[Nehan]

who did you lost?
it seems i've made good choices, because only

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tali and legion

died

[Hector]

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Jack (died in the initial attack; one of the beams cut straight through to engineering); Legion (died in an explosion in engineering during the same attack); the Solarian Professor who's name I can't recall (shot in the face after opening the doors for us) and Thane (crushed by his desk when it was thrown by an explosion)

I'm going to play through again at some point, to see if I can get through the suicide mission with no casualties.

[Gregorus Prime]

who did you lost?
it seems i've made good choices, because only

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tali and legion

died

I'm still confused as to how people are losing crew members. It's very simple. Like they tell you in the game, you need to upgrade your ship and you need to get everyone's loyalty. Do everyone's unique upgrades too, like Jack's biotics or Legion's rifle. From there it's just good choices. HINT: Do you think Jack would make a good leader?

I didn't lose anybody my first time through, except for the crew. I'm playing again so that EVERYTHING SHALL BE PERFECT 

[Nehan]

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my ship was upgraded, legion died being shot after opening the door, tali in the end (as she wasn't loyal - i've taken the renegade path during her mission)

[Gregorus Prime]

The status of your tech specialist relies upon who you chose to lead the first team.

If you picked a bad leader they get the techie killed.

[GC13]

Finished the other day, I'll post my impressions later.

Well?  We're eagerly anticipating your thoughts.

[Oscar]

Finished the other day, I'll post my impressions later.

Well?  We're eagerly anticipating your thoughts.

Heh... Don't expect a coherent article, just some random thoughts and purely my opinion.

I found it a very enjoyable game. Bioware set out to create a cinematic action-RPG (with more emphasis on action than on RPG, regarding mechanics mostly) and that's what they achieved, nothing more, nothing less.

The graphics and atmosphere, compared to ME, are greatly improved. The areas have more soul, and look more lived in. They gave me a nice Blade Runner/Deus Ex vibe, which is always great in my book. In my opinion, the areas in ME were a bit too clean, almost hospital like. For example, the old and new citadel wards. The old one lacked many details, all in a blue hazy light, with some red lights here and there. Same for the night clubs. I'll post some comparison pictures later. Also, level design is much improved. Long are gone the 4 repeated levels from ME. Now, AFAICS, all the levels are unique, even the ones for random planet missions. Moreover, there are more "cities", or quest hubs. In ME you mainly had the citadel, with just a couple of sidequests in some of the mission planets like Noveria and Feros. Here you have the citadel wards, Illium and Omega, plus side-quests on mission planets. Even if the number of side-quests is similar, they are more spread out, which makes the pace better.

On the setting, while unchanged, Bioware took a more over the top feel to it. The EXTREME situations are more extreme, the party members are all the meanest badasses around, doing extreme feats before joining you, and on top of that, you are going to a suicide mission where no else succeeded. Also, it has a lot of self-reference humor, especially at the flaws and general seriousness of the first game, with things like the fan acting like the extreme Shepard, or the Shepard VI. Overall, the party members also are a little over the top, which makes them more interesting than all the "down to earth" ones of the first game. But that doesn't exclude them of depth, and I found them one of the most interesting cast of characters in a Bioware RPG. Even the recurring characters from the first game take a more over the top approach. Remember Liara, the bookworm?

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Now she is a cunning informant dealer looking to kill the Shadow Broken, and she doesn't mind getting her hands dirty to do the job.

Regarding gameplay, I can't say it's great, but it was quite enjoyable. You move around, shoot, hide behind boxes, do some especial attacks every once in a while... Even though there was a lot of combat, it was definitely painless. I have no problem in going through the combat sections again, which is something that really prevents me from playing DA, for example. The character system was cut a little, but it didn't bother me much, and the same goes for the lack of inventory. What really did bother me was the minigames. All of them. The hacking and decrypting ones are quite annoying, and take quite some time. There is no character skill required, and no way to bypass them. Basically, you are exchanging your time for some credits. While visually they made more "sense" than the ME one, they take more time (especially the decrypting one), and there is no way of bypassing them expending any kind of resource. And the scanning minigame... God, I want to kill the guy who had that idea. Personally, I would just made it basic screen where it shows the kind of minerals there are and different focus on which you want to gather, the number of probes you want to use, and then a random roll modified by your ships equipment, that tells you how many minerals you got. Simple, has some interactivity and resource management, takes equipment into account and it takes WAY less time than the current one.

As far as C&C, they are mostly cosmetic. I still have to make another playthrough with extremely different choices, but even the big ones seem cosmetic at this point. But I have to give them the attention to detail. Almost every quest, even the smallest ones, have some kind of reference. You either meet some characters from the first game, or get a mail responding to your actions. Inside the game, the only place where you see the consequences for your choices is in the final mission, where they determine which allies will survive it. I believe that some gameplay consequences will come in the third game, regarding the allies you will be able to get to fight the reapers.

To sum it up, it's good for what it is

[Volourn]

 "Personally, I would just made it basic screen where it shows the kind of minerals there are and different focus on which you want to gather, the number of probes you want to use, and then a random roll modified by your ships equipment, that tells you how many minerals you got. Simple, has some interactivity and resource management, takes equipment into account and it takes WAY less time than the current one."

The scanning doesn't make me as butthurt in rage as it seems to do for others 9afteralkl, don't like it don't do it); but your idea is a pretty solid alternative.

