56 réponses à ce sujet

[Fardreamer]

I've started playing ME2 now. There's a lot of things I really like about it. I like the new weapon ammo system. It seems to make favoring strategy more important. I really like being able to customize some things on the Normandy, like collecting fish and models, and changing your armor. And I REALLY like how they improved the sniper rifle. Since it's my weapon of choice, it has been great. The best is how interesting the squad mates are.

Some things I don't like: No armor/weapon mods. The scanning of planets seems to be slow and repetitive. And after scanning 10 planets or so, it seems you have all the resources you'd ever need. There's no incentive to just go off and explore like there was in ME1. There you could find a planet to land on in almost every system, but in ME2 the missions on the planets seem few and far between. It also seems to take longer to get interested in the story. It does happen eventually, but at first, just flying around collecting a team is a bit dull.

I always thought that ME2 would be more moddable. I've been looking around, and it seems to be nowhere near as moddable as any of the Dragon Age games.

[cap and gown]

You can mod your armor. There are various different shoulder, leg, chest, helmet, arm pieces that you can choose among, even more with some DLC (free?).

You don't need to actually scan a planet to know if there is a quest on it. Just enter orbit. If there is a quest, EDI will tell you "anomaly detected."

Only scan for resources as you need them. I like to accumulate 75-100k of iridium/platinum/palladium and then I stop mining until the stock gets down around 50k. Ezo is harder to find, so I grab it whenever I find it. Usually I found Ezo is on green-looking garden worlds. By now I can tell just by looking at a planet whether it has Ezo or not.

[Fardreamer]

Yeah, since I made my post, I have found more side missions on planets, and I found you can unlock new systems by buying maps. It makes it more fun to go off and explore them, but the missions really seem the same so far. It always boils down to killing Blue Suns, Blood Pack, or Eclipse mercs. I haven't found any unique missions like in ME1 where you stumble upon an abandoned ship with a psychotic biotic inside. Or uncovering Cerberus' twisted experiments. Or driving around a new planet and falling into a Thresher Maw's pit.  At least there's been no reused areas.

Modifié par Fardreamer, 18 novembre 2013 - 04:59 .

[cap and gown]

Fardreamer wrote...
  At least there's been no reused areas.

THANK GOD!

[capn233]

I think they did a better job "disguising" the same old side missions in ME1.

In ME2 all the side missions are indeed against Mercs (Eclipse, Blue Suns, Blood Pack... somewhat similar but some variations), or the Geth. There are a few exceptions that are melee creatures or pure mech.

But if we recall from ME1, most side missions were essentially against Organics or Geth, with some against melee creatures (Husks, Creeper variants, or Rachni). Worlds mostly had unique vistas, but there were only a couple prefab building structures, mines, and essentially one ship design.

So all in all I somewhat agree that the side missions in ME2 might not seem as varied as in ME1, but I think that is mostly due to fact that you don't acquire them the same was as in ME1, and there is a little less narrative in each.

[Ship.wreck_]

