I'm now continuing on my quest to beat all of the Mass Effect games again, and give some quick reviews of them. I gave a pretty detailed review of the concept of Mass Effect last time around, so I'll be able to move through this one a bit quicker.
Mass Effect 2 is way sexier and more polished than Mass Effect, and there's a reason it's generally held in high regard by most gamers. You continue to follow the story of Commander Shepard in his quest to stop the Reapers from conquering the galaxy, albeit this time with a private organization called Cerberus rather than with the military. I won't spoil how you get there, but the game is nearly ten years old at some point, so go pick up a copy and find out!
The presentation of the game is much better than in the first, with sharper graphics and more detailed character models, better facial articulation and voice acting, and even more dialogue than the first (the first had a staggering amount of dialogue).
The combat is much better, due largely to the improvement in the AI. Your allies in the first game were no more than meat shields, but in the second game, they seem to use their powers more actively, find cover, actually shoot people, and contribute in a unique manner based on their character and powers. Combat, and the game generally, are much less buggy this time around, although there are still a handful here and there. I would occasionally just get stuck, unable to move, shoot, or reload, and only capable of looking around.
Mass Effect is one of the best written games of all time, but Mass Effect 2 is somehow much better than its predecessor. Despite a gargantuan cast of characters (maybe too big), each character is well defined and interesting, with excellent voice acting and superbly written dialogue. Some of the loyalty missions (personal quests given to you by your crewmates to help resolve a personal situation and flesh out their storylines) are positively captivating in most cases, giving a delightful level of love and attention to each and every character. Even little side missions contain a level of ethical challenge and heart tugging writing that will get you more than once throughout the game. The main plot will consistently capture your attention, and there's an absolutely huge amount of narrative to explore in the game.
The music is again very good, although I think I prefer the first game's music by a hair. It's hard to find too much to complain about, however.
Mass Effect 2 is a landmark achievement in the process of having video games recognized as art, but it does have a handful of weaknesses. The first and primary complain I have about this game is that they dumbed the RPG elements of the game wayyyyyy down. The first game had a character development system that was essentially like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, only without needing to roll for stats. Each character had 10 different skills which they could level up, which gave you a huge amount of developmental possibilities for your characters. If you wanted your character to focus primarily on battle ability with a sniper rifle, you could. If you wanted to focus on the active skills, you could do that as well. Here, you're pretty much limited to leveling up a grand total of about 4 abilities, and the experience gathering is positively dreadful. Rather than the grindy delight that is Mass Effect, in which you got experience for hacking terminals, completing missions, killing enemies, and just about everything you could do, Mass Effect 2 basically just gives you 1000 experience for every completed mission, and 1000 experience gets you a level up. This keeps the difficulty curve of the game on point, but at the cost of feeling genuinely in control of your character. Rather than feeling like Shepard is you, he's a much more factory made model in this game, and it makes leveling completely dry, and doesn't reward going above and beyond to seek out side missions and extra combat in the slightest. This is also true when considering the weapons and armor system, which couldn't possibly be more basic. Rather than the dozens of different types of weapons and armor you could get in the first game, you'll find 2-4 of each type of weapon, with absolutely 0 ability to customize any of them. Again, it feels like BioWare really cut back on the role playing elements in this one to appeal to a more mass audience, and I didn't find it terribly helpful in allowing me to truly role play as Shepard.
My other main complaint has to do with the resource gathering in the game. As you go, you get to find different upgrades for your ship, shipmates, weapons, biotic abilities, etc. In order to purchase them, you need to find tons of resources. While some resources can be found in the course of your missions, upgrading fully will necessitate mining planets for resources, which involves a minigame which gets very dull after a while. This time around, I didn't mind it as much, as my wife really enjoyed the minigame, so I just let her mine for an hour while I played Hearthstone. But I don't think it's an exaggeration to suggest that I had to mine for about 2-3 hours to be able to afford all of the upgrades, which is a substantial chunk of a game which took me roughly 40 hours to complete, and that was with doing absolutely everything in the game, including DLC.
Mass Effect 2 is definitely the best Mass Effect game, but it never quite managed to capture my heart quite the way the first one did, based primarily on the kiddy role playing elements. It's definitely the most accessible, best written, and most fun game, but there's a certain RPG charm that the first one has, while the second feels like a shooter first, and an RPG second. But you can't deny its greatness, and I must admit on net that it is better than the first game in the end. I'll give it a 9.7/10. Next up is my destined completion of Mass Effect 3!
-TRO
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