Mass Effect 2

[Cernos]

I've been playing Mass Effect 2 and really enjoying it, much more than I expected to. Love it in fact. Great storyline and the graphics are stunning with such wonderfully atmospheric locations. The voice acting is top notch and I love all the incidental conversations you can eavesdrop on, some really funny ones that reward the time spent listening. I'm finally getting the hang of the combat system and ripping up some enemies at last (only in normal mode though).

I'm playing as a Sentinel, the extra survivability of the tech suit is helping with my lack of FPS skills (though I know it's not a true FPS). I'm tending to group with Grunt for the extra muscle and one of the biotic characters like Jack for the extra crowd control, sometimes with Miranda so we can double up on the overloads and warps.

Anyone else playing this? What class are you playing? And who do you find the most useful squad members are?

Also, anyone gone renegade? I'm mostly 2:1 Paragon/Renegade ratio so far. I know they say on the forums that you should choose one path or the other and stick to it like glue, but there's so many grey areas in the plot that I find myself sometimes going with Paragon choices, sometimes with Renegade. Role play choices are more fun than min-maxxing.

[Lasiien]

I think i got a bit disjointed on the main story as I went around and did all the side quests (not just recruitment but also the loyalty ones), so I lost the main thread but picking it back up again. I am enjoying it allot, but I am a sucker for sci fi and this is so well implemented as well so it's just about perfect really!

I went plain old soldier (guns guns and a bit more guns), you can still use tech powers or biotics though by putting them on your quickbar from your party members abilities, which is cool. Can also research an ability and add it to Sheppard as well, so I have 'Slam' i think max'd at level 4

I am in love with Miranda so she mostly comes with me on missons, maybe its that New Zeland accent or something.. :0 But i think the most useful are the warrior types (Grunt, Garrus, Jacob etc). The techs/biotics always seem to get themselves killed

Going all the way paragon at the moment, maybe a reaction to being such a nasty man in DA:O

[eKo]

ME2 is a great game, but the main campaign is relatively short though it's lengthened considerably by the recruitment and loyalty missions. I also played as sentinel I think as it seemed the balanced option, but will replay it eventually with my new ME save in which I played as Commando (eventually).

I found the difficulty rather easy at first (on normal), though there are some hard sections. I usually had a soldier & bionics type in my party, though near the end I went with Jack & Tali mostly.

As usual I went mostly Paragon with only a few Renegade options when they fit me better.

The game came out when I had some days off and finished it in 3-4 days straight (I think around 35 hours played) .

[Cernos]

Yeah I prefer sci-fi to fantasy also, so ME2 is right up my street and yep it's pretty much perfectly implemented.

Just got pushed into the mission where you get the additional weapon and decided to take the assault rifle, which has beefed up my Sentinel a fair bit. I tried the sniper rifle, but it didn't suit my playstyle with Sentinel - I like to watch the whole battle and pop my powers as needed and staring down a scope jarred with that. Will perhaps play through a second time as an infiltrator and do the sniping thing properly.

Do you do much micro managing of your squad mates? In DA:O I found I was having to constantly micro manage to get through tough encounters, but in ME2 squad mates seem to look after themselves pretty well in terms of positioning and what they attack, though I do control their special cooldown abilities quite often.

I see ME1 is going cheap at Amazon at the moment and would be cool to take a character through both games. But I also heard it's not compatible with Windows 7. Is that the case?

[Lasiien]

Nah, occasionally I'll use the 'q' and 'e' buttons to tell them to get behind cover (when they do dopey things) and I do drag some of their abilities to my quickbar and use em, but thats about it

Not sure about ME1 and windows 7 not tried it, I didn't have my old saves so i just started a fresh character.

[eKo]

ME1 works perfectly fine on Windows 7, played it again after playing ME2 as I could hardly recall anything from the first game except the ending and I loved it. There's a couple of difficult choices to make, but it's exactly those choices that make the game so great. And since the choices I made are very different from the standard choices I got when creating a character from scratch I'm anxious to see how they'll influence the game.

There's way less sci-fi RPG's than fantasy ones, so maybe it just feels fresher and there's less need to stereotype. Though they did create a great world for ME (2), the Quarians especially are great imo, it's all extremely well done actually.

Hardly did any micromanaging besides using special abilities & sometimes moving them to cover, they do pretty well on their own. Did way more micromanaging in DA:O, especially in tougher fights or when mages were involved.