 *braces for mass scale backlash*
The original Mass Effect is by far my favorite.
For the record I'm not fully qualified here as I have yet to play 3. But if you ask me, between the original and 2, the original wins, hands down.
My three favorite things in video games are in no particular order:exploring (especially in a sci-fi, derp)modding/strategy (ie: decisions I make about how to equip my team effect how it functions)and tactics (ie: decisions I make about how to use my team effect how we perform)
Unfortunately in ME2 there's no real ability to actually explore. In Mass Effect you can land on at least one planet in every system, in an open world/sandbox format and actually... explore. While in ME2 even if you can land on just as many planets (which I'm not sure is the case), once you do, every single one of them, every single one, every single time, is a completely closed non-environment, point A to point B, run and gun, level design. You just land, there's only one way you can go, and you just go and shoot every thing until you get to the end. That's not exploring. Thus, there is no actual, genuine, exploration in ME2 whatsoever. Which to me, was a gigantic bummer.
That said, I'm not saying Mass Effect was perfect. It had quite the opposite problem, there was plenty to explore, there just wasn't anything to find if you did haha! There were almost never any enemies/random engagements to find on all of the planet surfaces combined. I think I only ever found one, or two places where there were groups of hostiles on the surface in some random place that you could find through exploring. After that maybe a handful of other times where there were enemies outside, but ALWAYS grouped around some objective/structure marked on the map that you're definitely going to anyway. A handful of random Thresher encounters that got boring and repetitive in a hurry. And besides combat, an occasional crashed probe full of mediocre booty.
So, in Mass Effect there was PLENTY to explore, just nothing particularly worthwhile to find while exploring. They just didn't keep it interesting.
When ME2 came out I was really expecting them to keep the original format and improve on it, thus retaining everything I love about ME and improving on it by a) making things I liked even better, and removing all the things I didn't like.
So I was expecting the same planet exploration with hopefully higher level gear when found in some off map marker planet surface location, and random combat encounters, perhaps one on every other planet you land on, or at least one in three. That way exploration would be more exciting, it would pay off, and there'd actually be a good reason to do it.Instead what I got was, people complained that exploring was boring, and the Mako was a pain to handle, so Bioware reacted by removing sanbox planet exploration entirely. Instead of simply improving it. Oh yeah, and replaced it with exponentially more boring planet scanning. FTW.
When it comes to modding:The upgrades system in Mass Effect enabled the player to completely change the fundamental behavior of weapons by applying different upgrades. That is amazing!For example, right now (I'm replaying ME) I've been running with a sort of standard squad loadout. One squad member has an assault rifle that acts like an assault rifle. With a scram rail for increased damage, frictionless materials, to reduce overheating, and whatever ammo is appropriate for the enemies (tungsten for geth, shredder for biologicals, or proton for shields). It does a lot of damage and can shoot a lot but overheating is still a bit of an issue. So basically long bursts of relatively high damage fire.The other squad member caries an AR that I've modded to act more like a machine gun for supressive fire. 2x scram rails and cryo rounds which reduce heat and rate of fire enough that the thing can actually fire indefinitely without ever overheating.And I made my assault rifle a "battle rifle". High Explosive rounds increase heat by 500% I need 2x frictionless materials on it just to be able to fire six round bursts without overheating! But it's worth it considering that as long as I control my fire and don't overheat, I can knock down three or four enemies at a time by alternating targets, and then pin them down, firing on each just often enough to knock them back down just as they've gotten back up. Essentially neutralizing an entire squad.
So any time I get a chance, I put my "gunner in the back, and they just continuously fire into the enemies non stop, constantly sapping their shields and health, put the regular "rifleman" off to one side where he can pick off anyone who gets close, and then I take the other side and simply knock down as many enemies as I can. Once I've knocked down a handful off them, my rifle does suprisingly little damage, but all I need to do is keep them down and between the gunner and rifleman both attacking them and me holding them down, it's a clean sweep.

Using this method I can routinely complete missions (small side missions) without any of my team members ever even having their sheilds broken. And it's specifically thanks to the wide range of abilities I can give the weapons using the mod system. It is by far the best part of Mass Effect and sadly there is nothing even remotely like it in ME2.

Now I concede the point that ME's inventory system is a horrendous, nightmarish, attrocity to have to deal with. It was actually possibly the dumbest thing I've ever seen in any game, to force players to track INDIVIDUAL INSTANCES of any and EVERY given upgrade for each weapon they want to use it on... I just can't even imagine what they could have been thinking.
But the wide range of behaviors and benefits you can get out of guns using those upgrades is actually AMAZING and possibly one of the coolest things I've ever seen in any game.

So, once again, I was expecting an improvement in ME2. All the same upgrades, new ones, inventory system SANS INDIVIDUAL INSTANCE TRACKING. What's that? You have Kinetic Coil VI? Great, put it on every thing you want, no questions asked and don't f-ing worry about "how many" you have, there's no such thing, if you have it you have it, and it's fully available, no questions asked.
Boom.
Literally 1000% of all of the inventory related problems of Mass Effect... solved. Right there. While retaining all of the benefits of the weapons modding system.

Instead in Mass Effect 2 there is no weapons modding at all.
I have to admit that they definitely improved the weapons VARIETY. That was pretty cool. Instead of two basic shapes of each type of weapon all of which function exactly the same (out of the box, before modds) theres, what? Three distinct types of weapon for the "Assault Rifle" slot. Four or more with DLC?
But otherwise no ability to modify those weapons, whatsoever.
I hate the ammo mechanic. For one it's completely logically inconsistent with the premises of the original but more importantly it makes the combat feel exactly the same as every other shooter out there.
The heat management mechanic made Mass Effect completely unique among shooters and gave a distinct Sci-Fi feel to the gameplay. By comparison ME2 is exactly vanilla.

