Ok so I took a break from playing Skyrim. I'm a horrible person and deserve to die, I know. I was getting a bit burnt out from the game.

Anyways, I decided to go back to playing ME2 (PS3 version) and I'm a bit disappointed that some of the rpg elements such as the leveling system were taken out of the game and instead the game became a third person shooter. Now don't get me wrong I'm still enjoying the game, but I'm not feeling the whole let's make it a shooter and focus on that. I feel like that's not Mass Effects style.

Anyone else annoyed by this?

@mac_n_nina:

You're kinda late to this particular party.

yes

TPS? I don't know what game you're playing, but the Mass Effect 2 I played was nothing but a dating sim with a few combat sections in between.

@Tennmuerti: ya i know I'm way late to this party

I just started playing the game and i've had it since launch on 360 for some reason I did the same thing with the original

Yep. Very disappointed. It's why ME1 will most likely remain the best in the franchise. From what I see of ME3 they are going even further down the "Gears of War" route. So stupid and unnecessary. ME1 was unique. ME2, not so much.

@xyzygy: That's typical EA. I knew that it would be bad news for Bioware fans the second that EA bought them. Just look at what they did to Dragon Age.

Yes. I liked really liked ME2, but the first one was better.

Eh, I just miss the RPG trappings the most. The series was always a Third Person Shooter, but it had some really cool RPG elements in it that made it seem like an RPG. If they brought back a lot of that stuff that let you upgrade your character in a deeper way, it'd be fine. It's still fine, but just not that re-playable to me.

It wasn't a bad game because of it, but it certainly felt less like Mass Effect to me.
 
There's just this sense of scale to ME1, something was so addicting and impressive about it.
I finished ME1 28 times and still I want to play something like it again.

Yeah, they made changes that weren't necessary. I was actually replaying these games, and I'm around the middle of mass effect 2. I played Mass Effect 1, 3 times and really liked how overpowered the Adept became. It was a delight seeing my singularity flinging around a dozen mercs. In ME2 you have that universal cool down timer, which gets better but I really like just casting warp, singularity, lift, stasis and push right after each other, I was untouchable in ME1. I liked how I began as a weakling in ME1, but eventually became a badass capable of hitting things miles away with an assault rifle that never overheated,

Also the party members have like 4 skills in ME2 compared to the large amount they had in ME1.

NO, YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE, LIKE EVER

I pretty much played ME1 as a TPS, so no.

To me the change between the two games was playing a bad third person shooter to playing a competent third person shooter.

I don't remember ME2 as much as I do ME1, but that's probably got nothing to do with the gameplay. The end of ME1 was just better.

I agree with you though. I also missed grenades.

Here I come with the unpopular opinion. I enjoyed the combat in ME2 a lot more than ME1. RPG style combat combined with guns can be an awkward combination, especially in real-time. ME2's just felt more gratifying to me.

No I really liked it, but it would have been fine as a traditional rpg too

I'm not disappointed that the combat went from a clunky hybrid tps/diceroll system to something much more enjoyable, but yes, Bioware streamlined the character customisation elements too far.

@Nottle said:

Yeah, they made changes that weren't necessary. I was actually replaying these games, and I'm around the middle of mass effect 2. I played Mass Effect 1, 3 times and really liked how overpowered the Adept became. It was a delight seeing my singularity flinging around a dozen mercs. In ME2 you have that universal cool down timer, which gets better but I really like just casting warp, singularity, lift, stasis and push right after each other, I was untouchable in ME1. I liked how I began as a weakling in ME1, but eventually became a badass capable of hitting things miles away with an assault rifle that never overheated,

Also the party members have like 4 skills in ME2 compared to the large amount they had in ME1.

I hated that about ME1. When you're throwing everyone in the sky and then blasting them with a shotgun, it gets boring, as ridiculous as that sounds. And the vanguard upgrades from 1 to 2 were amazing. Being able to just fly into people and then just blast them was awesome.

