Mass Effect 2 Initial Thoughts

Ok, so I've decided to quit beating my head against the Insanity wall.

...about 10 times.

Each time I walk away from it, I find myself considering the fight I'm having trouble with, how I might change strategy and tactics and then I find myself booting up the game again and figuring out a way to advance one more step.

Make no mistake--it's a real challenge and something of a grind. The fights take a long time. Sometimes you find yourself dying over and over and over and over... well, you get the idea. But as I've continued to play, I've developed some tactics I'm finding useful, and I've actually started getting through some of the more recent missions pretty sucessfully.

Here are some random impressions (minor spoilers, so beware if you haven't gathered your entire crew):

1. Adept on Insanity is insane (but you knew that).
2. You MUST micromanage your teammates. Position them, choose their actions, send them to tactical positions, tell them what weapons to use and on who, and so on.
3. As an Adept, my major weakness is actually damage, escpecially weapon damage, so I need teammates who can lay the hurt down.
4. Miranda is good if you need to be sure you can deal with armor, barriers, and warp and gives a great team damage and hit point buff. She is not a good choice for me, because of her poor weapon skills. She does not significantly increase my ability to take down protections because of the long cooldown on squad member powers. She would be a must have for a Soldier or an Infililtrator, in my opinion.
5. Jacob is probably one of the weakest squadmembers. Shotguns are nice, but on Insanity you want to keep your distance, and they simply suck at long range. Pull is a nice power, but nothing special and other, more useful teammates have it. There are just better choices for every class.
6. Archangel is a solid teammate and one of those I like. His use of Sniper rifles, assault rifles and Overload perfectly fits my Adept. His bonus power is nice, but not as nice as some others, like Jack's Warp Ammo.
7. Zaeed is another solid teammate, mostly because he has Squad Disruptor ammo, and his Inferno Grenades, and uses Sniper Rifles and Assault Rifles. An Adept can pretty quickly take down any protection themself except Shields, so Disruptor Ammo has good synergy. And Inferno Grenades is a useful special, against armor (like those blasted Mechs and Scions) and organics (the controlled Collectors).
8. Grunt also is a good choice with his massive health regen. Squad Incindiery Ammo matches very well with Zaeed, since I can use whichever squad ammo I need, leaving only Barriers to deal with, which my Adepts Warp annihilates. Concussive Shot (which Zaeed also has) is also very effective against Barriers. Fortification makes Grunt easily the most surviveable member of the team. He has assault rifle for medium to long range, and he is the one character who really benefits from Shotguns, since he can survive longer in close and his shotguns do more damage than everyone elses.
9. Mordin is a great character at lower difficulty levels, but on Insanity there are better choices. He is most effective against unprotected organics, which makes him almost useless when they have Shields or Barriers. Incineration is a great ability against armor and organics, but again, very weak against shields and barriers. There are better choices, in general.
10/11. Tali and Legion are very similar and can complement certain classes (including an Adept), but Ai Hacking is an inferior ability in ME2. Their drones are useful, but not so much on Insanity because they die so quickly. Legion has the best Sniper Rifle in the game, giving him an edge over my favorite Quarian, but there are better choices.
12. Samara(and her daughter) are basically Adepts and while very cool characters, not a good fit for my Adept, since neighter has decent weapon skills or ammo powers. Reave is a very useful power, but Samara's has too long a cooldown to make her a good choice.
13. In many ways Jack is a disapointing character, power-wise, but if I were allowed one more it would be either her or Miranda. Warp Ammo is a very nice addition in certain situations and both Pull and Shockwave are situationally useful, but not so much for an Adept. Better choices.
14. Thane is a great character, with Sniper Rifles and Warp, but Garrus edges him out because Overload is more useful to an Adept and Shredder Ammo is inferior, especially on Insanity. I might consider him if I were playing a Soldier, Engineer, Infiltrator, or Vanguard. I've often thought an Infiltrator using Garrus and Thane might be fun--an assassination squad.

Considering all of the above, I find Zaeed and Grunt to be the best crew for my Adept; although Garrus can replace either one of them in certain missions when either Overload or a second Sniper Rifle make sense.

Bonus Power: There are basically only 3 powers worth even considering. For an Infiltrator or Soldier, I prefer Warp Ammo, since it's the best Ammo in the game, and I prefer the heavy version, to give my warrior the most punch I can (and Miranda/Samara is my likely squad). Reave is a solid choice for any class since it takes down barriers and armor and heals you, except for an Adept, because of the universal cooldown and the fact it is very similar to warp. For my Adept, the best choice by far was Energy Drain, which means I can strip any protection: warp for barriers/armor, and energy drain for shields--and it has the added bonus of replenishing my shields when I use it.

My build: I maxed Singularity, Throw (my basic "oh crap a charging Krogan" power), Nemesis (for rapid cooldowns and improved damage), Energy Drain, and Warp, making me the one who strips protections--I let my squad do most of the killing.