Of course fire capacity/accuracy is kind of what defines "assault rifles" vs. "battle  rifles" vs. "machine guns". But I feel the distiction could be made under the heat management system anyway, and while retaining customizability. 
The machine gun could have inherently lower accuracy, higher damage, and higher heat capacity than all the other guns before modification and with a permanent handicap and bonus' respectively in each category even after modification.
Assault rifle, average on all fronts.
Battle rifle, inherently higher accuracy, higher damage, and lower heat capacity before modification and again with permanent bonus after modification.
Having these inherent traits creating diferent types of weapons, even in the ammo free system could produce even greater variety of weapons behaviors after modding if modding were still possible.
That would've been really cool. But instead Bioware heard complaints about overheating and inventory and instead of fixing the issues, they simply VIOLENTLY knee jerked away from everything that difined their original game and put a picture of Commander Shepard on the cover of what winds up ammounting to a Modern Warfare game.

Lastly there's the issue of Tactics.
In Mass Effect there are some.
While in ME2 they're severely limited.
Of course in the Mass Effect franchise there's always going to be powers and special abilities that you can use more or less strategically.
But anyone who knows anything about tactics can easily tell you that the most important thing to using them is... freedom of movement. Or a controlled lack of it (bottlenecking).
Now, even in Mass Effect there were problems. As I mentioned in the open environment of planet surfaces there was almost never any combat at all. And even when there was combat, obviously the mako was the go to. And Mako combat was easily one of the worst combat mechanics in the game. I mean the vehicular combat was... just bad. It's pretty much impossible to loose in the Mako. You just sit there and absorb the rifle hits and slowly, methodically, boringly, so, so, boringly, blast away all of the enemies with the main gun. The machine gun does next to no damage but knocks all enemies down easily, resulting in a "leaf blower" effect where you wind up just pushing the downed bad guys all over the map for minutes on end before they finally start dying. Even facing Geth Armatures and Colossus, that can do respectable amounts of damage to the vehicle, IF you get hit... you NEVER do! Their projectiles are so laughably slow you'd have to get distracted reading a magazine while waiting for them to arive to actually ever get hit by any of them. So you just inch the mako forward a couple of feet to avoid a hit, then back, the forward, then back, while again, slowly, methodically, boringly, so, so, boringly, hammering away with the main gun until the colossus FINALLY dies. Just going through the motions.
So I for one, abandon the Mako at every oportunity to fight on foot instead.
But even then, on the pathetically rare occassion you get the chance to fight on an open planet surface, and you choose to fight on foot. Where you have plenty of elbow room to do whatever you want, and you could, for example, put a sniper up on a hill top a football field length away from the bad guys, then take put the other squadie on point with a shotgun, back them up with an AR, sneak around the side of the hill to within sprinting distance of the enemy position, then have the sniper open fire drawing the enemies attention so that your element can charge into the middle of them from behind while they're distracted and devastate their ranks before they realize their tunnel vission on the sniper was a mistake...
You still can't do any of that because there's about a 100ft limit to how far away any of your squad members can get anyway. So you're all stuck, effectively standing shoulder to shoulder, even when there's the space to use tactics, you're simply not allowed to use all of the space.
And then the vast majority of the fights happen in one of four identical sturctures with only slightly varied (or not slightly varied) baricades and cover items dispersed around them. Ship, Mine, Warehouse, and Bunker. 90% actually happening in just Mine, Warehouse, and Bunker. Probably 85% happening in just Warehouse and Bunker.