@Willin said:

To me the change between the two games was playing a bad third person shooter to playing a competent third person shooter.

This is essentially my stance on it, too. I do miss some of the more traditional RPG-like trappings of the first game, but ME2 was still very much an RPG, even with some aspects simplified. The series was always a TPS with RPG elements, so making the shooting aspect of it actually competent is not a negative but a positive. From what I've seen so far, ME3 is going to be increasing the amount of customization again, so in that regard it should be closer to ME1, but with the competent gunplay still intact.

ME2 is a better game. Better combat. Better side missions. Customizing and coloring armor was more satisfying than all the time-consuming item management/deletion that was required in ME1. There are fewer options for abilities but all of those options are better realized and more focused. ME2 looks a lot better as well.

Yes.

No, because they took Mass Effect and made the broken half of the game work.

ME2 is a better game. Better combat. Better side missions. Customizing and coloring armor was more satisfying than all the time-consuming item management/deletion that was required in ME1. There are fewer options for abilities but all of those options are better realized and more focused. ME2 looks a lot better as well.

@xyzygy said:

Yep. Very disappointed. It's why ME1 will most likely remain the best in the franchise. From what I see of ME3 they are going even further down the "Gears of War" route. So stupid and unnecessary. ME1 was unique. ME2, not so much.

As much jank as the first Mass Effect had, it was a really good RPG. In the second Mass Effect, they more or less turned the leveling system into a kiddie-button. The free-exploration that ME1 had just didn't seem as expansive in ME2... I didn't mind the moon-rover driving around on a planets either... as barren and same-ole as each planet was, it was still more free than ME2 was. ME2 was very direct going from location to location. And the biggest disappointment was that the story of ME2 was nowhere as good as the first game. ME2 just was more or less a recruitment game instead of an actual story.

Not particularly, it's a better playing game than anything BioWare released before and RPG minutiae of dice rolls and stats bore me to tears. ME2 is fantastic, the simplification of it into a TPS made the gameplay bearable when ME1 was a chore

Just because the upgrade and level-up system are more streamlined doesn't mean it's not a roleplaying game.

@DuderMcBrohan said:

@Nottle said:

Yeah, they made changes that weren't necessary. I was actually replaying these games, and I'm around the middle of mass effect 2. I played Mass Effect 1, 3 times and really liked how overpowered the Adept became. It was a delight seeing my singularity flinging around a dozen mercs. In ME2 you have that universal cool down timer, which gets better but I really like just casting warp, singularity, lift, stasis and push right after each other, I was untouchable in ME1. I liked how I began as a weakling in ME1, but eventually became a badass capable of hitting things miles away with an assault rifle that never overheated,

Also the party members have like 4 skills in ME2 compared to the large amount they had in ME1.

I hated that about ME1. When you're throwing everyone in the sky and then blasting them with a shotgun, it gets boring, as ridiculous as that sounds. And the vanguard upgrades from 1 to 2 were amazing. Being able to just fly into people and then just blast them was awesome.

I disagree. Fighting on on of those big open planets then seeing a krogan that would have given me crap earlier in the game and just using lift plus an assault rifle on him to launch him in the air so far he just disappears is very satisfying.

Also any of those stock warehouses in the game could be taken down with singularity alone.

Playing 2 after playing ME1 with an OP adept with an assault rifle is just kind of boring. Sure the aiming is "better" right off the bat, but an assault rifle that I always have to reload and that gets less accurate when I shoot it isn't as interesting as what ME1 did.

@mac_n_nina: the inventory management and levelling up were handled horribly so I dont miss them. Strange that such a good RPG company could make such a mess. The shooting was terrible, but they knew shooting sold units so they had to focus on that,

The parts of Mass Effect 1 I prefer is the heavy blue color scheme, the film grain, and ... That's about it. Having 50 levels is better than 30, I suppose. Spending skill points in social skills rather than having them level up based on which ones you favor is kind of dumb. Powers weren't balanced at all. I maybe preferred increasing each members specific gun skills individually rather than buying entire squad upgrades (at the same time, less micromanaging the better). Remember how Shepard's gun wheel always had weapons she couldn't use? How stupid was that?

