It’s been a while since I’ve last played Mass Effect 2, but Bio Break‘s Mass Effect 2 Wrapup brought back some memories. Mostly good memories, because as you’ve undoubtedly heard, Mass Effect 2 is a good game. In fact, it’s probably the prime candidate for the Game of the Year title thus far, although Red Dead Redemption and StarCraft 2 look set to give it a run for its money.
But no game is perfect and that holds true for Mass Effect 2 as well. Practically every critic and blogger on the planet has raved about this game by now, but few have taken the time to point out its flaws. So that is exactly what I’ll be doing in this article, which may be a tad late but no less true for it.
I’m structuring this as a bullet point list in order to keep it clear and concise. Also keep in mind that the following points contain spoilers if you haven’t finished Mass Effect 2 yet.
Gameplay
- It still feels like a third-rate shooter even with the improved shooter mechanics and cover system. The cover system is nowhere near as solid as Gears of War’s and fights are incredibly static.
- There is little challenge to be had for seasoned FPS players. Insane mode is relatively easy and can be compared to Regular mode in Modern Warfare 2 or fighting Average bots in Unreal Tournament 3.
- The planet scanning system is terribly dull and possibly even worse than Mass Effect’s repetitive planetary exploration with the Mako.
- Sidequests weren’t anywhere near as repetitive as they were in Mass Effect, but were also a lot less numerous and still felt like a major step down from the rest of the game.
- Mini-games were better than in the original, but still got repetitive towards the end. They were all introduced early on and never changed throughout the game.
It's not a good sign when the opening sequence is one of the highlights of a game
General
- The game’s encounters start strong (space walk, Garrus, Mordin) and go downhill from there with few exceptions (Samara’s and Tali’s loyalty missions).
- The new presentation of The Citadel was hard to swallow. I know it’s a big station, but there should have been more cameos of old-Citadel areas or some hint at the existence of these new areas in the original game.
- There should’ve been armor customization for bonus armors (Blood Dragon Armor) so that they would’ve been viable alternatives for N7. No one likes to play with perma-helmet.
- The end boss looks ridiculous and out-of-place. It’s also too easy to defeat, even in Insane mode.
- Mass Effect did a better job of making you care for the party. In part because there were fewer characters, but more-so because you got to take them on a wealth of important galaxy-changing missions, which mostly doesn’t happen in Mass Effect 2.
- Returning to the Normandy crash site could have been handled better. It was a dull, rather than an emotional, moment.
- The ending is a lot weaker than that of the first game.
There are only five interesting people in this room...
Storytelling
- The impact of decisions made in Mass Effect was minimal. Mostly it was covered by brief emails and news broadcasts. I’d have liked to see more character enounters and actual plot influences.
- The ending has a definite “that’s it?” feel to it. It doesn’t seem like a lot happens – that progresses the overarching plot – between the beginning and end of the game, despite the significant length of the whole.
- Most moral dilemmas had identical or very similar, short-term, outcomes in both Paragon and Renegade routes. Hopefully this will be adressed in Mass Effect 3 for the most critical dilemmas (genophage, Quarians and Geth).
- There weren’t enough actual moral dilemmas, with most choices being between either similar approaches to the same situation or decidedly Good vs Evil decisions (Samara’s loyalty mission). This would have been fine had pre-release marketing and post-launch hype not alluded to a great deal of tough moral dilemmas.
- Too many characters on the team makes for a cast that’s muddled and difficult to connect with.
- Jacob and Miranda may have been required as an introduction to Cerberus, but they’re dull and generic as party members.
- Legion should have been presented earlier on. It’s more of a gimmick than a proper addition to the team like this, with just 3 hours of content left after its introduction.
- Zaeed should have been removed from the game. He’s clearly not on-par with any of the other characters in terms of content and he’s also absolutely forgettable.
- Liara’s transition to hard boiled information broker seems very out of character.
- The Council’s utter refusal to speak with Shepard isn’t very believable.
I’ve probably missed a few, so feel free to comment with your gripes with the Mass Effect 2 experience.
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I agree with just about everything you said except for Zaeed. I liked him and thought he was a great character and only lamented that he wasn’t developed more.
The reason the story was so weak was because Drew Karpyshyn didn’t do the writing in the second game. Which I just don’t understand. Why would you take one of the best speculative fiction writers of our time off of a body of work that is planned as a trilogy?
Anyway good article and in my opinion very accurate.
I looked into it and apparently Drew Karpyshyn was the lead writer for Mass Effect 2 as well. He finished ‘his share’ of the writing before moving on to work on Star Wars: The Old Republic. He says as much on his own website’s FAQ.
I admit that I may be a bit biased against Zaeed, because he didn’t fit in with my play style (more paragon than renegade) at all. The reason why I think he should have been omitted is because his content is flimsy in comparison to all other characters. His loyalty mission is the weakest of the bunch and he’s the only character that you can’t directly talk to. Not to mention the fact that he’s the only character who doesn’t respond to recent events. He clearly needed a lot more development time.