But even then, at least in Mass Effect once that fight does happen in that room, with only one exit and one entrance, it's an open room, with an array of obstacles, and effectively inumerable possible routes through those obstacles to the other side. It's not much, and it might seem like nothing to you. But when you consider that you can send your team mates anywhere in that room, without running into the distance limit, and you can go any other where in that room, it actually opens up a fairly wide potential for tactics. Considering the limitations anyway.
One I used to like to use was entering discretely, posting someone really hard to kill (Wrex) with a shotgun right at that entrance, to prevent enemies from circling around behind us (not that the AI is smart enough too but there are some enemies positioned such that that's just the most direct route), bringing someone with a "machine gun" along toward the right and positioning them about halfway down the lenth of that wall where they immediately open fire on the enemies visible all over the space, drawing and holding the attention of every badguy in the building, while I shoot my way through the handful of badguys in the extreme right corner, then move up the wall on the right to the very back of the room. I've killed all the badguys on the right, as all the badguys on the left try to rush onto the gunner's flank they run into Wrex and get stopped cold. Meanwhile all the other badguys in the room (most of them) charge straight into the gunner's field of fire, and I'm in the very back laying into them from behind as they try to get to the gunner, then I move wrex up on the opposed side and he attacks them from the third point of triangulation. TACTICS.
Limited tactics. But tactics nonetheless.

While in ME2 there are no such opporunties at all. Bascially every fight, on every world, in every mission, etc., etc. has been reduced to an extremely narrow corridor. As in ME, there's one entrance, one exit, but inbetween there's an exact route you have to take. Sometimes theres an appearance of a choice/manueverability in say two foot bridges from this side to that side, one on the left, one on the right. But seing as how they both go the same place it hardly matters. Instead of a room with badguys dispersed througout it, we get an alleyway with bad guys shoulder to shoulder, wall to wall, and there is no other direction to send your squad mates (or to go yourself). There is only forward, backward, and two walls.

Like I said, ME wasn't much better. It was pretty boxed in too, but there was a hell of a lot more of elbow room and ME2 was not an improvement over it, but a dumbing down of it.

What they should've done: sand box levels, more features, expanded "colonies" that look more like towns instead of a shack. More enemies outside, more types of buildings, enemies on ground, roof tops, etc. etc. more complex combat environments, random enemy encounters, remove distance limit on squad members, add one squad member, better vehicular combat, enemies with tanks of their own, individual squad members can enter and pilot Mako while others stay on foot. Imagine that, a small colonial town 5-10 diverse buildings with two or three roads through and alleys inbetween, on a planet surface, infested with enemies, a squadie in the mako atop a hill laying supressive MG fire on the the roofs (not that there aren't nooks and cranies for them to take cover so it's not a simple clean sweep like that) another squadie on a hill on the other side of town with a sniper rifle methodically picking off enemies that've found cover from the Mako, Shepard and one other squadie entering the town on the a third side and shooting it out with the entrenched enemies below in the streets and alleys, maybe have the sniper come down after the roofs are clear, climb up on the roofs and move along with the squad providing rooftop cover. Maybe have the Mako roll down and move up one side of the town shooting down all of the streets and alleys as it goes one block at a time, helping clear the way ahead of the team. Then clearling one building at a time until the mission is complete. All of this of course after clearing the enemy armor in the area with the Mako, with perhaps some help from the Normandy in the form of an orbital strike or two, or close air support, with the normandy hovering overhead droping shells on the occassional tank. (at a low enough rate that there's still something to do with the mako... wait a second... knock out air defense turrets ahead of the Normandy). Or hell, if there's no need to capture the whole town, just sneak in under cover of night, secure whatever the objective is, and sneak back out and continue on one's way, with a stealth XP bonus for mission completion that makes up for the lack of kills.

[Fardreamer]

Well, I finished ME2... the ending really caught me by surprise because I wasn't expecting it to "end" so quickly. I still had several side missions I wanted to complete, but I had gained the loyalty of all my crew, before it gave me the choice to go rescue everyone taken hostage. I managed to get the best ending (all crew mates and squad mates survive), pretty much by accident. It wasn't until reading the wiki later that I found that some of them could die if I didn't upgrade the ship and gain their loyalty. I guess it's a good thing I'm a completionist.

Overall, it's pretty much what I expected from a sequel. Nowhere near the same level of emotional investment I had in the story of ME1, but sequels rarely live up to that. Here's to hoping ME3 which I will me starting shortly, is a bit better.

Funnily enough, I think the biggest let down is that they didn't show Tali's face in the romance scene.  I was waiting since ME1 to see her face, and then at the big moment, it was just a tease.  Do they show her face in ME3, or am I going to be waiting the whole game again for no reward?

