Psych the Psycho said:
3- Throughout the course of ME2, there is constant build up to the final mission and making sure everything and everyone was ready for it. ME1 was more about finding and stopping Saren which did have so tension to it but not a lot. In ME3, the first half did have some build up to the final push but after craving through tons of enemies the game starts losing tension.
Racing to a specific goal against an opponent gives far more drama than waiting for npcs to do all the racing for info and just telling you where to go when the time comes.
ME2 had you collecting team mates for no logical in game reason except Mordin(where all the strongest writing is).
In ME1, you had the beacon connection that made you important, ME2 drops that for the most part.
Saren gave you a personal focus and goal. He had things that he wanted to do and he was willing to go to any length to do them, just like Shep, that's interesting. Collectors are empty husks with no redeeming features. No one cares when they fight them.
I HATE the fact they magically got a bug for Mordin to study after all the build up of, "They leave no trace".
Oh, and they leave no trace from a giant rocket that's seen creating craters when it takes off.
Most of ME2's writing were acts of lazy convenience and self defeating plot holes.
Until you saw the collector base(thankfully it wasn't a home planet or something else that would have made the team building pointless), you had no idea what to expect making the need of grunts over combat cruisers questionable to say the least.
Loyalty missions had no connection to the suicide mission and can't be seen as buildup. Loyal flagged characters are just given plot armor of +10 dodge face seeking missile.
There is a tonne of stuff ME2 did poorly even without bringing in overarching themes and plots into the picture.
Combat was more fluid and I enjoyed it more than ME1 but getting rid of ammo-less weapons and Biotic abilities no longer being stackable was not a step forward.
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Me1 also had it's plot holes but they were no where near as numerous or blatant.