Mass Effect 2... who should I blame for this? -redux-

Wonderful news, thanks nightshade. Dennis your screenshots are amazing. I only wish I could have a setup that could push that out at 60fps!

 

Only about 10-12 hours in so far, and I'm entirely sick of the overly simplistic Character developement. Likewise with a lack of any sort of inventory management. Or the fact that their explanation of Thermal cooling clips doesn't match up to the in game implementation in any way.

In other words, one clip doesn't equal one clip. When you pick up one clip you get 5 clips, one for each weapon. So instead of having say 10 clips and thus 10 total reload period which can be any combination of weapon, you have a variable number of reloads per weapon because the "clip" you picked up added a variable amount of "ammo" to each gun. WTF. A universal thermal cooling cartridge (according to the game) isn't even that. It's just units of ammo given to each weapon and doesn't even represent a "full reload."

For example, picking up a cooling cartridge off the ground should give a fully "cooled" gun with a full "load" of shots according to the game lore. Instead, my sniper rifle gets 3 sniper gun ammo while the fully loaded (cooled) sniper rifle has 15 shots.

I'm still going through the motions of playing the game, but the gameplay mechanics are wholly unsatisfying. There's no satisifcation in leveling up the character because there's virtually nothing you can do when leveling up. Thus the combat seems rather boring and unrewarding.

They would have done a far better job to have just removed all character developement and made it a purely story driven FPS.

That said, so far the story is passable. And I'll finish the game to at least see how that plays out, but I have absolutely no desire or incentive to play through the game again so far. If the combat wasn't already so easy, I'd be tempted to use a trainer/cheat code just to get through the game faster.

I had high hopes for this after ME1, a flawed but otherwise brilliant game. But so far, I'm almost completely disappointed in this one.

Regards,
SB

 

Just wait until you have to mine 4-5 hours worth of resources!

 

Really 4-5 hours!?

 

Well somewhat true if you want to upgrade everything in research terminal.

 

The beauty of the PC version is that savegame editors are available.

 

Whoops based on the feedback looks like I'll be picking this up on Steam for $10 in a year or two.

 

If you plan on getting everything you're probably looking at 8-10 hours worth of mining.

Just finished it yesterday. Half my team and the majority of my crew didn't make it. My post-game Normandy is now a deserted and incredibly depressing place.

 

8-10 hours is totally untrue....at most it'll take you 2-3 hours atmost if you want to chew out every single planet's resources. But you don;t need to chew every planet if maxing out the upgrades in Research Lab is your goal.

 

I guess it just seemed like 8 hours then. It's just so incredibly boring. I'd gladly take the Mako over this mining crap anyday. At least it added a little bit of scope to the game. Still, an hour? - no way.

 

I found driving the Mako around the planets added a bit of expansiveness to an otherwise cramped little game, regardless of how quirky it was....

 

Mako felt perfectly fine to me, it controls exactly like the warthog from Halo games...both on 360 & PC.
And the jumpy-jumpy ability with its ridiculously amount traversing ability made it nice

 

Spoiler

Only the Dr. made it for me. I did all the loyalty missions. Btw how do you make Sheperd die doing the suicide mission? Just fight poorly or what

 

Shepard will die if

Spoiler

all of your squad members die

 

Gah, something else that's annoying the ever living #$@# out of me, is having to go back to your room on the ship if you want to change your armor. No other reason to ever go there (at least so far for me).

Thank god I don't have the loading bug or this would drive me batpoo insane.

If not for DAO, I'd seriously be questioning Bioware's ability to actually create a good RPG after playing ME2.

I do like the WFRP (Warhammer RPG) method of awarding exp based on completing missions/objectives rather than random acts of violence (combat).

Oh, and regenerating health? /sigh. Worst feature ever invented. Extremely sad to see it now invading RPGs...

As I said before they would have been far better off just making this a pure shooter with a storyline. Rather than a severely castrated RPG with shooter aspirations.

Regards,
SB

 

As far as the last mission goes,

Spoiler

some of the deaths seem to be random. Despite doing everyone's loyalty mission, leaving immediately after the crew was kidnapped, etc., Jacob died after he got shot in the head, seemingly at random. Nobody else died, even though I thought Samara was gone for sure.

 

Spoiler

You gotta pick the right person for the job & obviously make sure you have their loyalty quest [not so important] but the important part is you also have to upgrade their special abilities, once you do that there is no way you'll get them killed.

Vents - Tali/Legion
1st Squad Leader - Garrus/Miranda
Biotic Barrier - Samara/Jack
2nd Squad Leader - Garrus/Jack
Escort - Anyone loyal would do but still people are reporting having problem with Mordin, so its better if you keep him for your squad in the last part.

Final Squad - The less powerful ones cause the good ones need to defend the door, Ipicked up Mordin & Legion since they both are pretty useless against Collectors. If by any chance you pissed off someone from a fight then there is only one sureshot way to make them survive....dont use them at all

 

While DAO is certainly better than ME2, they are still vary similar. The both at least for me lack a certain sense of progression. Its almost like they put together the story and thats that! No enough consequences for the actions taken. Its also far too obvious in both what you need to do and what the consequences will be. And don't get me started on the class balances in DAO: Caster >>>>>>>>>>>> Fighter >>> Rogue.

Yep, one bar of health per mission would of made the game much more interesting and difficult. As it is, even on insane, you can just shoot til you almost die, wait 2 seconds and do it again.

Agreed, I think a lot of people are giving it a good review because it has an OK story (not that great of a story, but considering the sorry excuse for a storyline most games have...) but it really shouldn't be considered a good RPG. At best its a poor shooter with a good story. Which is OK, but still don't think it or ME1 really compares to something like HL2 or Bioshock. Just hoping that Bioshock 2 isn't a pale imitation of BS1.