This game really left an impact after I played the first one - the opening sequence alone got me invested and I was impressed at the improvement from 1 to 2 in basically every aspect. The visuals are better, the gameplay is for the most part better, and the plot is better.
The squad is full of very interesting characters with different backstories and motives, and even for the ones I didn’t like much I was interested in figuring out their background and doing their loyalty missions. The loyalty missions are satisfyingly varied which I appreciated as well.
Most of the missions in general are snappy and quick, making them less daunting than in the first game. After spending so much time driving the Mako around, I was thankful BioWare realized this part of the first game was super boring and made the Hammerhead missions quick and straightforward. The only missions where the driving took a long time was the DLC mission with the rogue VI, but that was ok in the grand scheme of the game.
The gameplay itself is more interesting than the first game, particularly the inability to power heal through bad tactics. I died a lot more in this game and it made me have to interface with the mechanics and specific talents more than I did before, which made me appreciate the game design and variety more than before as well. I do miss the quantity of skills I had in the first game, but I can appreciate the decision to focus more. I didn’t end up engaging with the customized armour or weapons as much, partly because the customized armor was really ugly and because there didn’t seem to be a lot of options to choose from anyhow. The planetary exploration part of the game was also more interesting, with the fuel and probe system, although by the end of the game I was pretty finished with that as well and left large areas unexplored.
The structure of the game orienting effectively around one large mission was very cool to me. The number of things that can change on the final mission is very cool and even though I had set everything up for success, I still was worried that I might have forgotten something or made a wrong turn and it kept me on edge, in a satisfying way.
The plot and dialogue as a whole was written really well - I was worried playing the first game that maybe the trilogy wouldn’t fully click with me, but after playing this second one I realized there are large differences in how the story is told that I appreciate.
My one main gripe with the game, which is small but still an issue, is that the auto-saves are bugged and it meant I had to spend extra time redoing missions at times which really threw me for a loop. If you die at the same time as a big enemy, which weirdly can happen somewhat often, the game deletes your old auto save but can’t then save your new auto save, meaning you have to reload your last full save or the very start of the mission you are on. While the missions are snappy, they can still be 30-45 minutes long and it was a real buzzkill when this happened. I got in the habit of manually saving very regularly because of this, but don’t think I should have needed to.
The dialogue trees from the first game also still, with few exceptions, encourage you to hyper focus in only one direction (Paragon or Renegade), which seems to oversimplify a lot of decision making. I found myself constantly picking the upper left or upper right options to keep my Paragon score going so that I’d have the blue options available when I needed them. I did notice a small handful of scenarios where only a blue or a red option was available, and I wish more of those were in the game to encourage some investment in both angles, and somewhat break you a little from hyper investing in one direction.
Other than those two issues, an incredibly good game that I’m impressed ran on an Xbox 360!
The squad is full of very interesting characters with different backstories and motives, and even for the ones I didn’t like much I was interested in figuring out their background and doing their loyalty missions. The loyalty missions are satisfyingly varied which I appreciated as well.
Most of the missions in general are snappy and quick, making them less daunting than in the first game. After spending so much time driving the Mako around, I was thankful BioWare realized this part of the first game was super boring and made the Hammerhead missions quick and straightforward. The only missions where the driving took a long time was the DLC mission with the rogue VI, but that was ok in the grand scheme of the game.
The gameplay itself is more interesting than the first game, particularly the inability to power heal through bad tactics. I died a lot more in this game and it made me have to interface with the mechanics and specific talents more than I did before, which made me appreciate the game design and variety more than before as well. I do miss the quantity of skills I had in the first game, but I can appreciate the decision to focus more. I didn’t end up engaging with the customized armour or weapons as much, partly because the customized armor was really ugly and because there didn’t seem to be a lot of options to choose from anyhow. The planetary exploration part of the game was also more interesting, with the fuel and probe system, although by the end of the game I was pretty finished with that as well and left large areas unexplored.
The structure of the game orienting effectively around one large mission was very cool to me. The number of things that can change on the final mission is very cool and even though I had set everything up for success, I still was worried that I might have forgotten something or made a wrong turn and it kept me on edge, in a satisfying way.
The plot and dialogue as a whole was written really well - I was worried playing the first game that maybe the trilogy wouldn’t fully click with me, but after playing this second one I realized there are large differences in how the story is told that I appreciate.
My one main gripe with the game, which is small but still an issue, is that the auto-saves are bugged and it meant I had to spend extra time redoing missions at times which really threw me for a loop. If you die at the same time as a big enemy, which weirdly can happen somewhat often, the game deletes your old auto save but can’t then save your new auto save, meaning you have to reload your last full save or the very start of the mission you are on. While the missions are snappy, they can still be 30-45 minutes long and it was a real buzzkill when this happened. I got in the habit of manually saving very regularly because of this, but don’t think I should have needed to.
The dialogue trees from the first game also still, with few exceptions, encourage you to hyper focus in only one direction (Paragon or Renegade), which seems to oversimplify a lot of decision making. I found myself constantly picking the upper left or upper right options to keep my Paragon score going so that I’d have the blue options available when I needed them. I did notice a small handful of scenarios where only a blue or a red option was available, and I wish more of those were in the game to encourage some investment in both angles, and somewhat break you a little from hyper investing in one direction.
Other than those two issues, an incredibly good game that I’m impressed ran on an Xbox 360!