Am I likely to enjoy Mass Effect 2?

[Jessabi]

I hated ME2 at first but it became my favourite of the series! I started playing it straight after finishing the first one, and I loved the first one so much that I was holding ME2 up to it straight away to compare. I missed the old crew and the old ship and couldn't get past that feeling at first. However, ME2 has GREAT characters who grew on me quickly and I really enjoyed the story. The combat is different but I got used it, and actually preferred it in the end. And the game's ending sequence is just amazing, that epic musical score gives me shivers every time. Give it a chance OP!

 

[Ihrgoth]

ME2 has better characters, and much better controls, however it lacks focus, I realized that when I realized you can complete the main story without any side stuff in like 5 or 6 hours. It also has a vastly dumbed down leveling system, weapons that don't feel like you hit anything other than with a sniper. Also as a fan of biotics in ME1 and ME3, they were made practically useless in ME2, with Tech powers being slightly overpowered.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

I realized you can complete the main story without any side stuff in like 5 or 6 hours.

That's not a bad thing. It's an RPG thing. And it's one of the reasons why ME2 is the best in the trilogy. You can try to finish the game as quickly as possible, or do as much as possible before attempting the end game. The outcome depends on how you play the game. As far as choice/consequence goes, ME2 easily beats 1 and 3.

 

[Chaos Isaac]

Don't play ME2 if you're interested in the story, because nothing in ME2 really matters that much. Hell, none of the characters you meet really have any point or much of a impact in 2 besides maybe Mordin and Legion. And the enemies in two are just one shots, they show up, but are really never mentioned again. ME2 doesn't really matter in the long run, and kills the 'urgency' of giant fuck you space squid.

Seriously, you can hand wave all of ME2 away and say like three sentences of the important stuff.

Not to mention most of the new characters suck, and honestly Garrus and Tali are still better then all of them at any rate. Except for Mordin, who is significantly awesome and is a legit reason to play the game no matter what.

 

[visiblenoise]

I only liked Mass Effect for the characters and don't really think much of the gameplay (the highest praise I'd give it is that it's more present than in an adventure game), so I enjoyed Mass Effect 2's streamlining.

 

[AntiChri5]

ME2 has better characters, and much better controls, however it lacks focus, I realized that when I realized you can complete the main story without any side stuff in like 5 or 6 hours. It also has a vastly dumbed down leveling system, weapons that don't feel like you hit anything other than with a sniper. Also as a fan of biotics in ME1 and ME3, they were made practically useless in ME2, with Tech powers being slightly overpowered.

ME1 is way quicker then ME2 if you ignore side stuff.

The levelling system is actually more complex, as every skill ends in a branch rather then just advancing point by point with meaninglessly small incremental upgrades.

Weapons might not have as much impact as something with explosive or sledgehammer rounds in ME1, but i would argue that's a good thing. Those were absurd. And i challenge you to use the Claymore, Mattock or Revenant with Inferno Ammo and tell me it doesn't have enough impact.

Biotics in ME1 were the most grossly overpowered thing in a horrifically unbalanced game. Biotics in ME2 aren't quite right (they didn't get to Goldilocks territory until ME3) but they are way better.

 

[Kinokohatake]

I found Mass Effect 1 awful. The awful auto save, the Mako, the combat that was inconsistent at best. I took me 4 years to pick up ME2 and I loved it. So...dunno.

 

[Darknacht]

I found Mass Effect 1 awful. The awful auto save, the Mako, the combat that was inconsistent at best. I took me 4 years to pick up ME2 and I loved it. So...dunno.

Mass Effect 1 & 2 are fairly different games so if the op like the first but isn't enjoying the second so far he probably wont like it. Personally I like the first one but half way through the second I quit because I was not enjoying it and it was clearly was not going to get better and got maybe an hour into the third one before deciding that it just was not a series for me anymore.

 

[Zetatrain]

Well ME1's was alot more flexible with the combat but as a whole felt very clunky to me. ME2's combat on the other hand is a lot more restrictive but much more refined.

I personally prefer the shorter universal cool downs as opposed to the long cooldowns on ME1 as it offers more versatility IMO. Your overall enjoyment will depend on whether or not you enjoy GoW/chest high wall combat as the combat leans much further to that compared to ME1. If you loved ME1's combat then you will probably find ME2'a combat to be inferior. Whether or not you will find it bearable I cannot say. I'd say wait until you complete the first two Omega recruitment missions and if you find don't find it fun then I doubt it will get better for you.

That being said the main draw of ME2 is its characters. If you like the characters/squad mates then they might be enough to keep you interested in the game despite your grievances with the gameplay.

For me the combat doesn't peak until ME3. ME3 basically combines the versatility of ME1, with the refinement of ME2. Its also the only game where found playing engineer, adept, and sentinel to be fun. For me those classes were too hamstrung by their weapon restrictions in the previous installments.

