Quote Originally Posted by Mister Adequate View Post
The thing is that whilst ME2 did make some gameplay changes to improve over 1 (which was by no means a perfect game), in many ways it just went too far. Like, yeah, the inventory interface in ME1 was abominable, no question about it. The solution was not to remove the inventory. Overheating instead of ammo was an interesting mechanic that had both lore backing and impact on gameplay, so they stripped it entirely and hey reloading like old times. etc. etc.

ME2 ended up, to me, feeling like a boring and fairly generic game that happened to be in a setting I like. ME1, for all its flaws, ended up being something I really remember, thoroughly enjoyed, and have replayed since more than once.
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While I can agree that ME1's inventory system is in a battle to the death with Xenoblade Chronicles version for the title of worst inventory system in a AAA title last gen and that the Mako sections could be better; the gameplay in ME2 was just so streamlined and dumbed down compared to what ME1 had to offer. I missed actually customizing my party with different gear and having to make actual hard choices for skill upgrades since there was not enough levels to max out everything like ME2 comes close to doing. More importantly, I appreciate that ME1 had a more organic structure to gameplay as opposed to the Hollywood style no-brainer set up in ME2.

In ME1 I could be walking through a hallway on the Citadel, a hallway I cross a dozen times and then suddenly get jumped by Saren's mercenaries which catch me off guard like an honest to goodness ambush would work. In ME2, I would walk into a room, notice that the room is large and filled with plenty of things to use as cover and know immediately that I was going to be attacked. It made combat pretty predictable and boring and it seriously took me out of the moment in the Collector's Ship scenario when the whole damn dungeon was set up this way.

Likewise, ME2's plot was pretty much, "Shepherd got resurrected by Cerberus to investigate and stop the Collectors. Build a rag tag group of people and stop them". There is no story beyond that, and while the actual character stories are pretty damn good, the cast is still hit or miss for me. I was especially bummed about losing my favorite character from ME1 in the form of Wrex and even more disappointed in his lousy replacement on the team. Likewise, getting rid of boring old Kaiden (unless you killed him like I did) to replace him with his black copy in the form of Jacob wasn't exactly a boon for the game. Of anything, Mordin and Tali pretty much had to carry the whole character story part of ME2 for me.

This is not to say ME2 was a bad game, but I feel it's hype is certainly misleading to the overall experience, especially when I was expecting more of what ME1 brought which was exploring an interesting Sci-Fi universe.