Modifié par Fardreamer, 28 novembre 2013 - 10:17 .

[cap and gown]

Fardreamer wrote...

Well, I finished ME2... the ending really caught me by surprise because I wasn't expecting it to "end" so quickly. I still had several side missions I wanted to complete.

I am sure you know this already, but just to be sure: you can still do more missions. It is not like ME1 where the game is definitively over.

Overall, it's pretty much what I expected from a sequel. Nowhere near the same level of emotional investment I had in the story of ME1, but sequels rarely live up to that. Here's to hoping ME3 which I will me starting shortly, is a bit better.

Personally, I liked it better. For me it was like the Empire Strikes Back compared to A New Hope: surprisingly better than the original. (One wonders what happened to Lucas between the first and second trilogy. Brain damage?)

I am afraid you are probably going to end up like many people and be sorely disappointed by the ending to ME3. Haven't you heard about the big uproar over the ME3 ending? Even if you don't know the details, it was still the biggest gaming controversy of 2012. Make sure to download the extended cut DLC (free). BW reacted to the controversy by releasing a longer version of the ending to try to address many of the fans' complaints. Still, many people are not happy, like this guy.

Funnily enough, I think the biggest let down is that they didn't show Tali's face in the romance scene.  I was waiting since ME1 to see her face, and then at the big moment, it was just a tease.  Do they show her face in ME3, or am I going to be waiting the whole game again for no reward?

Again, you are going to be disappointed. You get to see a "picture" of her, but many fans became irate about this subject as much as the endings. Still, the Talimance in ME3 may be one of the best romances in that title, maybe in the series.

[MegaIllusiveMan]

Fardreamer wrote...

Well, I finished ME2... the ending really caught me by surprise because I wasn't expecting it to "end" so quickly. I still had several side missions I wanted to complete, but I had gained the loyalty of all my crew, before it gave me the choice to go rescue everyone taken hostage. I managed to get the best ending (all crew mates and squad mates survive), pretty much by accident. It wasn't until reading the wiki later that I found that some of them could die if I didn't upgrade the ship and gain their loyalty. I guess it's a good thing I'm a completionist.

Overall, it's pretty much what I expected from a sequel. Nowhere near the same level of emotional investment I had in the story of ME1, but sequels rarely live up to that. Here's to hoping ME3 which I will me starting shortly, is a bit better.

Funnily enough, I think the biggest let down is that they didn't show Tali's face in the romance scene.  I was waiting since ME1 to see her face, and then at the big moment, it was just a tease.  Do they show her face in ME3, or am I going to be waiting the whole game again for no reward?

Did you complete it with DLCs??

Also, did you download Bring Down the Sky? It's worth the time. But since you completed ME already, well, on the next playthrough

[chaosaeon]

Fardreamer wrote...


Funnily enough, I think the biggest let down is that they didn't show Tali's face in the romance scene.  I was waiting since ME1 to see her face, and then at the big moment, it was just a tease.  Do they show her face in ME3, or am I going to be waiting the whole game again for no reward?

I'm not going to assume you will be pissed, but you probably will. Bioware just took a stock image of a model from the internet, and badly photoshopped it. It looks nothing like anyone had imagined, and they never addressed it. It goes alongside part of the ME3 ending where they recreated a vista almost identical to another picture found online, and that thing they did where they stole a picture from someone's deviant art account and used it for the game as well. Unfortunately, those aren't even the most unpleasant things about ME3. Other than the "it won't be an A,B,C choose ending quote that turned out to be a lie, wait till you see the downgrade in animations (you glide across the ground instead of running, feels like you're floating), the obnoxious FoV that makes your character take up half the screen so you can be "right in the action", and the fact that you can't even put your gun away when there are no enemies, so we can enjoy aiming our guns at nothing while we float around the level when we want to explore instead of putting it away to expand FoV and change the camera to better see around us . . . As I'm replaying ME1 right now, I really would have rather they just reused the running animations from that. The floaty feeling and odd way the character sways back and forth instead of moving like they actually had momentum and/or human joints/anatomy irked me through the entire game in ME3. 

