Mass Effect 2

AlmightyCushion

wayne040576 wrote: »

Started playing yesterday. I've put about 9 hours in so far. A few things I've noticed so far: They seem to have changed the rpg elements quite a bit. The skill tree is quite small. Don't seem to be able to level up speech skills in the same way, it's linked to the points you gain during conversations? Is that correct.

Plus, I've noticed a lot of people seem to like Jack. I used her today for the first time in a mission and she just kept running into danger even if I directed her to cover. Ended up needing to revive her during most enemy encounters.

At one stage she was hanging from the ceiling in the direct line of a grenade launcher.

Only used her in my party when I had to. I tend to mostly use grunt, thane or the guy from the dlc. I don't really use biotic powers much, I prefer to go with sheer brute force gun power. Should I start going with one of the weaker gun characters who are better with biotics?

Branoic

loving the game so far, and I absolutely love to hate Conrad Verner

I played a complete full on Paragon in the first Mass Effect, always the diplomat, EXCEPT when it came to Conrad. The guy just got under my skin and I decked him. So, the first thing I do when I meet him the second game? Shoot him in the foot! "Conrad, this is not okay!!"

I also genuinely laughed out loud when he was talking about how he got the replica N7 armour and is going around the galaxy helping people. To paraphrase, "It's amazing, the galaxy is just full of people waiting to tell you their problems and help them. And sometimes, I search through crates, you know, for some extra creds."

Branoic

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

Only used her in my party when I had to. I tend to mostly use grunt, thane or the guy from the dlc. I don't really use biotic powers much, I prefer to go with sheer brute force gun power. Should I start going with one of the weaker gun characters who are better with biotics?

I always go for variety of abilities. Since I'm a straight up soldier, I'll never bring another soldier class with me. Grunt and the DLC bounty hunter nearly always stay on the ship, as does Thane and Garrus. My most frequent team is Miranda and Mordin.

AlmightyCushion

I never really had much interaction with conrad in the first one. When I replay it I must start talking to him more.

Mitch Connor

when you complete the game, is that charactor saved? I want to play through as a renegade on a second play through but I want the current charactor's decisions to be available to me in ME3.

johnny_ultimate

Branoic wrote: »

I always go for variety of abilities. Since I'm a straight up soldier, I'll never bring another soldier class with me. Grunt and the DLC bounty hunter nearly always stay on the ship, as does Thane and Garrus. My most frequent team is Miranda and Mordin.

This! Except for the loyalty missions, Mordin and Miranda were always my top choices. Between them, they have enough biotics to bring down barriers, shields and armour (incinerate ftw) and take down most enemies, while Shepard chips away with weapons, shockwave and barrier for the most part. Very rarely brought anyone else. If pushed

Legion

, because combat drone & enemy possession thingie (alright, probably not the technical name for said biotic) are pretty handy.

tman

Branoic wrote: »

I always go for variety of abilities. Since I'm a straight up soldier, I'll never bring another soldier class with me. Grunt and the DLC bounty hunter nearly always stay on the ship, as does Thane and Garrus. My most frequent team is Miranda and Mordin.

Yep, +1 for Miranda and Mordin
You've got all bases covered with their incinerate, overload and warp skills then (

incinerate for yellow, overload for blue, warp for purple shields

)

I quite liked the Krogan for his concussive shot as well, which is also good against biotic barriers.
Most of the time I just hammered away with brute force though, you don't really need to be all that tactical on normal difficulty imo.

Woden

Just finished it there this evening. Really really enjoyed it I must say. Must go back and actually play ME1 properly

Needed to redo the final mission for the achievement. I think I managed to get everyone killed with my choices

Another +1 for the miranda and mordin choice this was my prefared combo in the latter stages of the game. Just going around the star systems now searching for the anomalies.

Burgo

tman wrote: »

I quite liked the Krogan for his concussive shot as well, which is also good against biotic barriers.
Most of the time I just hammered away with brute force though, you don't really need to be all that tactical on normal difficulty imo.

Yeah, I played as a soldier and generally brought miranda and grunt,grunt just never died which was pretty handy :pac:

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

just finished it there, managed to bed them all except for

miranda, wench won't talk to me at all after I sided with jack during their little spat and the paragon/renegade options are greyed out whenever I try to talk to her... next play through, she will be mine

I lost

samara

during the last mission, but she was an irritating jackass anyway so no loss there.

Sephiroth_dude

Im doing the sidequests atm just to take a break from the main storyline,really enjoying doing them.

pixelburp

Hmmmm...

