I'm playing through Mass Effect 1 for the first time on PC at the moment.

I'm now trying to figure out how much carry through to the 2nd game when you import your savegame. There is so much contradiction everywhere though. Specifically, i'm considering buying the second game on PS3 since it's the closest there is to a GOTY edition easily saving over 20$ over getting it for PC and buying the story DLCs. Even if it went back on sale for 5$ on Steam i'd still be more expensive for PC.

Do the 6 major choices that you get to make in the genesis comic represent the only major important choices that carry through? Are there any side quests you don't get access to or characters you can't recruit if you didn't do certain tasks in the first game or does every other smaller conversation choices and side quests in ME1 only affect minor dialogues and the likes in ME2?

Also what about the quality of the game itself on PS3. I know its a unreal 3 engine game so the improvements on PC are probably only the higher resolution and framerate. I'd still be great to have that though since my PC would easily run it at 60 fps at max setting. For third person shooters i don't really mind playing with a controller.

I lost my ME save before starting ME2.

Everything was wrong! Wrong romance, wrong choices. ME2 was still an awesome experience, but it was constantly grinding my gears.

When I got my hands on Genesis I redid ME2 (twise) and everything was so much better.

I cant comment on which version to get. I only play PC.

There are a lot of little hints and nods at things that you do in the first game. [edit: actually, http://masseffectsaves.com (not posting a direct link as it's full of spoilers for you) has a full list... let's say there's about 40-50 decisions that carry over]

Mass Effect 2 seems to be 20€, I assume that would be $20 as well - so not sure how you'd save $20 over that :)

A lot of stuff carries over but 90% of it is extremely minor. I can't imagine caring about anything not covered in that comic thing, but I guess that depends on the person.

@Pr1mus: If you want to have a genuine experience then I wouldn't bother with any of that. Just play how you want. If you're one of those who wants to see everything and have everything, then as @Mnemoidian: said, masseffectsaves.com has everything you need.

I checked the list of things that carry through as i don't really mind spoilers and i've been spoiled plenty over the years anyway. It really does look like it's only minor dialogues and emails and such that changes. So if the 6 major choices in the comic are the most important i could deal with not having my own savefile to import.

@Mnemoidian: The reason i would be saving over 20$ is the PS3 version includes all story DLCs except Arrival. The PC version doesn't have any and it's sold for the same 20$ as the PS3 version. 3 of them are 7$ and Shadow Broker is 10$.

Just pirate it; ME2 doesn't deserve your money. You can even buy another copy of ME1 to make yourself feel better!

@Pr1mus: the difference is really minor. An extra dialogue here there, romance thing but not really cause...well you'll see. At the end that feature was a huge let down.