Yeah, I kinda have to post a retraction there. Although Drew wasn’t the lead writer (Mac Walters was) he still worked on it. Cheers!
I was a huge fan of Mass effect 2, but I have to say I agree with most of your points. Its clear that Bioware’s aim for the game was to get you involved in your teams development. You go away with them on ‘loyalty missions’ so that they will trust you enough during the final mission.
Unfortunately, as you have said, the number of characters ruins any sense of attachment to them. In the original, often the most of your interaction was simply talking. There was a small mission for each of them (Wrex’s armour, Garrus’s doctor) but the game always ensured the plot centred around you and your decisions. They kept the same methods of interaction for Dragon age, which resulted in me becoming more attached than I was in ME2.
Your points on a lack of moral dilemmas though is right in some aspects. There weren’t as many as you would expect, but there are alot of moments that make you think about your choices, as you know it will be one of the many points carried into the third game. Tali’s loyalty mission for example has several such moments, as does Legion’s. A miission you do for Aria in Omega could also have possible consequences. This I think has been the series greatest strength, you always have to consider whether your actions could have consequences.
The potential consequences in Mass Effect 3 definitely make what moral dilemmas there are in Mass Effect 2 even more difficult. You know there will be consequences in the next game, so you’d better do your best to make the right choices for your character. It certainly seems that the dilemmas presented in Mordin, Legion and Tali’s loyalty missions should have a major impact in how ME 3 plays out.
Are you joking? Insane not HARD???
After finishing Modern Warfare 1 and 2 both on veteran i think i can say that Insane mode is, as its name suggests – INSANE! It has got to be the most rewarding experience i have ever encountered outside of demon souls. Seriously, either so called “droniac” is a name for a hacking group, they are damn liars.
Also, what the heck!? you cannot say that mass effect 2 is flawed because of its DLC, that wasn’t even wholly made by the same people over the same timeframe – you have got to remember that EA now own Bioware – and EA have deadlines – jesus christ give these guys a break.
I watched Legion today and it was pretty cool BTW, how was your day yesterday?
I tend to play every shooter and strategy game in the highest difficulty setting. By that standard, insane mode in Mass Effect 2 was ridiculously easy. There was all of one challenging encounter, namely an entirely forgettable sidequest in which you had to defend a few Cerberus supply crates from three large robots. I had played Dragon Age: Origins a few months prior and that posed more of a challenge in normal mode than the Mass Effect 2 campaign did in insane and unfortunately that’s no exaggeration.
I don’t think I covered any non-launch DLC? Zaeed is part of every legitimate copy of the game and was developed in the same timeframe and by the same team as the rest of the game. That’s why I noted that he was so very underdeveloped. No other DLC was mentioned, because I agree that you should judge non-launch DLC separately.
Not a big fan of ME2. Utterly disappointing let down. Despite the fact that I hold a much harsher view of the game than you, those are all extremely valid criticisms, and fair play for having the honesty to list them even with a positive view of the game.
I had problems with all the major aspects of ME2, story, gameplay and characters.
I couldnt like more than a couple of the new squad, and even they get old quickly. I found their entire characters to be far too segmented, and felt seperated from the rest of the game. Their loyalty missions almost always involved more shooter than character driven content, and I didnt enjoy most of them.
The gameworld and the whole structure of the game felt like it was tailored specifically to TPS goals. Mass Effect 1 felt like one glorius, uninterrupted journey. Sure, elevators and air locks could be a tad annoying, but with great banter and the feeling you were never being artificially moved around by loading screens, it was worth the little wait.
ME2s loading screens are boring, repetative, and take just about as long as elevators did. Plus you have to view them every time you die, and with the new “FPS 3 second regen” mechanics, that can happen often when the game resorts to enemy spam (and it does it a lot).
The story was atrocious. One of the worst Bioware have ever done. The actual story must make up about 2 hours maximum of the entire game. The rest is the aforementioned disconnected recruitment and loyalty missions, all for characters who can die, and most likely wont factor into ME3 as squadmates (for which Im glad).
I felt the way they treated the original romances was ridiculous. The only silver lining potentially is that I hear it was done to “save them for ME3″, so I should probably hold out some small hope that they will return Liara and Ashley/Kaidan in ME3 as squadmates again.
Yeah, ME2 ultimately got a few things right. The TPS gameplay isnt mind blowing, but its still solid and clearly the part they spent the lions share of the effort on. The game looks good, and the voice acting is on par with ME1. The music was a little more disappointing, but still not too bad.
On the whole, Im glad to see that now the hype is dying down, this game is getting the criticism it rightly deserves. Seeing 10/10 after 10/10 and fans already claiming the game is perfect, with even some critics calling it “the future of RPGs” was sickening.
Now at least Bioware will have shortage of things to improve on come ME3, and no excuses to doing just too well with ME2.