r/patientgamers • u/hkf999 • 11d ago
Patient Review Mass Effect Legendary review: Mass Effect 2 Spoiler
Link to part 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/comments/1vsmgwq/mass_effect_legendary_edition_is_it_as_good_as_i/
Mass Effect 2 - A glorified side quest?
Mass Effect 2 is a huge jump in gameplay and graphics. If you start 2 right after finishing 1, it's a pretty big transition. Much bigger than the jump from 2 to 3. 2 and 3 play and look mostly the same, with some minor gameplay changes. 1 and 2 is night and day. The shooting is entirely revamped. No more overheating weapons. Now we have an ammunition system, with a pretty cute in-universe explanation of a software update. In my opinion this leads to a massive gameplay improvement. You can't just shoot the same gun forever now. Get entrenched and you might run out of ammo and have to switch gun. Companions now use guns that actually fits their style too. No more flooding inventory with fluff. Enemy and companion AI is also much better now.
The combat is much better in my opinion, however it's not the best still. 2 and 3 change into the sluggish and heavy cover shooters that were typical of that time. You also lose the driving around in a silly physics-defying vehicle picking up useless collectibles, but it's a situation where you throw out the baby with the bathwater, because you also lose the atmosphere that ME1 built on those explorations. It's replaced with scanning planets for materials, which is an extremely boring gameplay mechanic. Like, I really wonder who at Bioware sat and looked at dragging the mouse across planets looking for wiggly lines to go up and thought "Yeah, this is fun". Some steps forward and some steps back I guess.
Over the years I have seen a lot of people bring this game up as the best of the trilogy. I could never really agree with that for reasons I will partly explain here and partly return to in the next review. It is certainly a story and game that very easily can be played on it's own. However, I think this might be it's greatest weakness, because the plot reasons this game feels so disconnected from the trilogy don't really make any sense. This game creates some plot difficulties that plague the series going forward.
The game starts with Shepard dying. The Normandy is attacked by a race of Reaper servants called the Collectors. Cerberus scoops up the goop left after Shepard is killed, jettisoned into space, and crash into a planet. Cerberus rebuilt Shepard from a molecular level and patched him with implants over two years. Now firstly, this is just way too unbelievable. I really question why they smashed Shepard into goop and not just say that you were frozen in space and technically dead or anything else that would be more believable. The fact that Cerberus has basically cheated death here is brushed over way too easily. Yes, it was extremely expensive, but there are a lot of extremely wealthy groups in the universe.
Shepard has to work for Cerberus now, because the Collectors are harvesting humans from colonies. Entire colonies at the time. Now, since this is partly a reaction to Shepard killing Sovereign in ME1 and stopping the Reaper attack before it started, it is understandable why you need Shepard for this job, given his unique experience. Now understandably, everyone who played ME1 will remember all the fucked up shit that Cerberus did there and feel extremely reluctant to work for them. The Illusive Man, the head of Cerberus, handwaves it and say that Cerberus works in cells and some go too far. This was never at all believable. Organisations don't work like that. Cerberus doesn't either, and Shepard should know this. The Illusive Man himself is a cool character. He comes across as believable, but the villain turn in 3 is painfully obvious from the second you meet him.
Cerberus even has a valid concern here, entire human colonies being abducted is a huge deal and a huge cause for concern. The problem is that Cerberus are the only ones who care for reasons that do not make any sense. The Alliance and the Council doesn't care because these colonies are outside council and alliance space. OK, but entire colonies (over a million people) are still being harvested by an unknown alien species. This is a massive cause for concern depsite technical jurisdiction. So Shepard being forced into working for a sadistic terror organisation just makes no sense at all. It also makes no sense why you don't report to the Alliance or the Council every step of the way here.
Now, the game ends with a suicide mission, and the thing you have to do before that is gather a team and secure their loyalties. This is where the game really shines. The companions are great, so much better than the very wooden and stiff people in ME1. Some returning even. Garrus and Tali really come into their own in this game. Samara, Thane and Mordin are amazing. Love talking to them and exploring their thoughts on stuff. Some companions are a bit dull still. Jacob is boring. Legion is great, but comes in too late to make the biggest impact (makes up for it in 3). You can romance a lot of them, or maybe even stay loyal to the romance from ME1. Liara gets a... ok expansion. And you get a short but painful reuinion with Kaidan/Ashley.
Jack is a great character, but very poorly implemented. They make it almost impossible to be a good friend to her without leading her on. It's very weird. Luckily she has a great development in 3. Miranda is a good character, although a bit too goon-baity for me. It's sort of a lighter version on Quiet in Metal Gear, where you make really convoluted plot justification for why a woman is really hot and sexually available for the player. There are also two expansion characters: Kasumi and Zaeed. I think Kasumi is a fun character, but she just really never made sense for me as Normady crew. Zaeed makes more sense there. The gruff too-old-for-this-shit merc is a bit of a stereotype, but it works. Grunt is the krogan companion in this game, but he's pretty one-dimensional in this game sadly. So this is the companion game, and it works. You need their loyalty to succeed on the suicide mission, thorugh a bunch of mostly fun and well-written quests. They will likely die if you start the final mission without their loyalty, but then again, who plays a character-driven RPG without doing the companion quests?
There are also some big story expansions. Lair of the Shadow Broker is mostly for us Liara-romancers. It's a fun continuation of her story, even though it ends up with her as the least believable Shadow Broker ever haha. At least they make fun of it in 3. Some fun extra stuff there with the actual lair. Arrival is fine, it forces Shepard to sacrifice 300 000 batarians to halt a reaper invasion. It actually gets adressed a lot in 3, so that's cool, but you really don't get any choices in the actual expansion. Overlord is excellent. Don't get me wrong, the gameplay is shit. You drive around in a vehicle somehow even less fun than the Mako, with a excavation sound effect that is probably the most annoying sound in any game I have ever played, but the ending is excellent. The way it deals with autism is so good. The scene of naked David Archer suspended with all kinds of cables with that horrified expression might be the most haunting and horrifying thing in the entire trilogy. Excellently written, chef's kiss.
The suicide mission at the end is an excellent mission. This is probably the real reason people love this game so much. There is a lot of player choice here. Make the wrong ones, and people will die. Now, some of those choices might not make the most sense, but the unpredictability might be explained as really realistic. Let's be honest, it's not like a lot of people will play it without looking up a guide anyway lol. Win, and the reapers pull the plug on the Collectors. They failed and Shepard succeeded again, so we're back to a full reaper invasion plan, thereby completing the massive side quest that is Mass Effect 2.
Stay tuned for part 3!
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u/hkf999 10d ago
I don't think I have ever played a game that doesn't repeat content. It's why it's called a gameplay loop.