Eddie the head said:
Yeah, like I said people have a tendency to attach to the first game in a series that they have played. For most people Mass Effect 1 was there first Mass Effect game so they hold it above the other ones despite the improvements. What I mean is I don't think it's much "tastes" as it is nostalgia.
If you played Mass Effect 2 then Mass Effect 1 and liked it more, I would like to hear why. If you played 1 then 2, your opinion means less to me. Just me but if you say the first game you played in any series is the best, you better have some damn good reasons why.
I bought one and two at the same time. Played one first, then immediately went on to two. Technically I still played one first, but its really not nostalgia when 1 is also the last [Read: Most recent] Mass Effect game I played, 'cause I found two and three to be disappointing and its not just looking on with fond memories of 1 - I actually play it and enjoy it more.
Why?
Combat. Yeah, its clunky. Its not as monotonous and downright boring though. Combat in 2 and 3 was... meh. 3 Was close to good, and the decent AI helped it some, but neither really grabbed me with their gameplay. Unless you were the vanguard, your job was to sit behind a wall and shoot when the enemy stopped. This effected level design as well, and the levels turned into bunches of chest high walls everywhere whilst you were walking down/sitting in small corridors and shooting with your average run-of-the-mill guns, unless you had a heavy weapon + ammo, which to me is not very entertaining. You died way too quickly out of cover, and whilst it was arguably more responsive, it was also more boring as well.
Now, I kinda covered a few points there, so I'll clarify a bit.
My main problem with combat was its focus on fast deaths and chest high walls as a cover based shooter. Good for you if you like that type of game, I find it incredibly boring as its just monotonous padding that fills up 3/4 of the game with you sitting there doing nothing.
Weapons were also meh in 2 and 3. They consisted of your average sniper, assault rifle, pistol, shotgun and SMG. Heavy weapons were fun, and more interesting than the grenades in 1 [Though those grenades were incredibly useful at times and I'd have liked both]. Normal ammo that reloaded so quickly it really didn't even matterand you received no info on a gun which made you guess whether it was worth using or not until you'd played around a fair bit with it. I also disliked that ammo was relegated to powers. That was meh IMO. Ammo is ammo, keep it as such.
Level design in 2 was better in some aspects, worse in others. It was better in the fact that there were no more cookie cutter side quests, in was worse in the fact that everything was just a corridor shooter fest where chest high walls would literally just pop up as you entered combat half the time. There was only ever 1 way to get to the end of a mission, and unless it was one of the few hubs there was nothing to explore either. One thing that I will give 2 is the suicide mission, as that was awesome all round.
In addition to this, the hammerhead sections were shit. The hammerhead was literally made out of tissue paper. It died faster than Shepard would have on foot. Add to that its missile homing was retarded and would always aim at the enemy you weren't looking at, and home in on them so you always missed, and those missions became some of the worst gameplay wise in ME2, though they were refreshing compared to the rest of the game.
Powers were also meh. Sure, there were a couple of interesting ones to use. They were the only ones you could use though because everything was put on cooldown when you used one power. No more alpha strikes, and your strategy ended up just revolving around your strongest power 'cause it was the only one you were going to use - it would save your ass if you were in a tight pinch, and if you weren't it was still the most effective means of taking out enemies. Also; Ammo powers. No.
The story was really just Shepard faffing about doing nothing whilst the Reapers started closing in. Yeah, the collectors were invented so he had a reason to be faffing about, but its relevance to the main story was pretty much 0. Had ME2 not existed, 3 would still make sense, just introducing the characters as you went along. Well, there was the issue of Shepard's ship getting impounded with an AI in it, but even that could be delegated to the Alliance building him a new ship and installing the AI from the moon base on it. I don't think I need to say much about three other than I didn't like it. Not just the ending, but the vast majority of it from start to finish, minus a couple of well done moments and Tuchanka.
No inventory, and equipping only at the start or midway points through missions, was annoying. Not as annoying as having what weapons you could use locked to a class though. That was BS. 3 fixed that issue nicely at least. They also were missing the hotkeys for journal, codex and squad menus that ME1 had, which became a hastle quickly for me when instead of just hitting J, O or U respectively I had to open up the menu, move around its annoying design that was obviously optimized for consoles, and then select what I wanted to do. Planet scanning was bad in 2. 3 somehow made it worse by telling you were the thing you were looking for was outright, so there really wasn't even a point to you scanning - it was just there to waste your time.
There is more I could go on with, but that's probably enough. How does ME1 compare with this?
Combat in ME1 can't be called smooth in any sense of the word, but it was varied. Sometimes you were running through an enemy base shooting at everything in your path, sometimes you were in cover whilst rockets and sniper shots flew over your head, and sometimes you were a kilometer away from the action sniping your enemy. Whilst clunky, it managed to vary itself enough that I could keep my interest, and I could do what I wanted to in combat.
Weapons in one weren't great, but they weren't as generic as 2 and 3 either. You had overheat instead of ammo, which opened different methods of thinking about the battle. Weapon modifications existed or allowed you to specialise your weapon - a one hit ragdoll shotgun with one shot then overheat, or a fast firing 60 shot overheat shotgun - the choice was yours thanks to the mods you had. Ammo was ammo, and became fun to use for certain things like high explosives, though they could have explored that idea more. Heavy weapons didn't exist, which was a shame, but the grenades [Det packs more like it IMO] were quite useful and different to normal grenades too.
Level design in one fell for the trap of cookie cutter sidequests, which became monotonous. Even with that though, they were all had a different layout to each other, and some of those cookie cutter ships became atmospheric due to how they were set up. On the flip side, the main missions had more work put into them than the main missions of two or three, baring the suicide mission, IMO. They were long, contained sidequests within themselves, were non-linear in how to get through them - both in the way of talking to people and actual navigation through the complex - and were all available at once as options for what you thought had the higher priority, which 2 had to a certain extent, and 3 just threw that idea out the window. Levels were also not just chest high walls in a corridor for you to walk down.
The mako sections weren't as bad as everyone makes them out to be. It wasn't that hard to control the thing, and it actually felt like a vehicle rather than a fast floating ball of tissue paper. The planets lacked detail, but that was something that should have been improved upon rather than simply discarding the idea, and whilst lackluster in 1 they were optional, and always told you where the interesting stuff you wanted to find was. It was also more interesting that just scanning the planet at a slow speed. That was monotonous and filler content.
Powers in 1 were a bit over the top in how many you had, and they weren't that interesting most of the time, but they could all be used at once, giving there a purpose to leveling up more than one spell.
The story in 1 did what it needed to do, and was executed well. There were no real glaring "That's bullshit" moments, and the pacing was good throughout. The characters weren't as memorable as the ones in 2, but they were still interesting and nice to talk to.
Inventory was poorly designed and implemented in 1, but that just required a rework of the system and interface rather than complete removal. It was also less laggy and far more informative than ME2s armour locker, and around equal with 3s. Hotkeys were included so that menu traversal was not necessary, and you could quickly get where you needed to when you needed to. There was also, thankfully, no planet scanning.
2 and 3 definitely did some things better than 1, but 1 is overall the most enjoyable for me. It is a matter of taste in a number of ways. Some things I've criticized about 2 and 3 you might like more than 1, but I prefer 1 simply because that is my taste in all games - I dislike games that do things similar to my criticisms of 2 and 3, and in general enjoy those with 'clunkier' shooting mechanics, but more interesting overall IMO gunplay with non-linear levels - like Bioshock.
I will grant that a lot of my disappointment in 2 and 3 was that they didn't improve on anything that was poorly done in their prequel, and instead just removed it and maybe did something else, or not - especially in ME3.