I have ended up in more than one fight with everybody down but me, no medi-gel, and enemies lobbing sniper rockets and shockwaves, hunkered down in some little niche, slowly whittling away at their protetions so I can finally take them out with a singularity/warp combo.

Well, I've bored you enough. I've recruited Miranda, Jack, Zaeed, Mordin, Archangel, and Grunt, and just started the Collector Planet mission with Zaeed and Grunt. I've only done Zaeed's loyalty mission. I'm actually having fun...

...in a pound your head against the wall until it's a bloody pulp kind of way...

How does insanity compare to hardcore?

I finished normal as an infiltrator, then started playing around with Adept, Vanguard and Soldier to try their powers out on veteran. Ended up sticking with the vanguard.

I lost interest in the adept after trying to abuse pull/throw as much as I could on one mission. It was almost comical.

I never really got into the soldier, although adrenaline mode was pretty cool.

I switched the vanguard to hardcore for Tali's first mission, and I keep forgetting to switch back. Every time I start a mission I think "Oh yeah, I'm still on hardcore .. oh well" The only thing that bugs me is shockwave, which on normal/vet is a nice "oh spit!" power against husks or fenris bots. Allowing at least partial knockback effect on a panic button power like that would be a lot less imba than, say, pull field. Overall, the vanguard is fine on hardcore, though. Just got through the collector ship.

Maybe I should restart the adept on insanity .. I'd been planning on a sentinel for my try at insanity though.

I played as a Paragon Soldier, finally fed up with the powers that be sitting on the sidelines and ready to do whatever it took to win. I had a blast. The game was not as good as ME1, mostly because of the Empire Strikes Back lack of an ending and how much of the game was a setup for ME3, but it was still better than everything else out there, including Dragon Age. Great game! Excellent climax (though not as pulse pounding as the ME1 end game.) Not ready to post spoilers yet, so more another time.

I've gotten stuck on scenery twice, but got out each time. I haven't experienced long load times; about 3-5 sec. max. No crashing or slow downs of any sort. Overall, the interface is cleaner and snappier than ME1, but the toon movement is a bit slower and less exact, not the direction I'd have gone when moving toward a more Halo-centric play style. Nonetheless, it's pretty much just as good as the first game in the UI and system department. The lack of inventory is a real plus, to my mind.

Ammo collection sucks, BUT: it does encourage the use of all my weapons. When one runs dry, I switch to another and immediately change my tactics, which is very John Woo, IMO. Also, there are some very cool new weapons in this game. The combination of the Warrior's Adrenaline Burts with the close range Plasma Thrower is more fun than should be legal, especially when fighting foes hiding around corners. I wish there was some way to figure out what sort of opponents are likely to be encountered in upcoming missions. When fighting Heavy Mechs, the missile launcher is invaluable, but since Shepard is the only member of my team that can carry heavy weapons, I can't have that AND the plasma thrower.

Currently about 5 hours, and several systems done. I have about half my crew. I witch I can still strangely only take two with me at any given time... :p.

I am enjoying the story arch quite a bit.. The character import did make things feel smoother, instead of somewhat jarring, with references to things going down different then I recall but that is pretty cosmetic and after the start dose not pop up all that much.

I would have preferred a better inventory system. I am not finding the range of available stuff to be very interesting or the upgrade rate.

The combat feels decent, though much more like phased FPS rather then real FPS but that is pretty close to how I recall the first one.

The ammo collection drill pisses me off and is total lame. Whoever thought that little resource management piece would be cute to add in should get a bonk on the head. You always have enough ammo, if you are willing to be lame and run around, WTF total time waster and adds nothing to the game play.
I don't know maybe the though is that if you are on hard and have to make every shot a head shot then maybe that will make counting bullets fun. Apparently not a John Woo fan of fire fights.

There is a bug, and I gather it's a unreal engine bug, that makes load times on a dual core system completely fucking ridiculous. So, if your on your PC wondering why it's taking 2 minutes to load between ship levels try this http://www.giantbomb.com/mass-effect-2/61-21590/mass-effect-2-pc-fix-for...
got my load times down to like 3 seconds.

I would not play through ME1 again just to have a save file to import. Nothing earth-shattering is affected by your choices. The primary things I've noticed so far:

1. Your relationship with any romantic interest will affect dialogue options when encountering those characters.
2. The fate of Urdnot Wrex
3. Alenko or Ashley
4. Anderson or Udina
5. Paragon or Renegade
6. Council's Fate
7. Miscellaneous characters

The last point references several of the minor characters you either killed or saved, jailed or worked for: many of them show up in bit parts in ME2 and reference your choices/actions in the first game.

Overall, it is a nice bit of continuity which in no way impacts the actual story or game in any significant way. Nicely done in my opinion. If you have a save file it is a nice touch, but you won't miss it much if not.

Even if you have a save file, you get to choose your appearance and class, so you are in essence recreating the old Shepherd in the ME2 game system.