ME2 is such a curious case.
I agree with the OP that most of the inventory was just so much meaningless noise. There was no real depth to the armor and weaponry, since the higher number was always better... and there was rarely any major strength/weakness of a particular tier of weaponry. One was almost always better than the rest, although sometimes it had +20 damage in exchange for -2 accuracy over the second best weapon of that tier.
But ME2 got rid of the upgrades that forced the player to make decisions and I think that's a shame. On the plus side, the standard weapons had different strengths and weaknesses, so it took me a few missions before I made up my mind if I liked the assault rifle with less stopping power and a lot of ammo or the AR with better stopping power but far less ammo.
ME1 had a better mix of enemy types, giving combat a bit more diversity... then sticking the player into a bottle-neck so the same basic tactics are used in pretty much every encounter. The larger levels of ME2 made combat a much more interesting experience for me, but I wish the game hadn't been so cover-based centric.
One day, I think an Action RPG is going to get this right. Give us a fairly simple weapon set-up, give us lots of upgrades to customize the weapons, make the levels and complex enough to support multiple approaches to the same goal. I'm an action player, but I enjoy using stealth to recon enemy positions and plot out an attack strategy. Then I break cover and blast away. Other people enjoy being tanks. Others love using the environment to take out opponents (works well with powers). There are the snipers and cover-based fans. You don't need every level to conform to every play style (making a player play against his type can be fun and challenging), but I would love to see a game where every level has a minimum of three tactical approaches.
Neither of the Mass Effects are that game, but ME2 was a much more entertaining shooter.
I agree with the OP that most of the inventory was just so much meaningless noise. There was no real depth to the armor and weaponry, since the higher number was always better... and there was rarely any major strength/weakness of a particular tier of weaponry. One was almost always better than the rest, although sometimes it had +20 damage in exchange for -2 accuracy over the second best weapon of that tier.
But ME2 got rid of the upgrades that forced the player to make decisions and I think that's a shame. On the plus side, the standard weapons had different strengths and weaknesses, so it took me a few missions before I made up my mind if I liked the assault rifle with less stopping power and a lot of ammo or the AR with better stopping power but far less ammo.
ME1 had a better mix of enemy types, giving combat a bit more diversity... then sticking the player into a bottle-neck so the same basic tactics are used in pretty much every encounter. The larger levels of ME2 made combat a much more interesting experience for me, but I wish the game hadn't been so cover-based centric.
One day, I think an Action RPG is going to get this right. Give us a fairly simple weapon set-up, give us lots of upgrades to customize the weapons, make the levels and complex enough to support multiple approaches to the same goal. I'm an action player, but I enjoy using stealth to recon enemy positions and plot out an attack strategy. Then I break cover and blast away. Other people enjoy being tanks. Others love using the environment to take out opponents (works well with powers). There are the snipers and cover-based fans. You don't need every level to conform to every play style (making a player play against his type can be fun and challenging), but I would love to see a game where every level has a minimum of three tactical approaches.
Neither of the Mass Effects are that game, but ME2 was a much more entertaining shooter.
