I loved the original Mass Effect. The reason I loved it was because of the RPG elements, the cool shooting mechanic where your weapons can overheat, and the amazing story. This game takes 2 of those 3 things and basically throws them out the window, which frustrated me. But by the time I finished the story, I really enjoyed the game regardless because of how great of a job Bioware did with the story, world-building, and character development.
You again play as Commander Shepard, out to stop the reapers from destroying all life in the galaxy. But in this game, you join up with "The Illusive Man," who is on a crusade to stop a group called the Collectors who are abducting human colonies. Despite taking you out of the main story and essentially giving you a side plot between the first and third games, the story is excellent. The new characters that are introduced are at least as interesting as the companions from the first game, and by the end you grow to really care about them after doing their loyalty missions. Speaking of loyalty missions, I was planning to complain in this review that every quest ended up just being a "go here, shoot those guys, come back" plot, but I was surprised to see that tossed aside a couple times to great effect, and I really appreciate that the game varied its side quests enough to keep them interesting. Your decisions make a *huge* impact in this game, more than any game I've played, and that is a really cool mechanic that more games should emulate.
However, the reason this game doesn't live up to the first, in my opinion, is that they seemed to just cater to the shooter fans (I am clearly not one) and dropped a lot of the RPG elements. Yes, you still technically level up and learn new skills, but it's nowhere near the amount of customization of the first game. You basically invest in 3-4 different battle skills, but that's about the only choice you have as far as customization of your character. They also completely dropped the overheat-mechanic, which was something I adored about the first game. I didn't have to run around picking up random ammo on the ground like every other shooter, and I loved that. You had to time your shots and plan for cool-downs and that greatly added to the strategy. Here, they just went for the basic crap of ammo everywhere and having to run around after battle picking it all up off the ground. It was really frustrating to see a unique idea completely scrapped like that just to be replaced with the unimaginative, over-used mechanic of ammo pick-up.
Some things I did not like about the first game are gone. The long elevator rides are no more. The Mako, the trash car you had to drive around, is similarly scrapped. There are no more repeated dungeons and you can leave a place right after completing a quest and not have to travel all the way back out. I appreciated all of that. However, it's not replaced with anything great. Now, instead of driving the Mako around, you have this horrendous mineral mining mini-game where you mindlessly search planets for minerals to upgrade your ship/armor/weapons. It's tedious and adds absolutely nothing to the game; I actually preferred driving the Mako. The mini-games to open/hack into things were also uninspired and repetitive.
However, the game is saved by the world-building and characters that occupy it. You visit new planets with different cultures and wildly different lifestyles, and it's so much fun to just explore the galaxy and interact with NPCs with varying backgrounds and races. There is politics, racism, sexism, poverty; it's all covered in this game and it's done very well. I really enjoyed learning the backstories of almost all of my companion characters, and I was never even close to bored playing through the main missions. Everything felt so epic, and the ending was fantastic. It's rare that I play a game that has me so invested in the characters and story, but both ME1 and ME2 have accomplished that easily. Despite hearing all kinds of interesting complaints about ME3, I have to know how this story ends, and I can't wait to finish off the trilogy.
8/10