[Cernos]

I've started playing Mass Effect 1 but rather wish I hadn't. It's a real let down compared to ME2. ME2 got everything right, story, gameplay, pacing, balance, difficulty curve. ME1 fails in most of these. Leaving aside the excellent story, voice acting and graphics, the gameplay elements really disappoint. It does work on Win 7, but is rather flaky in Windowed mode.

I'm playing on normal as an Infiltrator. Current about level 20. Again and again I'm running into really poorly designed missions. I'm getting one-shotted a lot by mission situatons, be it overwhelming swarms of minions, enemies that spawn right next to you with no chance to seek cover or just some overpowered ability or other. I'm having real trouble completing some missions on Casual (yet I've been playing ME2 on Veteran without problems). I realise the two games have different mission design approaches (ME2 is about using cover to survive waves of mobs, ME1 likes to throw you in at the deep end and force you to move around more) but the balance, pacing and design of missions in ME1 seems flawed.

I don't recall ever running into any "wtf bullshit was that" moments in ME2. ME1 has plenty, when you or a team mate die instantly from something you could never have seen coming - reminds me of the old "you go north, you fall through a hole in the floor, you're dead, game over" adventure games of the past. There's way too many things that can one-shot you in ME1 and it makes for tedious progression.

Squad member AI is truly atrocious. They don't seek cover, even when you micro manage where you want them to go. Squad pathing is terrible too - often they just plain refuse to go to locations or carry out an action, saying they are blocked or can't get there when this is clearly not true. They insist on standing in the open and taking heavy fire and die constantly. It's so bad that in some situations I just tell them stay on hold somewhere out of trouble and solo the damn mission. But often they refuse to even do that and insist on immediately following and dying.

As for the Mako, elevators, shopping list side quests (I'm supposed to be saving the galaxy FFS!) and inventory micro management ..... meh.

If it wasn't for the great story and opportunity to import a toon into ME2 I don't think I'd bother.

[Lasiien]

Yep, ME2 is indeed more polished. One of the biggest issues in ME1 I believe was class balance, the game is way harder if you play certain classes as they are kinda weak (if you're not too deep in I'd suggest re-rolling and just going soldier or something tougher). I do also remember more issues with the AI control of your party as well, but actually I thought DA:O was worse until I learnt how to do all the macros etc ! I did die a fair bit though and if anything I found ME2 allot easier.

The mako sucks royally. I kinda feel the same way about that and scanning planets for minerals in ME2. Nice idea, way too time consuming for what should be just an aside. Fortunaltely though irrc you don't really have to do the mako stuff and the side missions in ME1 if you really don't fancy it ?

The best part about ME1 is the citadel by far imo, it really impressed me and i enjoyed all the side quests that you get there. Felt the citadel in ME2 was kinda a disappointment in comparison. And the ending is very very cool, you already know some spoilers by just playing ME2, but i reckon you'll enjoy it.

[Cernos]

I'm level 35 now and kind of committed to Infiltrator, for good or for bad. Infiltrator would be a good class if the game design allowed the sniper rifle to be used properly, but most missions are fought in close quarters or against mobs that use rush tactics, forcing a switch to pistols. I am having some success now using Liara for crowd control plus Tali for tech support or Garrus for firepower support, but it means getting in close and my using pistols 90% of the time, which wasn't what I had in mind for Infiltrator. Might as well have rolled a Soldier.

And when I do it get a chance to snipe the squad AI wrecks things. "Hold Position" does not mean hold position, they never stay put. I don't want my squad mates refusing to take cover and standing in the open and getting picked off. So I direct them to move to the rear and order them to hold position. They do this for a few seconds and then report "all targets down" or "negative contacts" (when clearly there are lots of targets still up) and this seems to reset their instructions and they decide to move up once again. So I try and leave them to their own devices while I snipe and they nearly always get themselves killed. It's driving me nuts.

The 1-shotting continues despite the levelling up. Even with Fitness, Immunity and medium armour I'm still getting 1-shotted by all sorts of different opponents, often right at the start of encounters as soon as a door is opened. There's too much getting blasted to feck before you have a chance to appraise the situation in ME1, the only way to play it seems to be to use the squad pause all the time and micro manage. I much prefer ME2's fluid style where squad mates know how to look after themselves and only need directing in the most intense battles.

Combat in ME2 is intensely fun, combat in ME1 is something you just get through.

