Perhaps the best example of what a western RPG can be. Mass Effect 2 sees commander Shepard, burned by the Citadel bureaucracy in Mass Effect 1, shacking up with a less savory organization to achieve their common goals. Rather than the plot-heavy focus of ME1, Mass Effect 2 switches things up by tailoring the gameplay around the character- a majority of the missions in the game are either to find/recruit a new teammate, or to win over their loyalty as you prepare to embark on a potential suicide mission. It rocks, it expands on the universe of ME1 wonderfully, and I haven’t even mentioned how much freedom the game gives you by loading up on renegade and paragon actions to really let your own personality shine (I went as an asshole this second time around). A decade later, it still holds up, and I’m excited to replay 3 soon.

Oh yeah my one knock that keeps it at a 4.5- I like to read dialog and press X to skip to the next line in the conversation before the character finishes speaking, but doing this too much locks you out of taking some non-neutral actions in your conversations. That was a little annoying.