Well having saved at the right juncture, I decided to pause the side-quests & finish the main quest as I couldn't resist seeing just how suicide'y this suicide mission really was:

I dunno how, but I only lost Jacob, who I sent down the ventilation tubes deliberately because frankly he was the worst character in the new lineup & knew he would die. A boring 2D character whose endless saluting annoyed me - byeee!

But on that subject, I'm a bit disappointed because having got this far into the game it's patently obvious that apart from a few cosmetic changes here & there, your actions in Mass Effect 1 had absolutely no real effect in number 2. They conveniently shelved most of the original team & whoever died - or for that matter, whoever were romanced - were just dumped out of the sequel's thinking. In terms of plot, my choice to

save the Council

had zero effect on the new game's social geography; I had one token scene where I pow-wow with them, called in a few favours & then be off.

As for the romance, I encouraged romance with Ashley Williams but in number 2

she dumped me in the space of one forgettable scene on Horizon.

. So despite the pretence of choice & consequence, I don't believe my actions will matter one jot in Mass Effect 3 as the developers will find some way of reseting my characters. And this kinda ticks me off somewhat because I made sure everyone lived, I was nice to who I liked & generally played "properly". I would like to see the reward in the next game.

But clearly given how many characters can potentially die in Mass Effect 2, the likely/easiest thing will be the big reset button to be pressed:
"Oops, what are the odds, the Normandy blew up again, you've forgotten all your skills - you can't even remember if you were nice or a dickhead - and your girl / boy friend's dead, or dropped you to rejoin the migrant fleet / join a travelling Gilbert & Sullivan group"

Grr I say.

AlmightyCushion

pixelburp wrote: »

Hmmmm...

Well having saved at the right juncture, I decided to pause the side-quests & finish the main quest as I couldn't resist seeing just how suicide'y this suicide mission really was:

I dunno how, but I only lost Jacob, who I sent down the ventilation tubes deliberately because frankly he was the worst character in the new lineup & knew he would die. A boring 2D character whose endless saluting annoyed me - byeee!

But on that subject, I'm a bit disappointed because having got this far into the game it's patently obvious that apart from a few cosmetic changes here & there, your actions in Mass Effect 1 had absolutely no real effect in number 2. They conveniently shelved most of the original team & whoever died - or for that matter, whoever were romanced - were just dumped out of the sequel's thinking. In terms of plot, my choice to

save the Council

had zero effect on the new game's social geography; I had one token scene where I pow-wow with them, called in a few favours & then be off.

As for the romance, I encouraged romance with Ashley Williams but in number 2

she dumped me in the space of one forgettable scene on Horizon.

. So despite the pretence of choice & consequence, I don't believe my actions will matter one jot in Mass Effect 3 as the developers will find some way of reseting my characters. And this kinda ticks me off somewhat because I made sure everyone lived, I was nice to who I liked & generally played "properly". I would like to see the reward in the next game.

But clearly given how many characters can potentially die in Mass Effect 2, the likely/easiest thing will be the big reset button to be pressed:
"Oops, what are the odds, the Normandy blew up again, you've forgotten all your skills - you can't even remember if you were nice or a dickhead - and your girl / boy friend's dead, or dropped you to rejoin the flotilla / join a travelling Gilbert & Sullivan group"

Grr I say.

Yeah I noticed this as well. I didn't do any romance in the first one, hell I was completely oblivious to it, I only found out when reading up about achievements that you could romance someone. Shows how clueless I am when it comes to women.

In the first I chose to save the rachni queen and there was a mission in my game where I had to kill some rachni. I doubt that would have happened if i had killed her. I killed the council and choose the guy who was in charge of the normandy to be in charge. It turns out the humans aren't as influential as we thought they'd be and the mostly ignore the guy I put in charge. He does me a favour or two. Doesn't sound any different to what happened in yours.

It would be nice if your actions had pretty bigg changes to the overall game so that the mass effect 2 and 3 I play will be a little or vastly different from the one that you played because of the actions we took. I imagine that would be a massive amount of work though. Would be great to see it none the less.

Stev_o

Finished the game and i have to say the ending is just woefull compared to the first game. The

terminator Reaper was just beyond cheesey and never felt threatening i mean i was thinking how the f*ck is this even practical or useful in any way! Jack and Tali died, didnt really care as Garrus and Thane survived which means happy days. Kelly died in a fairly gruesome death ill give her that. At least in ME1 there was the huge revelation with the Citadel, the council and not to mention Saren. This one just seemed very forgettable.

Sephiroth_dude

Have there been any good mods released yet?

Kiith

Nope, and there probably wont be. They didnt release the dev kit for this or Mass Effect 1.

pixelburp

Kiith wrote: »

Nope, and there probably wont be. They didnt release the dev kit for this or Mass Effect 1.