[eKo]

I replayed ME1 and yeah it's way harder than ME2, especially at the start. Despite all the flaws (the Mako, the endless elevator rides, the rather dumb AI, ...) I still found it very enjoyable. I liked the story better in ME1 as I found the main story in ME2 to be really short and straightforward (though all the sidemissions and especially the recruitment and loyalty missions lengthen the game considerably while also providing lots of background info). Also found ME2 to be more predictable, run into a large room with lots of cover and you know a firefight will follow, thought the fighting is very enjoyable .

Dunno if you tried the free DLC (Bring Down the Sky), but it's incredibly hard, though it's rather well done and gives more satisfaction than ME2 which I found rather easy (save for a few fights).

Haven't had any issues while playing on Windows 7, but I did play full screen.

The citadel was good, though it does drag on a bit and there's loads of backtracking involved (if you want to complete all the missions at least), but at least it feels suitably big. The ending is really cool and so is one mission near the end (you're told about it in ME2, but it doesn't have the same impact).

They're both great games though ME2 really is more streamlined and polished (to the point of being a bit on the easy side imo). Storywise ME1 is much better imo, but ME2 has better gameplay and the recruitment & loyalty missions are really great at providing loads of background information and thus fleshen out the ME universe.

I spent way too much time scanning planets in ME2, but at least it's not as infuriating as hobbling around in the Mako trying to find your way up a steep hill .

Enemy AI in ME1 is indeed rather silly in that they just do their thing untill you get 1 shot off at which time they usually just rush in. I found that having at least 1 biotic for crowd control helps a ton, so I usually had Kaiden + Ashley in my party until the end where I switched out Kaiden for Liara and sometimes took Tali as well (my pistol skill was good enough to solo kill the mobs while they were kept busy by the AI teammates). I also played as Infiltrator (specialized to Commando) and only had some trouble at the start when weapon skills are low. The sniper rifles are indeed pretty useless, only good for the opening shot which is a shame.

I don't remember getting 1-shot that often, though enemy snipers are deadly and there's quite a few missions where you get rushed as soon as you open the door, but those don't happen too often and mostly in the side missions.

[Cernos]

Well I've given up on my attempt to play a sniper Infiltrator and maxxed out pistols and immunity. I just get Liara to drop some crowd control, pop Marksman and charge in with pistols blazing. If things get hairy I pop Immunity and drop some more crowd control. This usually causes enough distraction that my third squad member (usually Garrus or Tali) can do their thing without getting any aggro. Not exactly the way I envisaged playing my Infiltrator, but it should get me through to the endgame (level 40 and doing Feros at the moment).

[Lasiien]

tank style infilitrator ! nice

I think the classes work much better in ME2, i did try a few out and the only one i really thought was wrong was the vanguard. Whilst its great fun to use that ability to fly halfway over the room i found when i got there the vanguard simply wasn't strong enough to take the punishment, so it often meant i died or ran away (which is a bit silly given that they are supposed to be great up close). Inf's seemed to work well to me though if you wanted to sit back and snipe.

[Cernos]

Well I just finished ME1 and have to say the finale from Ilos onwards was stunning. The story telling was first class and the way it all unfolded was breathtaking. It was worth the agony of the flaky combat system, which I eventually learned to live with (pistol packing Infi ftw). To be fair most of the problems with game design and balance reared their head in the side missions. It wasn't an issue of level as I finished the game capped at level 50, mostly just poor design in most cases. But the plot missions mostly ran smoothly and were much easier to complete, plus my companions seemed to behave a lot better in the plot missions. I guess they didn't want anyone getting stuck in the plot and probably playtested these missions a lot more thoroughly. Anyway, glad I stuck it out, the ending was well worth it. Going to import my Infi into ME2 now and play on Veteran or Hardcore.

[Lasiien]

nice one, well done for getting through it after the frustration you were having. I guess upon reflection playing ME1 after playing ME2 is prolly the wrong way around, they did correct an awful lot of stuff

Very cool ending isn't it, I loved it from Ilos also Which ending did you go for? Did you save the council ? (i did)

[Cernos]

I saved the council and nominated Captain Anderson. I was going for the goody two shoes Paragon approach. But since the council are such an ungrateful bunch of bastids in ME2, next time round I'm going to let them burn! I also saved Kaidan Alenko, who goes on to be a right whiner in ME2 so next time round he gets it too

Currently continuing on as Infiltrator in ME2, Veteran difficulty. The sniping is much better, though ammunition rationing mean you can't just sit in cover and snipe everyone - which is fair enough. Overall I think the ME1 Infiltrator had more versatility but the stealth ability in ME2 is great for getting out of trouble.