 

[AT God]

I think any opinion, as the internet showed, about the Mass Effect series is a bit hard to trust. So instead, I'll just give you my opinion. I played ME1 and 2 back to back after getting them on a steam sale, and then got super hyped for ME3. Having played ME3, I would have preferred to just play ME1 and stopped. I personally disliked the ME3 ending, was unhappy and still am about it, although not enough to sue about it. And personally, I think ME2 and 3 should be clumped together narratively. ME1 had a somewhat satisfying ending, you beat up the bad guy and it wrapped up fairly well, but left the overall threat hanging in the event they were able to make a sequel. But since it was such a success, they knew they would get an ME3 if they made ME2, so they left a really bad cliffhanger for ME2. You beat up the bad guy again but it basically ends on a cliff hanger because you only defeat a puppet of the overall bad guy. If you happen to play ME2 and you like the story, you will want to play ME3 for the conclusion. And, again its a point of argument, but I think the conclusion voids the overall gain of ME2, I came away from ME3 angry and upset, wishing I could have just skipped the entire series. That said, if you have better control of your emotions than I do and you need to burn about 60 hours of your life, ME2 and ME3 are great fun up until the last 15 minutes.

As for gameplay differences, I personally had a bad time getting ME1 to feel right on my PC so I felt ME2 was better in control. And if you like the cover based stuff from ME1, crank up the difficulty in ME2 and 3, I think ME1 had less balanced gameplay, in that if you picked certain characteristics you were sort of locked out of having good gun play and vice-versa. ME2 and 3 sort of homogenize the two, and the gunplay becomes much better. In ME1 I almost never used cover, I played as the sniper class and was able to just destroy everything in my path, ME2 was a bit easy, but I only played it on normal. ME3's final mission on normal was hell on earth (ironically), and was insanely hard for me the first time through, lots of enemies and you have to stay glued to cover if you want to survive.

 

[Jingle Fett]

It's weird because while I would say that ME2 is probably the better game on a technical level (more polished, more variety in game mechanics, etc), for some reason the game just didn't keep my attention. I beat ME1 all the way through and with ME2 I sort of just lost interest about half-way through and don't have much interest in going back to it. Make of that what you will...

 

[f1r2a3n4k5]

I completely sympathize with this. I played ME1 way back when it first came out and I had an abundance of time.

Then I only recently just picked up ME2 and played through ME1 again straight into ME2. It's almost as if an entirely different company had designed it to be a spiritual successor. It basically felt like a total reboot.

Suddenly it went from "HUGE OPEN WORLD of emptiness" to "Tiny cramped corridor where everything happens."

I'm near the end and while I haven't finished it, I guess I would say you probably could like it, but it may require a paradigm shift.

ME1 had this very epic space-opera feel. You felt like Captain Kirk exploring vast wilderness and running and gunning around preposterously in this plot that determines the fate of the universe.

ME2 is smaller in every way. You get rail-roaded from plot point to plot point doing a lot of side tasks that feel somewhat insignificant on a cosmic scheme.

But I found I came to enjoy it a lot more when I viewed it as what it was, basically a "team-forming" story. When you treat the stuff about the Collectors as kind of a side-thing and the team-story as your primary objective, it's a bit easier to swallow.

But overall, I would say ME2 is less satisfying than ME1 in most other aspects.

 

[00slash00]

I loved Mass Effect 2 and 3 but Mass Effect 1 has always been that game I had to slog my way through to get to the games that are actually fun to play. And I don't think it's fair to say Mass Effect 2 had a bad or pointless story. It didn't really have much impact on the overall story but it was a good story that had closure and then led in to the final chapter. I found the story of Mass Effect 2 far more interesting than the stories of 1 or 3

 

[white_wolf]

ME2 is the ditch the narrative fell into and 3's the attempt to dig it out. Really as far as reaper knowledge and finding away to actually stop them you end up in the same area you started metaphorically which is nowhere. Only 2 good things really came out of that game you get to romance team dextro and the combat got improved outside of that the game is so irrelevant to the story only 1% at best made it into the next game. I'd say its not worth playing as 3 is more of a sequel then 2 is but you kind of need to know the persona's of your crew so you can see how bad they botched most of them for 3 or kept in the few intact.

 

[HaWkE_N7]

Mass Effect 2 is awesome, as is ME1.

Personally, ME2 is my favourite of the three. It's kind of like The Empire Strikes Back of the trilogy. It's darker, has more better moral choices, an awesome cast of characters; some you'll love, some you'll hate, but you'll grow attached to nonetheless. It has some great cliffhanger moments and brilliant DLC. My only problem with the DLC is that Arrival should only have been made playable post-Collector Base as it serves to follow right into ME3. After what you do their it doesn't seem right that you can do it before the ending going about your business with no one commenting on your actions. I also much preferred the vehicle you can use (courtesy of DLC) to the horrible Mako from ME1.

