I love the series, and Mass Effect 2 is one of only three games I have where I got every achievement. I think everyone feels like the game is just dumping info on them in the beginning. You definitely have to be in a relaxed mood until you leave the Citadel, because the game moves at a snail's pace while you're there (especially if you try to do every quest in one go), meanwhile dumping tons of info into your codex that characters will frequently reference.

And Knyte, I know it's the general consensus among the PC crowd (who aren't happy unless the instruction manual is big enough to have its own shelf and every single key is mapped), but I think Mass Effect 2 was better in terms of action, gameplay, and yes, even story. It's mostly decried for being more limited than ME1, but I think that was a product of two things:

-If you do all of the exploration in Mass Effect 1, do you really want to have to do it again in ME2? The exploration bits serve as a good way of framing the size of the universe for future installments
-ME1 felt unfocused, story-wise. The size of the galaxy caught up to the narrative, creating a lot of disjointed main and secondary quests, but it did a good job of creating a threat that will be fought in future installments. ME2 focused the plot, and pushed you a long a tighter path, rarely straying from the overarching story.

I will admit that the hub system is a stupid idea (even the elevators in ME1 kept things flowing smoothly), and that while it was great to see the talents and attributes streamlined, they were overly simplified, but the size of my post shows how much I love the series, and am looking forward to ME3.

Beach Bum wrote:

I feel like the first one is better story-wise than the second personally. The combat is smoother in the second one but the story felt a lot weaker to me. Also the hours of scanning planets got tedious while you tried to get some of the upgrades in the second one. I'll definitely play the third one but I'm hoping the story is a little more enjoyable like the first one. I actually felt like I was saving the universe in the first, the second didn't really give me that feel of "Wow if I hadn't been here we'd have been fucked!"

I'll give that the plot in the first one was better, but I feel like the second game's was told better (if that makes sense). ME2's plot just felt like an excuse to stretch it into a third installment, while ME1's plot just did not pick up until the Virmire mission for me. If I could wish that ME2's story was different, I'd dump characters like (spoilers for those who haven't played it) Samara and Thane (both of them were just like "eh, got nothing better to do, guess I'll just save humanity"), and spend time developing Legion and the Geth civil war a little better, while maybe engaging the actual Reapers more into the plot.

SoldierHawk wrote:

This is a good place to ask--can you explore planets' surfaces like you could in ME1? I know a ton of people made fun of it, but dammit, I loved going down and driving around the surfaces of alien worlds. ME2 didn't take that away did they?

There is no planet exploring similar to ME1's. I liked it to an extent, as well (making some of the planets impossible to maneuver around in was a dick move, though), even though the missions were very repetitive. It just gave the universe a nice scale. In ME2, you can only do this scanning thing where you drag a reticle over the planet, and fire a probe to get various resources that you use for upgrades. There are occasional one-off missions, but they feel more unique per mission than they did in ME1.

bitwise wrote:

tl;dr: IMHO the games tell a great story, but have a lot of mediocre elements. You could safely watch LPs instead of buying and spending the time playing through the whole things and not miss much.

The only LP I watched was this one, where the goal was to basically cram as much mods and console trickery into it until the game finally exploded: