Mass Effect 2 not as epic as the 1st game

Am I the only one who thinks this? I've even read reviews that say the 2nd game is better, how the hell can they say that? Mass Effect 1 was so epic, full of thrilling action, full of mystery and puzzles, even the soundtracks were so much better.
Sure, the 2nd game was also very interesting, had its moments, but I was highly disappointed comparing to the 1st game. Something was missing, I don't know what. The story was kinda a let down for me. I just recruited members for my team and did the suicide mission. That's practicly the entire plot, recruit my team and complete the game.
For example, take a look at these scenes from the 1st game: YouTube - Mass Effect HD Part 142 "Vigil's Tale" or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_MW0hplZTQ or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lc9pNApEXfk , they were so damn epic, I met nothing like this on ME2.
I hope Bioware won't become a lame company like most of the other gaming companies nowadays, and make stupid games in the future, i hope ME3 will change my mind. I also hope Dragon Age 2 will be better, cause Awakening was also a big let-down for me, while Origins is my all-time favorite game.

 

As a whole I think the second game has better gameplay and character development. The main story of the second one wasn't as good as the first one and the last boss was a bit of a let down. They did a great job building up Saren in the first one. However while the story isn't as strong/epic I felt that ME2 had more epic battle situations, with the player being able to set off Warp bombs, the inclusion of heavy weapons like the Blackstorm generator, and more memorable and interesting companions.

 

Hooray! Someone else who thought the storyline of ME2 was subpar!

Unfortunately, I don't share your glossy-eyed love for the first, either. Its story was better (not spectacular, but better), and it had more twists and was more atmospheric. But it just wasn't that fun to play. If only it had the polished gameplay of a less rpg-driven game, like Crysis or Bioshock - then it would've been a stellar game.

Also, when I saw the final boss of ME2, I laughed my freakin' head off! Were they trying to be ridiculous, or were they being serious!?

 

Better gameplay doesn't impress me, I could play on the mass effect 1 engine all their future games as long as they come up with the same incredible stories. But I agree, Miranda's romance scene was Hooot !
If I were to think of a memorable scene from ME2, it would be Thane's quests (both his recruitment and loyalty one), hes my favorite character and i played with him on all the missions since i recruited him, even tho i was an infiltrator.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CGRtKD_8Dc
YouTube - Mass Effect 2 - Thane

 

Hmm I was the boring type I guess. I played with Garros and Miranda. Gave me the combination of force skills and marksmanship I needed most of the time.

BTW for those interested, ME3 will be using the same resource gathering as ME2, it has been confirmed. Hmm not sure I'm thrilled about that, kinda boring.

 

I felt like I accomplished more in the first one. I agree that the soundtrack was better in the original as well. However, characters were better developed in the second one and the combat system was more fluid. ME1's combat was not very engaging, the excitement plateaued early on.

ME2 felt very guided although I still enjoyed it. I think both games are great; they are just different forms of enjoyment.

I am looking forward to ME3.

 

i agree with you completely, it wasnt a very good plot and did "lack" something that the first had. I was a little disappointed too and i actually liked the RPG elements of the first one. It seemed like they dumbed this one down to cater to the masses.

 

I'm not impressed with BioWare RPG. I've only played Dragon Age and ME2.

To me it's an allusion of RPG. It didn't matter what choice or what I did in both games. The result was the same. The same so far as the NPC talking to often would use the EXACT same line regardless of what response I chose.

So I'll admit I enjoyed ME2 immensely, but it's far from what I consider RPG. Just an action third person shooter IMO, a really good one though.

 

I don't know why i got the feeling that ME3 will be even more boring, like just another game, nothing special, i really hope it won't cause still, ME2 was enjoyable comparing to most of the games released recently.

 

at least neither me or me2 only took a few hours to finish, and both games had plenty of interesting characters done by more than a few voice actors.

me and me2 both have strengths and weaknesses and play differently from each other. it is pretty much 6 of one and half a dozen of the other. overall, me had a better story and lots of side quests, but me2 has more characters and personalities (but i hated resource gathering). since i play me2 more, me2 wins by a nose.

 

I will never understand people who idolize Bioware's storytelling. Seriously, it's nothing special - nowhere halfway close to the storytelling of days past, in true RPGs such as the Black Isle/Infinity Engine games.
/RPG-snob

I'm tempted to blame, of all things, Voice Acting as the culprit of shoddy storytelling (or if not the culprit, at least an accomplice), especially after reading this super-interesting article.

Tangentially related, why do we keep giving our character a name in these voice-acted RPGs?

 

The combat system in ME2 was much more simple, but a lot easier to understand and manage. The lack of upgrades was dissapointing however; ME1's customization of gear and weapons/addons was practically a game in itself( I.E. Do I want to melt my enemies with radiation, or blow them the heck up?).

Character growth was about equal in my opinion for almost all characters. Urdnot's raging on the beach, and the crew's slow approval for aliens are good examples from ME1. On the flipside, Liara was a super stagnant character, and so was Garrus even though he's such a bad astronaut.

The only thing that really led to me to not appreciate ME2 as much as I would have liked is SPOILER ALERT the ending..
It almost ruined the entire game for me.

Music in games was amazing. There was nothing like walking into club Afterlife for the first time(thus why i live there ). I'm a huge fan of techno so I just stood there in awe and listened to the music of the downstairs and upstairs lounges. The music from the club in the citadel of ME1 was also very nice.

I'm looking forward to ME3(though I sold my xbox so I'll only be satisfied with the storyline when i replay through both games for the nth time, but on the pc)

 

bioware does not provide literary epic storytelling.

relative to recent games that look great but are shallow, short, singularly linear, and way too expensive (like call of duty mw in the single player campaign), bioware provides a good return for your money.

with me and me2, you might only have few options, but at least there are options that let you have a different flavor of the same meal... but, yes, i would prefer to have a different plate caused by the choices you make. the escapist article makes some good points.

i agree that voice acting in me2 helps a lot. if i cannot get depth, i will take variety.

too many games have great graphics... and that is about it... which i also why i buy less games than i used to, read more reviews and wait until they go on sale.

 

I agree with the original poster. I loved ME1 and DA:O, their stories were amazing and I was genuinely bummed when they had to come to an end.

I picked up ME2 with crazy anticipation... it's been fun but not the same. I've been loaded up to the mission where I need to enter the Omega relay for about a month now and just haven't finished it, not much motivation to pick it up and finish the game really, the story just kinda fizzled at the end to me and didn't have a very epic feel... I think sitting there and scanning planets for 50% of the game (I'm a completionist and wanted to check them all) really just made the game drag out and lose its pacing.

:::SPOILER:::

in part it may not feel as epic and all-gripping as the first one because the Collectors are meant to be covert and secretive. they didn't storm in and take the Citadel, they just quietly abducted outlying colonies... it's not as "epic" because people don't appreciate the full scope of what the Collectors are doing... so nobody is really up in arms about the issue as much. that's one theory.

 

oh god yes!
me2 felt more polished in terms of everything but the story. and gameplay is a little bit dumbed down. but to be fair both games was too easy on normal.

 

Bioware created the Infinity Engine. This fact and the Baldur's Gate series which used it (and had pretty good stories) were their claim to fame in the first place. Black Isle only made one Infinity Engine game (Planescape: Torment) that may plausibly be argued to have better storytelling (the Icewind Dales were hack'n'slash).
/Elder RPGer

It's both voice acting and graphics. Graphics restricts the number of both characters and areas while voice acting restricts the ways you can interact with these characters. In the old games, the visual representation of a character was a portrait and maybe a 2D sprite. These are far less difficult to create than the realistic 3D models of today and don't consume as many resources (see the issue of there being no female Turians in ME1). The same goes for 2D drawings vs 3D environments -- all of the Infinity Engine games were much bigger than their modern counterparts and attempts to mass produce 3D areas (both Bioware and Bethesda have tried this in different ways) result in areas for which it is completely obvious that they were mass produced.

 

I liked ME2 way more than ME. Mostly because
1) finding your old teammates again and seeing how your choices changed the galaxy was great,
2) your teammates' missions. They made the game longer (took me 20hs to complete it doing only the story missions and the side quest ones) and didn't feel like one of those generic RPG missions (go find X, kill X, etc.).
3) the inventory system (while dumbed down quite a bit, it was easier to do what you wanted and not have it full of useless items waiting to be disposed of)
4) the story. While not as epic as the first one, it still makes you want to beat those Collectors. And the ending is great.
5) overall optimization, the game ran smoother and looked better that the first

 

Saren in the first game was a pretty good villain i'll give you that

 

As much as I enjoy these types of RPGs, they still don't create that "sense of nostalgia" that JRPGs (and some western RPGS) create. The only western RPG (I am hating these terms) that I've returned to multiple times is Fallout 2, and I got bored with 3. I played through Mass Effect once, enjoyed it, but I don't think I'll ever play it again. Odd how games with far more "choice" make me feel less attached to it compared to games with a defined and unalterable storyline.

Edit: Okay, I haven't played a JRPG in a while, so maybe my feelings don't apply for those either.

Edit edit: I agree with both articles. One of the things I loved about all-text RPGs was giving someone my name, and giving other characters names of people that reminded me of them. Of course, I was Cloud, the girl I liked was Tifa (always liked her better than Aeris), my muscular friend was Barret, and my smoke-a-holic uncle was Cid. And my dog was Red XIII. Oh the memories.

 

I absolutely agree with you.
QFT!

 

ALSO

SPOILERRR




Mordin died on me, even though I had him (and everyone else) loyal... apparently you have to put him on the return team. Also really stupid is how you during certain character hissy fits, if you side with A, then you can't convert B back, whereas if you sided with B, you could get A loyal again.

Basically I feel like this game didn't reward me enough... I made everyone loyal, and someone STILL died (on my second playthrough, after killing most on the first one.. hahaha). Weapon upgrades are spread throughout the galaxy and are hard to find.. I want shotgun upgrade 4! Where is it?!?! Even so, I felt like these upgrades really didn't do much.

 

Considering that you spend over half the game doing side-quests for each of your characters' loyalty, I felt like it was a massive waste of time. It also pissed me off when I permanently lost one character's loyalty, even after doing her a massive favor (like, a life-changingly family-member-savingly huge favor).

But then what the heck was loyalty for, anyway? There was only ONE freakin' scene after all the loyalty was got, and it was brief and kinda crappy and culminated in the dumbest boss fight I've been in in a while!

And SPOILER it was the DLC character that died on me - the morally questionable one - even though I had his loyalty (and had to kill innocents to get it), so I didn't give a damn when he died. More like relief, because I knew, from how predictable the game was, that he was dying in place of a character that I liked slightly better.

Right, I keep forgetting that IE was Bioware and not Black Isle (seriously, I knew that!). It's just that Bioware is such a different company now than they used to be, and they used to be a lot better. Still, Obsidian always outdoes them with their sequels (KotOR 2 and NWN 2).

But I actually liked the IWD stories

Large 3D environments aren't impossible. Games like Crysis and STALKER have shown us that it's possible, and I frankly don't mind at all if they put half the time into making it look pretty as those game developers obviously did. Or heck, just hire the folks who do the WoW landscapes and models.

Though I would be ecstatic to be able to play on an updated but still 2D version of Infinity Engine, so long as real RPG-ing was brought back!

 

Post Deleted

 

Agreed, ME1 was better than ME2 in terms of storyline, for ME2, you just know there's an alien threat, so you go recruit peeps, then do the attack the save the world, totally cliche and boring. At least in ME1 there's politics, betrayal etc feelings involved in the storytelling even though personally I think ME1's storyline sucked as well, just that it doesn't suck as bad as ME2's.

 

What? Obsidian outdoes with sequels? I beg to differ, KotOR 2 was such a disappointment as a game. In terms of mechanics it introduced some good points, yet it lacked polishing in every aspect. NWN 2 was not so bad except the overtaxating (for its time) graphics engine.

 

Eh, I can buy liking KotOR 1 better than 2. Just my opinion on the matter, but I really enjoyed 2. Especially being evil and getting rip-your-face-off powerful lightning attacks that tear up whole rooms of baddies at the end .

