games was arse - but also that the Journal simply wasn't that important in the series anyway, so as a criticism it's very periphery.

Mass Effect 3 on the other hand maintains the armour and shields penalty to the biotic classes but now introduces a weight penalty with the weapons, and keeps the global cooldown. So you can have either an effective gun or have low cooldowns, which since biotics don't do much against the protections forces you to prioritise the guns.

Maybe I'm getting the wrong end of the stick here (I did play through ME3 again last year, but it's been a good few months), but the underlined doesn't make sense to me. It's entirely possible to roll with one or two exceptional weapons and retain 200% CD bonus, or 'compromise' and maybe go with certain esoteric weapons or a selection of three, and have around 50%+ or a 0% rating. Small swings as far as effective difference in CD goes are only really life-and-death on the highest diff, and even then ME3 is not a very challenging game at all.

Ammo types are also more than adequate to compensate for any defensive lack - every class can take AP or Disruptors. Plus, all classes have access to potent weaponry that can deal with any defence, leaving their powers to be the main focus of attack.

I don't see any bias towards weapons in ME3. I feel the balance across the base classes was spot-on. If anything, I'd say the powers-biased Engineers and Adept's could be rather OP (the former's combinations of turrets and drones can be utterly devastating - and allow for certain tactics no other class can quite dish out - and stuff like dual-Lift/Push and detonated powers were an Adept's way of more or less nuking battlefields, especially when they had zero or very low CD penalties).

Tech based classes have actually improved I would say, thanks to the changes to powers such as Hacking and Overload. However a Soldier with Disruptor Ammo is far more effective against shields and mechs than a tech based class.

ME3 is surely a squad-based shooter, ergo a given weakness in Shep is kinda irrelevant when you have a squad to pick in order to augment abilities (didn't a load screen way back in ME1 even state this? to remind players to balance their capabilities for precisely this reason?). Unless someone shoves powers-use on auto, Mass Effect is effectively played as if Shepard has access to their own and everyone else's powers.

...I'd also subjectively say Soldiers are rather hamstrung by being the most boring vanilla class in the whole series, too.

You forget the information we found out about Cerberus in ME1. Where they were an Alliance Black Ops group.

Somehow between ME1 and ME3, they became a power capable of assaulting the seat of government during war time. That's hell of a leap in power.

In 3 they more or less pulled a Hydra as well, so it wasn't exactly just a conventional combined assault.

Even in ME1 their labs and shenanigans spanned the galaxy, so they were always rather conveniently deep-pocketed, having a hand in events or behind the scenes when the story or lore building required it.

I think they were dreary and lazy enemies, but ME3 needed another force to fight, and given Cerberus's resources in ME2 it kinda made them an easy candidate for cannon fodder between Reaper encounters.