[Fardreamer]

Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy the game. Both of them, there's just some things I didn't really appreciate. I feel like I've barely scratched the surface of ME2 even though I've finished one play through. For example you can only romance one character, and it leaves the others feeling a little... unfinished in their stories. I'm really curious to see Jack's full story if you choose to romance her.

I have heard a lot about the ME3 ending controversy. I've purposely stayed away from the details so as not to spoil it. The most I've really heard is some people saying "Shepard deserved better," but that doesn't tell me much. But to be honest, I'm not concerned about it. I know stories need to come to an end, and even if it's not the end I envisioned, I'm rarely disappointed by them. As long as I get to stop the reapers somehow, I think I'll be happy.

About the DLC, I've tried and failed to get Bring Down the Sky to work.  I think it might have to do with the fact that I'm playing outside the US, so the DL is blocked.  For example, I can't download Kasumi for ME2 because it won't let me complete the purchase unless my IP address shows I'm in the US.  In a few months I'll be back in the US, and I'll try to buy some of it then.

Modifié par Fardreamer, 29 novembre 2013 - 07:36 .

[cap and gown]

Fardreamer wrote...

Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy the game. Both of them, there's just some things I didn't really appreciate. I feel like I've barely scratched the surface of ME2 even though I've finished one play through. For example you can only romance one character, and it leaves the others feeling a little... unfinished in their stories. I'm really curious to see Jack's full story if you choose to romance her.

Actually, in ME2 you can romance everyone available to your Shepard in one playthrough. (i.e. Garrus, Thane, Jacob for femshep; Miranda, Tali, Jack for mshep) The first romance can be started before the suicide mission, then consumated when you jump through the Omega 4 relay. But after the suicide mission you can do the other romances. I think it basically involves not starting in on their romance dialogue track until you are ready to see it through, then advance the dialogue through mission completes until the romance is consumated the same way it is during the Omega 4 scene. You can then move on to the next character. I had an mshep romance both Tali and Jack in the same playthrough. Made a hard save after consumating with Jack, then broke up with her and proceded to romance Tali and made another hard save. That way I could do an ME3 run with Jack as my LI, and another run with Tali as my LI without needing to do two runs through ME2.

(Note: to advance dialogue it is very easy to just go to Alchera and place the Normandy monument again. Each time you do that it counts as a mission complete and will advance character dialogue.)

[crooked]

Fardreamer wrote...

Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy the game. Both of them, there's just some things I didn't really appreciate. I feel like I've barely scratched the surface of ME2 even though I've finished one play through. For example you can only romance one character, and it leaves the others feeling a little... unfinished in their stories. I'm really curious to see Jack's full story if you choose to romance her.

I have heard a lot about the ME3 ending controversy. I've purposely stayed away from the details so as not to spoil it. The most I've really heard is some people saying "Shepard deserved better," but that doesn't tell me much. But to be honest, I'm not concerned about it. I know stories need to come to an end, and even if it's not the end I envisioned, I'm rarely disappointed by them. As long as I get to stop the reapers somehow, I think I'll be happy.

About the DLC, I've tried and failed to get Bring Down the Sky to work.  I think it might have to do with the fact that I'm playing outside the US, so the DL is blocked.  For example, I can't download Kasumi for ME2 because it won't let me complete the purchase unless my IP address shows I'm in the US.  In a few months I'll be back in the US, and I'll try to buy some of it then.

That's a fair assessment, but I found that to be a good thing. Eventhough ME1 is by far my favourite game and most other games, including ME2, don't come even close,  I played ME2 more than the other ME games. The combat is pretty good and it has a lot of replay value. The somewhat challenging insanity mode also plays a big role in its replay value.

[crooked]

Ship.wreck wrote...

<edited - see post above>

I agree with you. The story and atmosphere in Mass Effect 1 were unparalleled. Part of this was because it was indeed less "streamlined". Eventhough it was just an illusion of sandbox, it really helped creating this mysterious atmosphere and sense of exploration. Still one of my best gaming experiences ever, and I've played A LOT of games

[KBABZ]

Goes without saying that you should download and install ME3's Extended Cut when you get around to it.

I'm rather torn between ME1 and 2 as to which one I dislike the least. ME1 has a lot more focus than ME2 and the plot is very meaningful, but the graphics haven't aged well and I never really liked the Starship Troopers look of the armour with plastics and rubber; makes it hard to take characters seriously. ME2 has got much better production values to help immerse the player in the world, but the plot progression is a mess and the Collectors are terrible villains who turn out to be rather inconsequential at the end of it all.