Mass Effect 3 however is awful, a complete mess with a rushed story that is full of plot holes. I thought it was ok at first until I got about 1/3 of the way through and began to notice all the flaws. The only good thing ME3 has going for it is the improved combat; also a quite good multiplayer mode that can become a little addictive. One thing I was looking forward to that they completely glossed over is Shepard's trial. I was hoping for a scene reminiscent of those with the Council in ME1 where I'd have the chance to defend my actions. This doesn't happen though.
ME3 also has a DLC issue, that set on Omega. This should've been apart of the game to begin with as the way to get them to join the fight - either that or it should've replaced the god awful fetch and carry missions on the Citadel that leads to their joining. You spend a huge chunk of ME2 getting to know the your crew and becoming attached to them for ME3 to come along and brings back characters (and introduces new) that you couldn't care less about, namely Ashley/Kaiden and James Vega.
They should've taken their time with ME3. That way it would have decent writing and plot, no god awful ending by actually having us take on Harbinger in someway and we could've stood trial. There they could've done two outcomes; if you succeed in clearing the charges against you then you can pick your own crew from the cast of the previous two games (Liara, Garrus & Tali auto join); if you fail, then you get the crew that we ended up with in ME3 as we know it.

 

[OneMoreNameless]

To expand on a few of my comments:

* I don't believe playing on PC is any worse or different to playing the console release - that is the point, that the developers didn't spend the small amount of time (compared to the entire game's creation) to fully optimise the controls for both platforms. If I can't trust them to put effort into something as basic as eg. displaying the correct key prompts for customised controls, why would I trust them to put effort into creative level design or meaningful choices? Hence posting this thread even after fixing most of the admittedly surface-level issues which balked me into quitting.

* The dialogue that bothered me the most in the first mission was when a character you'd just met and who had apparently been trying to help you was shot dead in cold blood by a second character who you also barely knew and who provided no evidence for their accusation of betrayal. Shepard's allowed reactions IIRC ranged from 'I believe you' to 'I didn't believe the other guy' to 'I believe you, but maybe we should have interrogated him first shrug?'. I'm fine with railroading the plot during a game's tutorial but railroading the player character's response to it not so much so in a WRPG. Also, the scene where Shepard's memories were supposedly tested contained easily the worst examples of leading the witness I have ever heard, almost to the point of hilarity when you can just reply "I don't want to talk about it" and everyone else still reacts like this totally checks out as a valid examination. (Jacob seemed cool though, and I'm fine with character-focused missions later taking the place of story-arc progress so long as they're well written.)

* My ME1 playthrough was with a soldier. I could effectively win most battles by simply shooting the right weapons at them, but was also able (and sometimes needed) to slow down and manually control my squad's powers to optimise crowd control, disable a trickily located foe, bombard a dangerous target etc. For ME2 I chose soldier again and it seems like I'd be able to effectively win most battles by simply shooting the right weapons at them and also manually triggering Adrenaline Rush every single time I pop out of cover because there is literally no reason not to do so. That is what I mean by power spam. Regularly giving enemies protection X that is only really vulnerable to power Y (aka Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors) also fits into this because it means that during tough battles there will very rarely be thought required or reason to not first order power Y at enemies with X.

If I do pick this game up again later, it will probably be as a Vanguard because they seem the only class whose signature power requires some care to use without getting themselves killed shortly thereafter.

 

[OpticalJunction]

I don't know what to tell you, I loved mass effect 2 myself, and I played mass effect before that too and liked that also. In my opinion mass effect 2 is a massive improvement, like assassin's creed 2 is to 1. give it another shot, thirty minutes isn't enough time to do that game justice.

 

[Rattja]

Will you like it? Maybe? I would try a little longer than 30 min though, as the beginning is quite bad.
It is true that it does not progress the main story much, but that's not the point. The point is your companions, as the whole game more or less is just a tale about how you met them all.
Talk to them, learn about them and fight with them to help them out with their own personal stuff. In my opinion they are rather interesting each in their own way, where legion is by far my favorite. I really enjoyed hearing about how a geth operates and sees the world.

The combat is mostly just there because it has to be. It's not good, but it is better than ME1 I think, mostly because ME1 combat was just horribly broken in every way. It had so many bugs, like the overheat bug or just broken AI that did not understand the concept of corners or movement so they just stood there.
I liked the idea of it, but let's be honest here it was very broken.

So if you like getting to know all the characters and that sort of thing, yea it is basically what it is all about.
But again, my best advice is to see for yourself and play a bit more since you already have the game. I mean, you have probably wasted more time on this forum already asking if you would like it than it would take you to play further into the game and see for yourself.

the weapons feel like peashooters

While I do like all three games, I'll certainly openly admit this. The shotgun above all else. In the first game it felt truly powerful, as if skulls and brains were being exploded into disgusting little pieces of unidentifiable matter after a close range blast. In the latter two games such a violent, earth-shaking impact is not felt and it instead feels like a pea or piece of paper being thrown at the enemy. The impact and violent force of firearms is a big deal in the authenticity of shooters, and in that aspect, the first game definitely reigns supreme above the other two.

I'm sorry but between the Claymore vanguard, Meathook solider and Black widow infiltrator I don't quite understand this argument. If things that sends them flying is not impact enough then I don't know what is.