Mass Effect 3 for me. It's flaws actually helped it in someways, for example, now that the dialogue wheel was completely broken it forced me just to sit back and enjoy the character they had created rather than do my own. I tried constantly to assert my own chosen personality in ME2 but the games just aren't designed to let you do that. Shepard is a soldier with a defined personality. The only time you can actually roleplay as such is when your character happens to match with Shepards (which I imagine was the case for a lot of people, considering Soldier was by far the most popular class, I didn't want a badass or a military character)
Also the actual plot of ME2 is the worst thing ever and hardly fits at all. At best it's a very poor Monster of the Week plot. ME3 gives context, right at the end makes the Reapers have more than 0 dimension and hits very nice plot points (Illusive Man, Mordin etc). I actually liked the ending and I don't really want to install the EC. (All through the series the game judges your decisions and tells you what happens, I preferred to leave the ending completely open to what I hope, free from control. I really really don't want to be shown anything that happens with the Quarians or the Krogans after by the game. Let my mind do the work)
But mainly the combat is umpteen times better in ME3. It's actually enjoyable, and since the game forces you into combat all the time at least when I realise roleplaying is a bust and go to that, it's actually fun for once.
Mission structure was much more deep in ME3
The overheard dialogue conversations were genius level writing, I loved the variety of ways you interacted with the crew and the way they talked between themselves and had relationships between themselves. Those moments where you chose between two people were also very good
Although there were less of them, the interrupts worked better in ME3, you could tell what they did and I made very deliberate chocies, ignoring some, choosing paragon or renegades at others and I didn't feel like I was missing out or breaking character.
ME3 actually gives choices consequences, War Assets made all the sidequests feel like they had larger purpose. The environments were much more detailed, the council stopped being a strawman, they belatedly chose to give us a face to associate with evil etc
The map which shows you what you need to do where was nice for levels with lots of loading screens and they were better at highlighting when characters wanted to talk. Reputation was a very welcome addition to the previously broken paragon/renegade convos. Scanning was much better in ME3
It should be noted though, that the actual characters in ME2 were much more interesting and the cinematography much much better. For someone reason they based their colour pallette on grey for ME3 so all the visuals and environments suffered.
In many ways ME2 was the better game, but the combat was awful and yet it forced you to spend most of your time fighting and it promised something that it actively fought against delivering. With ME3 they stopped trying to convince you that you could make your own character and encouraged just enjoying the story and that works better.
Plus I hated fighting collectors. And Harbinger, oh Harbinger. ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL
Griffon_Hawke179 said:
ME2 had hands down the best ending. ME3? no comment.
It's you again. Hi
Anyway, if ME2 wins the best ending, it wins by default. It was literally just a cinematic trailer for a ME3. It didn't conclude anything
. It was exciting (a very good trailer), just not really an ending in any way, and Collectors sucked. I never played ME1 so I'm a little surprised to hear that that ending was worse than 2
