Official Mass Effect 2 Thread

[Killergran]

Mass Effect 2 was awesome. I'll just go through a couple of points that I found especially noteworthy:

• The music; indeed the entire soundscape, is awesome beyond words. It sets the mood perfectly. Probably better than any other game I've ever played. Everything from Voice acting to clicking noises and themes makes you just fall into the game.

• The battles; They've really made some significant changes here. No exp from killing enemies, no dropped items, weapons now use ammo, regenerative health, different AI, more necessary to use cover, no accuracy stats.... It's a whole new beast. Plays more like a third person shooter than ever. And it works pretty well. Battles are more fun than before. But it's not an RPG in TPS clothing anymore.

• The characters; All characters in this game are good. All the main characters are great. In fact, I have never played a game with this many really great characters. The excellent voice acting has a lot to do with this. And since this game focuses more on them than ever it makes the game even better.

• Scanning planets for resources; isn't fun. Period. It's hardly even better than landing on a generic world like we did in the last game. Completely killed all exploring for me.

• Mission structure; has changed quite a bit. I'm a bit sad that all missions seem to take place in places you cannot visit before the mission, and cannot visit after. I don't mind this once in a while, but it's too frequent here. And what's up with having a mission completed screen? Apart from that, the missions are way better than in the previous game. Repetitive side missions are a thing of the past. Great work!

• Story; This time it focuses very little on outside forces, and instead takes great care to introduce the characters. My playthrough was 2h main storyline - 10 hours character storylines - 1 hour main storyline - 15 hours characters - 2 hours main. It's a great story with many compelling characters, but... there's just no real nerve n the main storyline. Not that I noticed any of this while playing. I had too much fun!

• Graphics; were good. At times even beautiful. Much the same as the original game, but more details and more orange.

• Importing a character from ME1; You should do this. All choices you made in ME1 have some form of consequence, and it makes it feel like you are part of the world, and can make an impact on it. This is a great feeling, and it does a lot to draw you in.

• No stats - really, there are no statistics in this game. No character sheets, HP increases, weapon stats... this game is the complete antithesis to JRPG's.

• Music; Did I mention how completely awesome the music is and how much it does for the atmosphere of this game?