All three games suffer from horrid side quest management, though. Why isn't this stuff marked on the map alongside the main missions? Regardless, I did have a hell of a time with the games when I played them all at the beginning of the year.

[aka.700]

in my opinion you should pay the same attention to all three games, baceuse story-wise, all of them are great and as you accomplish more in ME1, you'll get more from the ME2 and 3

[insan3Spectre]

Eh, I think ME1 is the weakest game in the series. It's stol a great game, though. I don't know I just think ME2 really kicked things up a notch. The one real issue I have with ME2 is the lack of customization, and characters like Liara aside from in Shadow Broker) and

[insan3Spectre]

I meant to say that characters from ME1 aren't in the 2nd game as much, except for Garrus and Tali. Thankfully, this is fixed inn ME3. I disagree that ME3 changed things up too much from the 2nd game. If anything the last game is a marriage of the strengths in the other two. I would argue that all around ME3 is theseries at it's best. I know it gets craap for it's ending but I don't care. Imo Bioware knocked it out of the park.

Sorry for the double post. My kindle won't let me type in the edit section.

[cap and gown]

I do like ME3 quite a bit. More than ME1, in fact. Personally, I thought the totally flawed premise of the Conduit made the ending to ME1 pretty stupid. Perhaps not as bad as ME3, but making the whole game about finding an ancient alien artifact that would enable us (and Saren) to do something we (and him) could do at the beginning of the game pretty lame. But the ending to ME2 was simply awesome. (Well, I could have done away with the stupid Reaper Larva part.) And choices really did seem to matter in the final ME2 mission (who lives, who dies) while they didn't really seem to matter in the ME3 ending.

[KBABZ]

I feel like a lot of ME2 falls down because of the Collectors. They feel much more like boogiemen rather than actual villains like the Reapers are. The threat of what they were doing could have had a lot more emphasis and concern put into it, like "the Collectors could be making a device powerful enough to cripple the galaxy's defenses and take us out before the Reapers even arrive". But instead they be takin' yo' wives to do... something. Everyone treats it rather casually (the Illusive Man most of all), and it ruins all tension as to what the Collectors are doing, especially since the Collectors focus only on humans, whereas the Reapers focus on every spacefaring species.

I also didn't like the completely open approach to the missions, where you can choose between five people to recruit and a metric ton of side-missions. It means that the story lacks focus and feels like a mess until those seemingly random Collector missions like Horizon or the Collector Ship. ME3 prevails here because there is a clear line between the linear story progression and optional side missions, resulting in a much clearer story arc as the Reaper war gradually gets worse and more desperate.

In those ways ME1 for me feels better because it overall feels a lot more relevant to the trilogy than ME2 does. You could cut the main Collector story out of the Trilogy and not even miss it. Or at least I wouldn't. There are certainly aspects that pay off in ME3 such as the Genophage and Geth War arcs, of course, and the experiences your team has with you in ME2 contributes greatly to the comradery in 3. But the main plot of taking out the Collectors feels like small beans compared to the Reapers overall. As I suggested earlier, making the Collectors feel more connected to the Reapers would have helped greatly.

As you can probably guess, ME3 is my favourite. It feels a lot more focused than the previous two, and realizes its world through the visuals rather well. And little things like the crew interactions on the Normandy help too. Plus, dat Citadel DLC. All of the games are good though, and they are flawed for different reasons. I just prefer ME3's flaws over that for 1 and 2.

Modifié par KBABZ, 13 décembre 2013 - 06:10 .

[CDR David Shepard]

I'm rare...I personally see all 3 ME titles as one long game...I could never play it any other way. Every single playthrough starts with ME1 and ends with ME3.

Each game has their own flaws of course...but if you want to experience everything that is great about the Mass Effect story...you need to play though all 3 games.

This is just my opinion.

[insan3Spectre]

Yeah, despite my post I really do agree with CDR David, too often people seem to pick a favorite and bash the others. Not saying it is happening here as some of the criticism like KABABZ is understandable, I even kind of agree about the collectors. Still, I can't imagine the series without that game, as it lays alot of groundwork for ME3. Not just the Genophage and Geth Wars, but stuff like the introduction of the Illusive Man and Ashley/Kaidan's distrust of Shepard.