NWN1 I thought was boring, bland, and ugly, and I never got through it (and it was darn near impossible to play as a pure spellcaster!), and NWN2 was much better. Still not great, but the expansion Mask of the Betrayer was just fantastic.

Besides, I'm trying to keep my hopes up for New Vegas! I got my fingers crossed that Obsidian is good enough to outdo Bethesda on this one

 

Of course I respect your opinion, but as far as I remember you could do the same in KotOR 1, plus you have a great story behind! NWN1 was not so boring, though the implementation of fully controlling 4 characters in NWN2 really made a huge difference in gameplay and choices you could do. (You can't do it as a spellcaster alone, you need to have a good warrior companion with you ).

I hope with New Vegas they will bring something new to the table and not just new textures.. (so yes, in my book Obsidian as a company is a mixed bag of surprises).

 

One of the things that disappointed me the most about Fallout 3 was the art style. Far too realistic. One of the things that MADE Fallout memorable was the art style. Every game tries to be realistic, but not every game needs to be realistic. That's why I love Borderlands.

 

Each with he's own, but i prefer realism
Also, i didn't enjoy fallout 3, nor any elder scrools game ! (you can start throwing with rocks at me but i simply can't enjoy such games). It's like playing a MMO game alone. Maybe I'll get back to fallout 3 sometime, but i don't know why i have the feeling that I'll quit after a day or 2.

 

Fallout 3 just takes a while to get into, and some motivation to go explore on your own without the game guiding you.

I'm not making excuses for the game - a game SHOULD be easy to get into, and a game shouldn't require you to be self-motivated to look for enjoyment - it should offer up enjoyment straight away. But there's definitely fun to be had, especially once you level up your crack-shot gunslinger-sniper-survivor or sneaky hand-to-hand ninja-pyromaniac character and can go roaming the wastelands unleashing your own personal brand of hell upon your enemies.

And yeah, the art style wasn't that... well, stylish, but it wasn't bad. Very post-apocalyptic feeling. Which is what they were going for. And the over-the-top exploding body parts (especially with that perk!) was always fun

 

I agree completely with this. It's very obvious with Bioware's ME2 and DA:O that RPG is an allusion due to this. No matter what choice you choose, almost always eventually you will hear the EXACT same line by the actor. No matter what you do.

 

Is there any map at least? I can't remember any map available. I didn't even know what i was supposed to do. I explored until i got into some kind of old destroyed school i think, and there were some jerks there which were really powerful and my guns were ineffective against them. I got pissed and quit right away.
Anyway, enough about that game, back on topic.

 

Agreed. IMO, they changed the game from Action-RPG to pure Mindless Action. I'm really tired of action games. They removed some of the most important gameplay elements such as the inventory and the weapon mods, and changed the reloading system from "overheating weapons" to the plain old reloading system. Instead of having an assortment of dozens of weapons to choose from, you are left with 4 different weapons for each type :/ one better than the other, plain and simple. The story was pathetic, IMO. It started really nice, but then recruiting and baby-sitting your wimp-minded companions got boring. After all that I expected to see a reveal of who/what Harbinger and the Illusive Man are, but instead I got a huge explosion and then "TADAAA~!" and then the credits.

Also, I missed the Mako ):

LOL Don't worry it happened to me too. Bethesda's games are hardest at the very beginning.

 

You realize, this means we can never be friends.

 

Lol you prefer realism, so you play a game with all types of aliens, inter-species relations, and immortal robot ships?

The Mako had terrible controls, but it was still fun. The Firewalker was intensely fun however.
Babysitting the characters wasn't that bad for me the first time around, but the second and third times through were just dreadful. Harbinger is a Reaper if that wasn't obvious, and I bet you the Ilusive Man is Miranda's father/The Shady Dealer that Liara is looking for...oh yeah Spoiler Alert?

 

i started the first one but as soon as you had to drive that car around dead planets i gave it up.

 

PS:T is easily one of my all-time favorite games, and probably my favorite RPG. WAY more atmospheric than most 3d games, way cooler character interaction, great dialogue, unique and refreshing in so many ways... and some of the spells and their effects are just wicked!