Aren't Mass Effect 1 / 2 built on the Unreal 3 Engine though? Surely it's possible for canny modders to reverse engineer the elements back into UnrealEd? I know nothing of UnrealEd though so presumably it ain't as simple as that

WolfForager

Is it worth my while getting a lend of the game off a friend? Like would i be missing out on much in terms of dlc? And how much replay value does the game have?

Otacon

WolfForager wrote: »

Is it worth my while getting a lend of the game off a friend?

Definitely. This is an early contender for GOTY.

WolfForager wrote: »

Like would i be missing out on much in terms of dlc?

Only DLC so far has been a sh!tty nostalgia mission, a crap 2D extra character and some hideous looking armour. Also, based on the DLC for the first game, it is likely that the rest of the DLC for ME2 will be crap.

WolfForager wrote: »

And how much replay value does the game have?

Played through it three times so far and going for a fourth... so yes.

pablomakaveli

Otacon wrote: »

Only DLC so far has been a sh!tty nostalgia mission, a crap 2D extra character and some hideous looking armour. Also, based on the DLC for the first game, it is likely that the rest of the DLC for ME2 will be crap.

To be fair with the code you get with the game, all that is free anyway.

ShadowHearth

just finished game, explored everysingle planet. All those said missions are really low quality...

Loved ME1, LOVE this one too, thought wount be going for second time... :rolleyes:

got really pissed of when lost mine 2 favorite crew members in last mission... thane and garrus... if third one will be in same way as second one, i will need to replay it and try to get them out alive

speedboatchase

ShadowHearth wrote: »

just finished game, explored everysingle planet. All those said missions are really low quality...

Loved ME1, LOVE this one too, thought wount be going for second time... :rolleyes:

got really pissed of when lost mine 2 favorite crew members in last mission... thane and garrus... if third one will be in same way as second one, i will need to replay it and try to get them out alive

Haven't done the final mission but those two I really don't want to lose, especially as I'd want to use them in any big DLC that gets released. I'll happily sacrifice Jacob though if the situation calls for it

Outkast_IRE

Yeah losing charecters on the final mission is annoying i lost 2 aswell , from what i read without spoiling anything for anyone is a lot of its down to your choices and weather your paragon or renegade good idea though to change the experience a bit for everyone.

pablomakaveli

I ended up letting Jacob die in mine. I was delighted though because i thought he was the most boring character i've come across in both ME games.

WolfForager

Juts picked this up today for 45 in HMV. The used version was 43, what's the point? :S

Only about 30mins in and already loving it :P

Venom

Just started on ME2 today and damm Im liking it. For those that have Dragons Age the Blood Dragon armour option looks pretty awesome in ME2.

ShadowHearth

so basiclt is it possible to make anather group set ups, to not to losse those characters? there is achievment for not loosing any.... how can you do that? i dont whant to go ME3 with garrus and thane dead...

it was so cool seeing REX in ME2, as i loved him in First one...

Venom

ShadowHearth wrote: »

so basiclt is it possible to make anather group set ups, to not to losse those characters? there is achievment for not loosing any.... how can you do that? i dont whant to go ME3 with garrus and thane dead...

it was so cool seeing REX in ME2, as i loved him in First one..

.

spoiler that **** you ****ing knobjockey.

Edited to add spoiler tags to a dumbass's post

balkieb2002

ShadowHearth wrote: »

so basiclt is it possible to make anather group set ups, to not to losse those characters? there is achievment for not loosing any.... how can you do that? i dont whant to go ME3 with garrus and thane dead...

it was so cool seeing REX in ME2, as i loved him in First one...

Hmm spoiler tags would have be handy for this as people don't want to know certain things.

It depends of numorus factors it seems
i.e. How much you have upgraded, whos loyalty you have and what i think is important who you choose to lead in the final segmant of game

Example - in my first ending Mordin and Jack died, i replayed from save at start of collector station changing who lead certain teams i.e. i made mordin bring back survivors and this time round only Jack died. Couldn't be bothered to replay final again to get her to survive (i'd lost her loyalty) so was happy with my ending.

Yeah was nice to see Wrex again... what I liked better was if you killed him first time around [ME1] then some other guy was leader but having him there was a nice reward for saving him.

Edit: ^^Guy above me... practice what you preach!!

Captain Chaos

Venom wrote: »

spoiler that **** you ****ing knobjockey.

It's not really a spoiler, it depends on your actions in ME1 if he is in ME2. Just like your entire old squad. Default story line, he is dead. But you find that out at the start of the game anyway.