[KBABZ]

I agree there too, it is like one long game and I usually have to set aside three or four weeks if I want to play through the story again. It's a bit like The Lord of the Rings, you can't just watch one of the films, you need to do all three.

I didn't mind the Darker and Edgier approach that ME2 did by exploring in the Terminus systems, but I did mind how it extended to characters such as Liara. ME1 is great outside of some combat woes, aging graphics and horrible item management. I don't have any problems quite as large as that with the third game, which goes one step further by having a great focus on it being a war. That war focus permeates everything, from the War Assets to what the crew are talking about to the news clips in the hospital and even down to the ramshackle look inside the Normandy because the ship had to leave earlier than intended.

But as said, they are all great games and, aside from a few transitional issues between ME1 and 2 (such as the faces not having codes), they all work very well together.

[crooked]

insan3Spectre wrote...

Yeah, despite my post I really do agree with CDR David, too often people seem to pick a favorite and bash the others. Not saying it is happening here as some of the criticism like KABABZ is understandable, I even kind of agree about the collectors. Still, I can't imagine the series without that game, as it lays alot of groundwork for ME3. Not just the Genophage and Geth Wars, but stuff like the introduction of the Illusive Man and Ashley/Kaidan's distrust of Shepard.

I have a definite favourite, but I never bash the others. I liked ME1 and ME3 the most, but I played ME2 more than any of the other games because the combat was pretty good and the insanity mode was a fun challenge. That being said, I still consider Mass Effect 1 to be by far the best game I ever played. It's just an opinion, but it's one of the few games that actually got me to care about the characters and the "faith of the universe".

I'll say it again, during those last few hours of play in ME1 I had constant chills and after I finished I just sat there for ages. For some reason I also found the choices in ME1 a lot more conflicting. It honestly took me about an hour to decide the faith of the Rachnii Queen.

If ME3 had more freedom like the first game, I think I might consider it to be almost as good as the first one. In the first game I felt like I was actually discovering things and like the threat was real. The more streamlined experience in the next 2 installements made it feel more like a scripted movie than an interactive experience. I think the attraction of the first game is not just the freedom but also the mysterious atmosphere of the world. You don't know much about the Reapers and the Protheans in the first game. It's like a movie, when you get to see what you are up against, it becomes less scary. In the next few games that mystery slowely dissapears and it becomes a different story. I just loved the moment where you drive through that Prothean tomb in Mass Effect 1, made me curious about what exactly happened.

Mass Effect 2 and 3 had a few of those mysterious quests, but nothing compared to Mass Effect 1. A lot of areas in Mass Effect 1 were very mysterious and scary when you first arrived and you only slowely uncovered what had happened. I personally love experiences like these. It's the same in a game like Skyrim, I enjoy those dungeons where you found small hints about something strange which has happened there.

I guess Mass Effect 1 was more free and mysterious while Mass Effect 3 was more like a good war story. Both have their merits I guess, but for me Mass Effect 1 was more impressive. It was ofcourse also a new game at that point, so by definition everything was still more mysterious and fresh.

EDIT: Just like KBABZ I also loved the Heat mechanic, it was a refreshing change from the standard ammo mechanic in EVERY single shooter out there. I was really dissapointed to see that go.

Modifié par crooked, 15 décembre 2013 - 08:22 .

[cap and gown]

Mystery: Apparently no game that follows on from a previous game can ever be as good as the original because not everything will be new.

Freedom: I am playing through ME1 right now and find there is not actually much real freedom. It doesn't matter in dozens of cases if you pick the paragon/neutral/renegade option, the same exact lines follow. At least in 2 & 3 the dialogue actually does change. And there are plenty of choices to be made in 2 & 3.

Heat Mechanic: if you like waiting around for your gun to cool down, get the Lancer in ME3. If you like to sit around not being able to do anything for 10 seconds because an enemy sabotaged your gun, more power to you. I prefer to actually be able to do something besides waiting in cover until my gun is usable again. I think it is quite obvious BW got rid of this mechanic because most people did NOT like it.

Modifié par cap and gown, 15 décembre 2013 - 10:43 .