Like I said, it's what real RPGs should strive to be.

 

I think he meant realism as in art style. Personally I don't really like realist art style though, prefer the exaggerated/cartoonish art style more, ie, Warcraft.

 

I hate Warcraft 3's gameplay, but I enjoy that type of art style more, usually. I don't play games for realism; I hope they are as imaginative as my own crazy mind. Not a big fan of Bioshock either, but its world is fantastic.

I also don't get why everyone loves DA:O. I hated the combat system. I didn't like Oblivion, too. It makes me sad that I don't enjoy many games anymore.

 

Combat was easily DA:O's biggest weakness. Which is truly a shame, as you spend 3/4 of the game in combat (well, maybe you'd spend less, if you don't die as freaking often as I did!).

But what high-fantasy RPG has actually had *good* combat gameplay? Excluding Infinity Engine games here, because one could easily make an argument for them.

Maybe Arx Fatalis if you go with a mage class - frantically drawing runes in the air to combine them into a fireball is about as close to blood-pumping action as one gets in action RPGs.

 

One of the things that bugged me about ME2 was that I never felt like I was part of a team or that my team members were part of the plot - they were more like temporary team members you did missions with - that's it. The first one was much better in that respect; most of the teammates cared about the plot and had a reason to want to get the bad guy; they worked with you and helped you out in that respect. Not so with the second one - everyone is like a freelancer who has unknown motivations for joining your "team" and "mission". They did not contribute much to the plot.
Anyone else feel that way?

Regarding the comments about ME2 being very action-y - definitely. The game is easier to get into but is unfortunately dumbed down for the masses. The whole game requires little thought. What made me like and accept the game was its polish, character development, and overall feel. I think the environments and general feel of the game are well done.

 

Yes, the team members in ME2 is rather lame as well. It feels like they are joining you just for the sake of joining you.

Another reason I actually liked ME1 to begin with was because of the RPG element in a FPS game. ME2 removed that one biggest redeeming factor of ME1 and made it a pure FPS game like CoD MW or something.

 

I'm right with you, CPJ - except for one thing. I didn't feel like it was "dumbed down" (and I know I'm pretty much alone in that view). There's nothing wrong (or "dumb") about making a game more accessible or making the action more fluid, fast-paced, and interesting. The action was pretty much hands-down better across the board, no matter which character you're playing (but particularly if you're playing a non-soldier class).

I never felt like the weapon customization and skill tree were really worth a whole lot in the first one. The combat was boring and same-y, so using those skills or weapons wasn't going to be much different no matter how much you tricked out your gear or beefed up your character. They were, in my view, extraneous aspects of the game, and only gave you the illusion of the character aspect of a cRPG.

ME2 didn't even try to be a cRPG. So it didn't have anything to fail at, which is both good and bad. It's good because playing through it wasn't painful. It's bad because playing through it wasn't memorable, either.

And I don't know why thinking about this game makes me want to rant so much. Maybe it's because I'm procrastinating on packing up my apartment to move across country

 

A bit baffled by some of the stuff that is being said here.
Of course I didn't play BG1, BG2, or any Black Isle games. I started getting into RPGs because of KOTOR, and played every Bioware game since then.



Mass Effect 2, is a much better game than the first one.

You give the shooting the fault, and say that it's more simple and its turned into a mindless action game? I don't know what combat difficulty you where playing on, but there was many times, where I had to pause, and strategically place my team, to win.
The shooting is actually good in this game. It's not quite gears of war, but the real time fusion that they have been aiming at for since KOTOR(semi-real-time), Jade Empire, Mass Effect, which has all been an evolution towards a more robust action real time combat system. It actually worked here.

The feedback, and good sense of shooting, as well as the over the shoulder, and cover and all those systems work better in ME2 than many action games.
On top of that, you can customize your other characters. ME2 is the first game to get it right. To really fuse the real-time with the RPG, in a way that doesn't feel tagged.
I am fine with that they got rid of the stupid weapons upgrade modes. You could call that RPG sub systems, but I would call it more, boring trash gameplay. The shooting in the first game was bad. The difficulty and balancing was completely off.



