I'm about 24 hours in and still haven't finished, but I've enjoyed it quite a bit. More than ME1, I think. It might just be that I'm not much of an RPG gamer, but I think it's for the best that the inventory management was replaced with the upgrades system. In first I feel like I spend a lot of time searching through all of the crap in my inventory to find the best weapon/armor/whatever, while in this game I just research upgrades and reap the benefits.

The combat is also much improved, and certainly a lot smoother than the first.

Quote: Original post by Antheus
- I liked the "Releasing control" scene, it put the button on the story for me
- Entire Suicide mission/post Omega-4 pacing was well done

Agreed, that's one of the highest climaxes for me in games to this date. I was expecting it to be cheesier but it wasn't.

I played the game trough in 29 hours if you can trust the ingame timer, but it felt a lot more than that. I saved and reloaded a few times so that might be it. I also didn't finish all the 5 anomaly side-quests and I played it on normal.

Quote: Original post by Antheus
Controls can be annoying, duck/jump-over/run tends to get mixed up

I never considered this to be a big deal, but then again - I played on normal.

[Edited by - SymLinked on February 14, 2010 4:41:10 AM]

Mass Effect is my favorite game. I was dying to play the sequel, but a week before it's release, my 360 suffered its third RROD attack. And now without gaming for three weeks, I'm considering just not purchasing another 360 and experiencing how life without gaming will be. Dragon Age and Civilization IV before that must have taken their toll. But I just know that when I finally get my new 360, Mass Effect 2 will be the game to play for the next 50-100 hours.

"Sort of" spoilers are below.

Quote: Original post by Promit

Quote: Original post by swiftcoder
If it is time you are worried about, don't be. I completed the game (including all optional side quests) in 15 hours, and I wasn't rushing or attempting a speed-run.

Eh? My first run took forty five hours...

I just finished it at 35 hours. I didn't do all the missions that can be discovered by scanning unexplored planets, but otherwise I did everything in the game as far as I know.

The only way to beat this game in fifteen hours would indeed be to rush through the main missions and ignore all the side missions.

I think Bioware did the natural and logical thing with the weapons and armor in this game. The upgrade system is effectively no different from the standard system of constantly picking up new versions of the same old weapons and swapping them out, but it's significantly more streamlined and convenient. It removes complexity without removing depth.

The story was simply outstanding, and some of the side missions were also fantastic. My favorite was probably the loyalty mission for Samara. The only one I felt wasn't good was the one for Legion, the geth. Going in, I thought it very well would be the most intriguing one, but it turned out to be mindless combat--a missed opportunity, but I don't hold it against BioWare since they clearly put so much work into all the other missions.

I'm glad that neither EDI nor the Illusive Man were involved in any massive plot twists. I was afraid that one of them was going to turn bad in a dramatic move, which would be too stereotypical. Perhaps the Illusive Man really is just the leader of Cerberus, nothing more. I did temporarily entertain the idea that the Illusive Man was somehow a Prothean based on his eyes, but I'm no longer sure about this, especially after reading about him online and discovering that his identity has been explored a little bit further in the Mass Effect novels (which I haven't read).

My only genuine complaint with the game was that despite their fantastic quality too much time was spent recruiting team members. The story is too interesting for it to take the backseat for so long.

Quote: Original post by Hnefi
Inventory! In the first game, you had fifty guns of each type to choose from. Now you have TWO?! That's on the order of the amount of guns you got in the original Doom.

I'm really not sure about this. I can find no interpretation of the assertion "you have two" that would make it true as it stands.

In ME1, you would find endless variations of the same assault rifle (for instance), and they would differ only in their statistics and name or manufacturer. In ME2, there are two or three (I forget the exact number) different versions of the assault rifle, each with distinct qualitative traits, but the stats are handled uniformly by the convenient upgrade system.

There is really no loss at all, unless you really cared that much about having different versions of the same type of weapon whose only differences were some obscure stats that 95% of players would never figure out and with different manufacturers listed.

[Edited by - nilkn on March 5, 2010 2:10:07 PM]

I played through Mass Effect a couple of times and I really enjoyed it. I've really been looking forward to playing 2, but I'm waiting for the Steam discount (I'm looking at you, Easter sales) so I can pick it up.

It's good to know the inventory system has been improved. Managing the inventory was a total mess in ME1. Also, the Paragon/Renegade thing didn't really feel like it had any effect in the first. Can anyone confirm how it works in ME2?

Enjoyed Mass Effect 2, even though I'm not exactly a fan of RPGs.

Shepard can become either an unsufferable bastard of intergalatic proportions, to hippy-go-lucky Jean-Luc Picard. Sometimes it's fun to go from one extreme to another just for the fun of it. But from my experience, it's mostly splitting loyalties among your crew, not a great deal of impact on the game. It probably dictate also who survives the final assault at the end.

Quote: Original post by liquidAir
I played through Mass Effect a couple of times and I really enjoyed it. I've really been looking forward to playing 2, but I'm waiting for the Steam discount (I'm looking at you, Easter sales) so I can pick it up.

It's good to know the inventory system has been improved. Managing the inventory was a total mess in ME1. Also, the Paragon/Renegade thing didn't really feel like it had any effect in the first. Can anyone confirm how it works in ME2?

The most direct effect the Paragon/Renegade choices will have is on dialog choices. I went all-the-way Paragon, so I had a large number of Paragon dialog choices that often helped me out. I imagine that if you played the game from a more neutral point of view without taking a stance it would actually be a fair bit harder to gain people's loyalty.

Other than that, your actual Paragon/Renegade score doesn't matter that much, but there are a large number of particular decisions that affect the very variable ending.

Quote: Original post by oliii
It probably dictate also who survives the final assault at the end.

[Mild SPOILERS]








No, what dictates who survives is whether you did the crew member loyalty missions, whether you properly upgraded the ship and whether or not you go into the suicide mission right away after "the joker mission" [smile].







[/Mild SPOILERS]


The game is great, I miss the MAKO (I seem to be in the minority there), am not particularly fond of resource scanning which I think is grinding or having to buy fuel to move from a system to the next, or keeping an eye out for ammo, but so far, best game I've played this year.

Quote: Original post by Kwizatz
[Mild SPOILERS]

ah sh*t...

Quote: Original post by Kwizatz
No, what dictates who survives is whether you did the crew member loyalty missions, whether you properly upgraded the ship and whether or not you go into the suicide mission right away after "the joker mission" [smile].

hmm, I lost two unloyal crew members, which was down to not having enough paragon points to trigger the right dialog. Maybe I didn't get enough upgrades for the third one...

Quote: Original post by Kwizatz
[Mild SPOILERS]

No, what dictates who survives is whether you did the crew member loyalty missions, whether you properly upgraded the ship and whether or not you go into the suicide mission right away after "the joker mission" [smile].

[/Mild SPOILERS]

SPOILERS START
Not really. You can have all the upgrades in the game, and have all members loyal but still lose them if you assign them to the wrong tasks at the end. Same thing if you decide to leave a squishy non-defensive crew member at the door with not enough defensive crew there to protect them.
SPOILERS END