Dansen said:
A fair enough analysis if those are your tastes, but I do have to disagree.
In the first game, biotics were wwwaaayyy overpowered, as was the Soldiers "Immunity" (Read: God-Mode) ability. Literally all you had to do was turn that no and mow down everything while taking little to no damage yourself. What was it at max level? Something like 85% Damage Reduction? Yeah, that's not broken at all. Then there's the fact that anything caught in a Lift or Singularity might as well be dead for all intents and purposes.
Indeed, there was a much wider variety of guns and armor in the first game than in the second, the problem is only about 3 of them were worthwhile. You'll find the brand of assault rifle that's better than everything else at your level and that becomes your standard issue. Everything else you find either gets sold or converted to Omnigel. Same with pistols, shotguns, armor, and sniper rifles. If you actually put a lot of thought into tweaking your combat stats beyond "Well this gun has 2 green bars and one red, so overall it's better than the gun I've got right now" then good on' ya. But I'd argue that's putting too much thought into it. No matter what mods you put into a gun, the bad guy's still going to die if you shoot him. The only real upgrades that matter are the ones for your armor, but in that case all you need is the most up-to-date medical inlay to give your characters that don't have built-in regeneration free regeneration and perhaps something that increases shields or damage reduction. For all it's variety, it was actually pretty limited.
Then there's the Specter-Class Weapons which go right ahead and break the game out-right. With the Specter Sniper Rifle, I always put 2 Scram Rail X's and High Explosive Round X on it, make it one shot for obscene damage. Don't like having a bazooka? Well slap some frictionless materials into that Specter Assault Rifle and watch as you have infinite ammo! Literally, the heat meter never goes up. Hold the trigger for about a minute straight and you'll start making progress, but in reality anything you'd have been shooting at by that point would be long since dead.
For me, the addition of Thermal Clips gave the combat more "realism" just in the sense that after firing off a huge chunk of metal from the Widow, there's a satisfaction about cranking out that thermal clip and putting in the next one. People say they didn't like the limited choice of weapons being "Standard, Upgraded, Super Version" but really that's how thing were back in the first game when you cut out all the worthless fat in concerns with the equipment. At least each gun you picked up in the 2nd game felt like it had a unique style of firing.
As for the powers, in the first game all you needed was someone who had tech to open doors and boxes and such and someone who had biotics for the obscene overpower of Lift and Singularity. In ME2 you actually had to plan your way around Shepard's shortcomings. A soldier will do just fine, but having someone with Overload and another with Warp definitely helps. That does bring up the point, however, that since ME2's combat is built around tearing down enemy defenses (Shields, Barriers, and Armor) that the Sentinel is actually the most overpowered class in that game purely because it has both Overload and Warp. Something with shields comes your way, overload. Something with Barriers or Armor comes: warp. You're prepared to absolutely level any kind of situation you come into contact with.
ME 3's fighting style isn't about making up for what Shepard lacks, but rather picking people that actually compliment Shepard's class. In short: it's ALL about the combos. Biotic and Tech combos rule the battlefield and if used properly can clear out any battlefield in a matter of moments.
When all's said and done, I'd say ME3 has the most comprehensive combat system. If you're a biotic you can still do massive damage against shields so long as you set up, for instance, a warp-throw combo. In ME2, if you try using an ability on someone's whos protection is strong against that ability (i.e. trying to warp someone with Shields) you're just wasting your time. And in ME1, considering that on the harder difficulties the enemies get that game-breaking Immunity ability (most of them, in fact, on the hardest difficulty) it makes every fight a ridiculous pain in the ass. Seriously, approach a bunker on an uncharted planet that has some dudes outside defending it, wait till one pops on Immunity, and then blast them with the Mako. Sure, their body goes flying for (in the game) miles and miles and miles, literally sailing over entire mountain ranges. But you bet your ass he'll dust himself off and stand back up when he lands. My record is shooting a Pirate quite literally half-way across the map and having him survive.