@McGhee said:

ME2 is a better game. Better combat. Better side missions. Customizing and coloring armor was more satisfying than all the time-consuming item management/deletion that was required in ME1. There are fewer options for abilities but all of those options are better realized and more focused. ME2 looks a lot better as well.

I think ME1 is the better game. The heavier focus on combat in ME2 hurt the experience - because the combat was still not good enough and the level design was formulaic and boring (cover blocks placed everywhere, those also gave away enemy encounters from a mile away... this wasn't as prevalant in the first game). Also, the game lost the sense of scope by cutting out the Mako planet exploration (the probe stuff replacement was way more boring). It just didn't feel as epic.

edit: I liked the relaxed space-opera vibe in ME1 also better than the more "egdy" and dark vibe in ME2.

I thought you meant

Anyone else a bit disappointed that ME2 turned into THPS?

and I was gonna be all like "No I don't remember that at all but it sounds awesome!"

@Ravenlight said:

I thought you meant

Anyone else a bit disappointed that ME2 turned into THPS?

and I was gonna be all like "No I don't remember that at all but it sounds awesome!"

It was on-disc DLC, not advertised. You must have missed it.

Nope. It eclipsed the first so much so that I just simply can't play the original.
 
Plus it is my favourite game of this generation.

@mac_n_nina: I'm not mad about the shooting getting better but I was disappointed that they felt the need to remove so much of the stuff that I feel is really important in an RPG.

It's kind of a split for me. On the one hand I do miss the heavier rpg customization elements with the wide breadth of skills when leveling up, but in ME2 I feel like they made all of the classes a lot more interesting with the new abilities. Really made the classes distinct from each other, so that's cool.

Yep and that's the main reason I don't like it, I feel like its just a sub-par third-person shooter.

Yes.  
No matter the story, situation, setting, characters etc, every fucking mission became an hour-long, chest-high wall shoot-fest.  
Fuck.  

I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume you never played Mass Effect. ME2 does have better shooting mechanics, but there is no more or less of it than there was in the first game. Sure, it doesn't have the clunky inventory management system, which I missed for a while, but it makes up for it with a better dialogue system and overall character development than the original.

Anyway, TPS is not a genre of game, it is merely a perspective from which you play a game with guns, and there ain't nothing wrong with that. MGS is a TPS, so is Resident Evil, so is Dead Space, so is Uncharted and none of those games are even remotely alike other than the perspective you have on your protagonist.

No, because the shooting in the first one was horrible.

@phish09: I have played ME. I actually beat it twice.

No, it felt smoother and less janky.

I would however like the return of a bit more RPG elements.

Which is what ME3 is bringing us. No complaints.

@mac_n_nina: Then you should know that all the shooting in that game was also from the third person perspective. Maybe ME2 has a bit more third-person shooting, but that's only because it doesn't have all those janky Mako sequences, which is definitely a plus imho.

@phish09: My problem with it is that you can tell they made it into a gears/uncharted clone because more than likely EA forced them into it to jack up sales.

@mac_n_nina: You're insane. The only thing it has in common with Gears or Uncharted is that the combat is actually really visceral and interesting in this game...other than that it is just an evolution of Mass Effect.

Mass Effect had a better story, but aside from that, Mass Effect 2 was better in pretty much every way.

Yeah I am. The gunplay is just as awful as the first game, only in a different way.

The first one felt like they just tried to shoehorn in all the KOTOR mechanics into a TPS. Some worked some didn't. They took out the ones that didn't work in ME2.

I loved Mass Effect and I loved Mass Effect 2. So where do I stand?