I was very dissapointed.
Call me a nerd... But my favorite thing about Bioware was their deep and detailed RPG elements. Combine that with the high level shooter gameplay and excellent story and you have probably one of my alltime favorite games in ME 1. But in 2 yeah the shooting is great, the story so far seems excellent, but the RPG elements have been all but completely removed. You cant change squad mates (cant remember if you could in ME 1 but you have been able to in all other Bioware games) weapons and armor have no stats so your improvement has no sense of tangibility. It could be completely absent considering that you know the enemies level to your level. The ability rankings have been cut in half literally and one category is just a pure stat boost so building characters is basically pointless. There is no looting, no mods, no customization nothing of depth.
I feel like they neutered and dumbed it down to appease more casual players, but they could have easily put in a auto leveling/auto equipping feature to appease both parties. Call me a nerd, but obsessing over minute details of shredder ammo mods and biotic implants is what gets my rocks of in RPGs if I wanted to play a simple dumb but adequate shooter I would play one of the other 100 XB360 shooters!
1. There are stats to different armor sets. Weapons you upgrade to add stats.
2. No, in ME you couldn't change squad on a mission. Nor could you do it in "every other BioWare game" Dragon age is an easy example here.
3. What? They removed useless skills? Oh no! Really- did you LIKE wasting points into pistols, just so that you could learn a second weapon skill and level that one up? Did you LIKE how there were two skill slots for renegade and paragon? They didn't dumb down skills in this game, they just took out the abilities that shouldn't have been there in the first place, ESPECIALLY when talking amps/bios. And once you unlock training, you can teach shepard all sorts of new skills. IE: Reave, Warp Ammo... Which puts your ability amount right back up there. Only this time, you're not burdened with all your weapon and armor training. Sure, it's streamlined, but I'm not opposed to that when it comes to ME1s skills.
4. I'm glad there's no looting in this game, too. When in ME1 every single enemy dropped something and the inventory was a pain in the
ass to navigate. Besides, the variety of gear in ME1 was pretty streamlined anyway. You had around 5 different armor sets, all with levels. All you really wanted to do was wear the highest level of your armor set that you could find, and sell everything else, constantly picking up downgrades all the while. I don't see the entertainment in that.
5. There's plenty of depth in the research terminal. The problem is, you likely don't want to go out and search random planets for minerals in order to get them. That's fine, but don't complain about wanting customization when you're just too lazy to spend the time to do it.
Sorry, but I find it a baseless argument when people say the RPG elements have been removed simply because they don't pick up pieces upon pieces of duplicated equipment to navigate a frustrating inventory screen and "micromanage" gear.
