well I have been playing the game for a good 20 hours and I'm not halfway through.... I have to say I have mix feelings for that 2nd tom in the saga.....
the graphics are great a lot of the first game problems have been solved... the story development is using the same principle as the first 1 which is great... the combat gameplay is a lot similar to the first one...

now on the negative first I found the weapon and armor choice to be really pathetic for a game pretending to be either a action or RPG game so both it's a disgrace...
the mapping of the environments.. well it seems that suppressing the elevator loading system also meant smaller less interesting environment.... so far everything is tiny IMO, best exemple when you get to the citadel compare to the citadel in the first one... this seems to directly affect the number of side quest so far.... no more solving problems between alien species and doing business with different opposing factions... and you have less to collect in each environment (creds, updates, or minerals)
not being able to grind for XP is also a problem IMO in an RPG.... but they seem to have balanced it well and you have the option to reassign your skill pts....
I play an adept and there seem to be some tuning issues with the biotic powers.... many times I'm aiming right and the curve he is doing with his powers (assassin style in WANTED, unnecessary sometimes) makes it lamely hit the ground 3 feet in front of him.... that gets on my nerves sometimes....

all in all I'm disappointed by the game so far and would rate it 70 to 76 out of 100
they corrected some major issues of the first one kept the good ideas (so why disappointed) because it looks like they cut back the size of everything to achieve that... it's like from a really good movie with low budget and bad post production they went to the same good movie with better production but made a short film instead....

I'm not talking about the length of the game, but more the depth... I don't have that feel of big galactic empire so far.... there isn't much interaction with the world and its daily inhabitants, the choice of weapons is weak, environments seem to be downsized to avoid elevator issues and texture issues... man I would bare the elevator just to have that feel of gigantic environement star trek style the first one use to have... and instead of suppressing all the planet scouting and putting a scanning system... they should have blended both....

well that's my first feel after 20Hrs... it might change..... but yeah I like the game, just was hopping for bigger with same quality... let see how the 3rd one turns out....

Woot, just finished playing through ME2 on hardcore (~41hrs.). I was playing through as an infiltrator and wow, the cloak+widow combination is really killer. (combined with the upgrades and I had squad warp ammo). Heavy Incinerate also helps. I took down the last boss pretty easily with just my widow. Also had Legion (widow as well) and Miranda. I somehow missed my shot with the Cain nuke, haha.

Well it seems like you get most of your gamerscore points at the end. I got 390 (out of my current 890 pts) right at the end. Though that includes the 75 for the long service medal (used my ME1 Shep.) Only 5 accomplishments left, now I need to go through on Insanity.

I like looting for dollars and what kind of rpg doesn't give exp. for kills? Promotes virtual pacifism! It does really well at sucking you into the story and action though. Hours just fly bye in there.

Miranda with the group health spec. can help a lot on Insanity. You may have to sleep with her though. Yeah, icky but it's a good cause. Don't play Vanguard. Adept is better if you want to go SW on em.

Haha, yeah it took me awhile to get used to not having the little pop-up showing exp. gained after each kill like in ME1.

Well I have Miranda with the extra weapon damage. The enemies seem to take a lot more hits to kill on Insanity so far, though I think that could be because I "lost" all of my upgrades when I imported my ME2 clear for Insanity. I just finished the Archangel recruit mission and it was tougher than I remember the last time. I have to do a lot more co-ordinating and manually using my teammates powers. On hardcore I could pretty much just leave them be and do my own thing, but on Insanity they tend to run out and get themselves killed pretty quickly.

Anyway, now I'm down to 3 achievements left; the use warp one(halfway there), the punch then kill one(might be tough on Insanity), and the clear on Insanity achievement.

I hooked up with Jack on my first playthrough. I was trying to choose between her and Tali (I didn't want to get with Miranda )

Anyone else done the Firewalker missions yet? A little repetitive, but not bad for it being free and all.

Yeah I agree. That said, I really liked the Hammerhead. I wish you got to use it for more than the five missions in the DLC. It's a lot more agile than the Mako was. Although on Insanity, the one mission where you have to fight the geth and recover the 5 research points is a complete pain in the ass.

I just did a run on the PC. Man there's no going back to the clunky 360 shooting after pinpointing everythings head with ease and having hotkeys.

Yeah thanks there Lurker. Enjoy.

Yeah, that one mission was the toughest one for me (on hardcore) until I just started staying really far away and attacking them from afar. On that last platform if you jump over (to bring the enemies out) and then turn around and jump right back to the other side you can hit them from far away. At least it worked on hardcore, I haven't tried it on Insanity yet.

That's what I did too. You can't get creative at all in that mission. I stayed over there the first time and just tried to steamroll everyone, but got torn to pieces in a matter of seconds.