Having been a huge fan of the orginal Mass Effect I had really high hopes for the sequel especially after seeing the trailers that BioWare released leading up to it. I am delighted to say that my hopes have been met, and very possibly exceeded. BioWare took the best parts of the original ME, stripped out the fluff, and added in some cool new features. The game isn't perfect, but if this is what they accomplished with the second game in the series, the third addition will be even more amazing.
I think one of the best and at the same time most annoying decisions that BioWare made was that in the PC version of the game they allow you to import your character from Mass Effect 1. This is an absolutely awesome idea as it gives even more continuity to the storyline from a player's perspective. At the same time, those people who no longer have their save games or play the game on a console for whatever reason are locked out of this cool feature. A couple of days ago
Penny-Arcade had reported that Chris Priestly, BioWare's community manager, said that there was going to be what amounted to a decision tree during character creation so that you could recreate your ME1 character without replaying the game. Unfortunately this feature did not make it into the release version of the game. I honestly don't know why they would have left that feature out if it was already coded. It is my hope that they eventually patch the game to include, or create a standalone program that allows you to generate a save file with the choices you want. In the mean time however,
MassEffectSaves.com has a repository of characters who have made different choices. This is the route I went. I have a character from ME1, but my favorite was from when I played through on the 360 so I didn't have that file to use.
The game starts off with a really well done cutscene. The only complaint I have is the interactive part in the middle of it is really unnecessary. I'd have rather seen them simply take the cutscene straight through to it's conclusion instead of making me interact with it as the interaction really has no value. After the cutscene you have the ability to customize your character including both appearance and class. This is huge because if you grab a file from the site above and don't like the look or the class of the character you're not locked into it, you're free to change it. Following this is the tutorial part of the game which is decent, but not spectacular. It does a good job of teaching you everything, but by the time I had gone through it the second time I was really wishing for a skip button.
Once you get into the non-linear part of the game it really takes off. Just like ME1 and all BioWare games since KoToR you're in charge of what you do when. The game gives you hints of where you should start, but you are free to ignore those if you choose. I actually did choose to ignore what the game said because I wanted to check out what they had done to the Citadel, though as soon as I was done there, I did go back to where the game suggested.
I would have to say the strongest part of the game is definitely the writing. The dialogue writers especially deserve some awards for the absolutely amazing job they did. The dialogue in ME1 was good, but ME2 puts it to shame. A word of warning though that the dialogue does get explicit so if you have kids around headphones are highly recommended. The explicitness is not overdone however, and is added in such a way as it seems very natural.
The combat system is probably the next feature that stands out. I always liked the idea behind Mass Effect of combining a shooter with an RPG and ME2 really steps up the shooter portion of it. The combat is much faster paced this time around and I don't find myself using the pause feature to setup attacks nearly as much. Enemy AI probably isn't on part with a top grade first person shooter, but it's definitely greatly improved over ME1 and I find that I'm having to be more tactical in the firefights than I was in ME1 where you could basically run it with guns blazing, throw some biotic powers around and everthing died.
Unfortunately there is one aspect of the combat system that I feel they went backwards on and that is the need for ammo. I really think the system from ME1 where your weapon overheated if you fired too quickly was a much better fit for the game than the new system that requires ammo for all of your weapons. At the same time, they've removed the on the fly weapon and ammo modifications. I have to say that I'm a bit disappointed by this as I really enjoyed being able to change things up to suit different situations. It looks like there are ways to upgrade your equipment once you acquire the right people however so I'll reserve judgement on this aspect until I see what my choices actually are. As a benefit to the no weapon mods though there is no longer a ridiculous inventory management system. In fact there's no inventory at all which removes what was really a tedious aspect of the original game.
Powers also got a major overhaul and I have to say that when I first saw it, I was really annoyed at it and saw it as a dumbing down of the game. However, after playing with the new system some more I think it really was the right choice. You no longer have to train your weapon skills while the training for tech and biotic skills have been significantly streamlined. One baffling thing to me personally is why they felt the need to rename lift to pull when lift described the power better. The also renamed throw to push so I imagine the former change was simply for symmetry. One minor change that I find minorly annoying is that biotic powers now seem slower in reaching their targets. In ME1 it wasn't quite instantaneous, but it was a lot faster from the time you hit the button to the time the power took effect. The other annoyance is that using one power puts all of your biotic powers on cooldown. What I'm afraid this is going to do is restrict me to basically using only a single power for much of the game except for specific situations where another would work better ie. using push to throw someone off a cliff.
As I said earlier as soon as I took control over my destiny I headed straight for the Citadel to find out what changes where in store this time around. I was sadly disappointed. The place that was easily my favorite zone and seemed so inspired in the original Mass Effect now seems almost like an afterthought. Now admittedly when I went there not everything was unlocked and I realize it's not supposed to be the center of the game like it was in ME1, however, I still found the fact that it seems to be a shadow of what it was to be disappointing.
Overall I think Mass Effect 2 is superior to the original and I can't wait to delve into the rest of it. If nothing else the story and the dialogue will make me want to finish the game regardless of the little things I don't like. This is an easy game to recommend to shooter fans who aren't really into RPGs as I think they would enjoy the combat aspect of it enough to at least put up with the RPG portions of it though I think most people would get drawn into the story and the characters. On the other hand it is really hard to recommend to those people that like RPGs, but don't play shooters. You have to have some ability to play what amounts to a twitch shooter in order to progress through the combat portions of the game. For those people who are like me and enjoy both aspects the game is easily worth the money even for the three to four hours I've put into it so far.
