Mass Effect 2 is a good game. It is a great game. It is a WONDERFUL game. I really enjoyed my time with the game, and I feel like I'm actually going to go back and play more.
It is such a huge improvement over the original game, though many lament how different it is. Instead of improving upon the much hated elements of the original, such as the inventory and the Mako, Bioware chose to remove those things entirely, which is fine by me.
They simplified the combat in that it became a decent third person shooter. Sure, it's no Gears of War, and the cover system is still a little iffy, but it plays very well. The biotic and tech powers still make the combat feel pretty unique, though the choice in powers feel limited in comparison to the original Mass Effect.
It's been two years since this game has been out, so I'm sure many already know how much this game has improved over its predecessor, so I'll move on to my personal experience.
A lot of people complain about the planet scanning, but I feel it is an improvement over the stupid Mako exploration of the first, if only because it doesn't really take that long to do. Sure, it's not super exciting, but you don't have to wait for any loading screens or deal with garbage controls. I can see it getting annoying if you have an OCD-tendency to mine every planet of all their resources, but I was able to afford my desired upgrades without any hassle.
The side quests are better in ME2 due to the fact that I actually wanted to seek out and complete them. It's unfortunate that the Citadel is smaller, but I kind of enjoyed exploring the other cities of other planets, like Illium and Omega. The world felt more alive, as you are often barraged with overheard conversations and news broadcasts.
It's no secret that my favorite thing about the first game was the world it created, and Mass Effect 2 does a good job at fleshing it out. The loyalty missions, in particular, often explore the different alien cultures in more depth. Visiting the Quarian Migrant Fleet with Tali showed more insight on how the Quarians operate. Exploring the Krogan homeworld (and saying hello to my good buddy Wrex!) with Grunt and Mordin reveals more about the history of the Krogan and how their fractured life is as a result of the genophage.
I really enjoyed the exploration of inter-species relationships among the different alien races. Overhearing a Turian being "friend-zoned" by a Quarian in a bar on Illium was a delight, as was hearing a Krogan wooing his Asari ex-girlfriend with sappy poems. A Turian expressing annoyance at the "life span talk" that his Asari girlfriend insists on having through the discussion of buying a souvenir fish is just really smart writing to me. This kinda stuff really makes the galaxy of Mass Effect a great experience (despite being threatened by the Reapers). Oh, and you can get it on with your alien crew members. Sweet. Of course, my girl Tali was not a romance option for my female Shepard, so I settled for Garrus and his puppy-dog face.
The game does have one glaring flaw for me, though. There is a severe lack of interaction between your squad mates. If you get lucky and pick the right group, there may be a little bit of banter between squad members during missions, but that doesn't happen very often.
As I mentioned, the loyalty missions are great, but interaction is often only limited between that specific character and Shepard. Your third member will just stand silently in the background and not say a thing, that you almost forget they're around until you see Garrus just walk up behind Shepard once a conversation is finished. I think there's only one scene in the game in which all of your crew members are in the same room, and, again, dialogue is only limited to a few of them. I wish they had done a "Deadly Premonition" and just had like a lunch scene or something with all the crew members just goofing around in the mess hall, to make it feel like a tighter bunch. Instead, they're all just standing around by themselves in separate parts of the ship for the whole game.
This is a problem with the game being so ambitious. There certainly is a HEFTY amount of dialogue in the game, written for even the most obscure scenarios. Like, it's possible to recruit Legion, the Geth, before Tali, and you're able to take Legion with you on Tali's loyalty mission to her home fleet and you'll get some really crazy and funny interactions due to the Geth being the sworn enemy of the Quarians. This kinda thing would probably not happen in normal play because Legion is meant to be gotten pretty much near the end of the game, but the Bioware writers had the insight to write all this dialogue just in case. And all the dialogue is voiced. There's a LOT of work that went into this game. Mass Effect is all about the choices you make, so you are free to choose whoever you want to wherever you want. Writing every single scenario with every single combination of characters and order of events would be almost impossible, so I can understand why your characters don't interact much. But it still bummed me out. At least the suicide mission had a lot going for it when it came to character interaction. I still want the lunch scene, though!
Man, there's probably other stuff about Mass Effect 2 to talk about it, but I'm drawing blanks right now. I knew I should've taken notes. Anyway, I'm installing Mass Effect 3 to my hard drive as I type this. I bet you're all dying to know how I feel about that game when the time comes…