Storywise; Hmmm. I can understand the sentiment behind saying that Bioware might be resting their storytelling ability on having high quality voice over. Yes, it masks the experience, because we're used to crap stories in game, with game breaking voice acting, cringe worthy dialog and bad delivery.
But it's not just in games that stories are struggling. ME2 as a blockbuster game, has million times better stories, than any character in any film I have seen this summer. If you take a look at Clash of the Titans, Prince of Persia, Robin Hood... These films are major joke, as far as story goes.

ME2 has a simple and straight forward narrative. I also felt it had many surprises. I actually have not completed it yet(i need one more crew member) but I am getting there, and I have loved it so far.
compared to ME1... In ME1 I didn't like any characters. Seriously, what character was good in ME1? Garrus? Rex? Ashley? - I disliked all of them. I thought Saren was an B-Movie Villan, the plot structure was moving forward in a way that left few surprises. The romance options where not interesting either. It was also just such a limited adventure in scope. Side quests, really stinked.



As for Dragon Age, I thought it was an outstanding game too. The story is as good, but the characters where really great. Alistair is like one of the best characters made in gaming ever.

He is the Kaden(ME1) of DA. The white young handsome male.. but only this time, and unlike KOTOR where Carth was a pretentious wananbe-my-moral-man, was actually funny, well written and sorta cool.





enchantment? ENCHANTMENT!

 

Well, I haven't played ME2 yet. But regarding ME 1 agree that the weapons system was an illusion of RPG choices, yet I think the skills matter more because they defined the type of character being built.

Now in regard to the combat DA:O, I think you are close to a contradiction. You say the IE (infinity engine, not internet explorer ) games have good combat. Part of the games powered by it are the Baldur's Gate which are based on the D&D rules... and DA:O is basically a modified version of the D&D rules, so why is it bad? (Note: I like the combat system a lot, especially the fact that the combat can be quantified clearly and the tactics needed to be applied to win some battles).

 

DA:O combat sucks? Why? Cause you have to pause sometimes and actually think what your next step would be? The game forced me to think and analyze the situation, which made it very interesting for me. I think it had a genius combat system.

 

By 'dumbed down' I mean that the game is less of an RPG than the first. It is more automated - getting to objectives and figuring out some of the puzzle mini-games are just too simple. ME1 required a bit more planning (for better or worse). Like I said though, I do not think that detracted from the game experience. And you're correct, there is nothing 'wrong' with it.

 

DA:O's combat was great, perhaps the best since the Infinity Engine... but they ruined it for a lot of people by failing to properly document the rules. I still remember the Baldur's Gate II manual -- it was this fairly thick book (more than 200 pages) which had most of the rule info. It wasn't perfect, but it gave you something to start with and if you did not want to read it, the data was also inside the game in the form of tooltips. DA:O's combat system was not simpler, but the manual was tiny and the in-game tooltips were borderline useless because they failed to provide quantitative descriptions.

Once the various fan sites provided the real rules, the game became a lot less frustrating since you no longer had to learn what works and what doesn't by trial and error.

 

I found the combat system in DA:O boring and predictable. This is an opinion of course. You are entitled to like it as much as you want. But I didn't find it very engaging. I could detail why I didn't like it (didn't like the way combat looked, found it to be "set and stare" most of the time) but I don't care for it enough to endlessly debate about it.

 

i personally liked ME2 better than ME1.
for some reason i never liked the rpg elements of both games that much. but the story and the presentation were both good. i just felt that the story in the 2nd one was tighter and it got rid of some of the annoying aspects of the game for me like the mako driving sequences and the poor 'inventory'.
also coming from a more traditional rpg background, i found the combat system of both ME's too console-like.
i for one like the combat system of DOA more since it gives me full control of my party and allows me more combat options and tactics. but i guess someone who hasnt grown up with BG, KOTOR, and Planescape(which for me was like the golden age of rpg's) would not really get it. i didnt find the story of DAO though that engaging and it was quite vanilla to me.
im happy though to have both types of rpg's - one that gives me a very cinematic albeit console like feel and one that gives me the traditional feel of the great rpg's of old.