[Oscar]

"Personally, I would just made it basic screen where it shows the kind of minerals there are and different focus on which you want to gather, the number of probes you want to use, and then a random roll modified by your ships equipment, that tells you how many minerals you got. Simple, has some interactivity and resource management, takes equipment into account and it takes WAY less time than the current one."

The scanning doesn't make me as butthurt in rage as it seems to do for others 9afteralkl, don't like it don't do it); but your idea is a pretty solid alternative.

Thanks

To be fair, though, the required minerals for getting every upgrade is not THAT high, so you if you are pretty smart, you will only focus on planets with rich resources, do only a full pass getting the most easily found minerals and move on. That way it doesn't take THAT much time, and you'll only need to scan about 20-30 planets that way to get all the minerals you need. Also, I've heard that if you complete the game twice (or complete it with a ME save), you get 50.000 bonus minerals when you start the game, which makes the mini-game almost irrelevant.

I can see the Bioware devs getting evil laughs out of all the OCD kids that MUST GET EVERY PLANET STATUS TO DEPLETED!!!

[Anonxeuix]

I just finished the game. Enjoyed it a lot, and like Oscar said I wouldn't mind playing through it again (unlike DA). Much better than ME1, and a really solid game after all.

I would castrate the guy who invented the scanning minigame before killing him though, Oscar.

I wish there were more fights like the one before:

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 recruiting Tali. That fight where you could take the left route, the middle route, or the right route, in order to kill that Geth Armasomthing. That was a great satisfying fight.

Also, two people died on my suicide run.  One was intentional, I hated him.

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 Zaedd.

The other, my mistake.

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 Legion.

I also handed the base to Cerberus. Didn't quite like that, but I couldn't just destroy the base!

 

[Oscar]

Oh, another thing that I forgot to point out. The voice acting in the game is superb. There was no character that I found annoying or badly acted. Even the "stars" were very good in their roles. Hell, I know Carrie Ann Moss's voice by heart (after watching The Matrix trilogy god knows how many times) and I really had trouble recognizing her as Aria. She really did her part well. And renegade Jennifer Hale was quite awesome to hear, even more than in ME.

[Gregorus Prime]

Personally I've never been able to get enough of Garrus's and Tali's voice acting. There's a lot of personality in them.

I'm also glad to see that Bioware is building a respectable pool of talent to draw from for their games. Claudia Black, Simon Templeman, Steve Blum, etc. are all great at what they do.

[Justme]

So you guys didn't find the magic black guy annoying. How? I swear the moment when he started whining about his lost daddy, I hit ctrl+alt+del, closed the game using the task manager and uninstalled it from my hard drive.

[Anonxeuix]

Erm, no?

What an over reaction!

[Justme]

Well, of course I didn't uninstall the  game just because of this one embarrassing moment. I kanda hated it from the start (well graphics and voice overs are really good but just about everything else feels sou much dumbed down that I felt like playing one of my little cousin's kiddie games which consist of randomly clicking on stuff to initiate all kinds of cool effects on the screen) but I really wanted to finish the game because well we're in the middle of the crisis and I can't afford as many games as I would like, so I sort of try to maximize the enjoyment I get from every game I buy.

 So I carried on through endless planet scanning and never ending cover-shoot-cover-shift+use one of your companions' supernatural power-shoot-cover-reload-shoot-all dead repeat in the next room battles, not to mention "dialogues", consisting of cinematic sequences that paused every now and then to allow the player to choose  whether they want to roleplay Richard Dean Anderson, Chuck Norris, or Max Paine in the next phase hoping that it'll get better or at least that the ending will be epic enough. Then my oh-so-fucking-tough crew members started moaning and whining like a bunch of pussies. "Boo boo my little twin sister is going to die, save her Shepard and I'll let you tap that genetically-altered, flawless ass.", "Shepard! Dude set us up! All my men died because of him. Go to some planet at the other side of the galaxy so I can get my revenge and stop being all emo", "ARRRRGH KILL, CRUSH, AAAAAARGHH Shepard blah blah blah go there-kill all dudes AAAARGH". For Christ sakes, Gaider, why the fuck do I have to go to so many fucking places and fight dozens of enemies just to get a retarded "loyalty bonus" which will make my companions a bit more effective in combat so I can kill yet more enemies to get to the end of the game. Why can't they just be committed to the task of saving the world and refrain from bothering me with their stupid errands? Flying around the galaxy, killing bad dudes without any connection to the main story line so a bunch of aliens will be my friends/let me fuck them is just not my idea of fun.

Anyway, after 5-6 hours I was almost done with it. I'd recruited most of my oh-so-unbelievably-diverse crew , flew all around the galaxy solving their problems, mined the fuck of many planets, bough many of the cool updates for my ship. I also got many of the worthless achievements. Then I realized I completely forgot about that noble, tough African American ex-marine always ready to sacrifice his life for the humanity even though the powers-that-be disappointed him so badly. My slut secretary("oh  Shepard you brought another fcked up alien on board! I'd so hump his furry penis tee-hee") kept telling me to go see him so go I did expecting another idiotic errand involving flying somewhere, killing more bad dudes. What I did not expect however was that he'd whine about his long lost daddy. I felt like puking while listening to his retarded pseudo-tough lines. Blah, blah, blah he left blah, blah, blah I forgot about him blah, blah, blah dead for me blah, blah, blah and on and on... Then the dialog paused again to let me choose how badass I want Shepard to behave in his reply to his future friend. But I already made my choice. I was done with this POS.