mothra on 2/2/2010 at 15:32

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shields are down in less than a second, they are the weakest protection, after that you can apply almost all powers, if you freeze an armored enemy you CAN use biotics on it.

I don't do micromanagement, I play the game in realtime, keyboard ftw ! I do above "micros" with the push of 3 buttons, not that hard I think, just put your squads powers on the quickslots.

As an adept I am better off than with a gun since I have to leave cover which means on insane almost instadeath with the boss. you need firing pauses to change cover, not to fire back. this is what you do from safety or you have to use medigel all 20seconds on insane, you have to draw the bosses' fire or your mates will die instantly. I played as an adept which means that I myself do almost NO shooting, my mates do and it did not elongate the fight anymore than when I did it as a soldier and just used the collector beam while hopping in / out of cover. took the same time imo and was much more boring than to zip around and fling powers around corners. the game is not so hardcore as to make it totally impossible to break a defense with the wrong power, it just less effective. and using the warp explosion does serious damage and holds off the smaller enemies. well, everybody got their own style, I just don't see how the game got worse with the different barriers, imo it got exceptionally good and is really, really well balanced and encourages different playstyles. If you just wanna spam powers you have to play on normal/veteran. Adept is a good class, it's just not that overpowered as in ME1 imo.

mothra on 3/2/2010 at 15:07

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I just love Samara, Jack and Grunt as my mates. they alternate in fights between:
"I will KILL you ALL", "embrace eternity" and my favorite "bloodraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaage", everytime you hear him shout this, be quick to follow because he willl get killed soon if left alone ;)

Best characters arcs imo are Thane and Samara. But then again, while still typical Bioware plotting and charactering this is the best iteration of it since KOTOR. this game beats everything else BIOWARE did, it's the masterclass. bow down in awe.
(never thought I'd say that about an Bioware game)

Judith on 3/2/2010 at 15:22

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I've been playing the game for about 5 hours and I haven't seen anything that Bioware hasn't done yet. The graphics and loading times/texture popping has been addressed, the design and lightning is beaufitful as always, voice acting is great. But the plot and the gameplay, eh... I really liked the game mechanics in ME 1, just hated the mini-games, but those were optional. Now I need to play mini-games to make progress with upgrades, weapons somehow now use ammo clips (yeah, I know the bullshit about the cooling system), and I feel like I'm playing CoD in KOTOR environments designed up to date (Horizon is Dantoine, Omega is Taris, etc.). Still enjoying it, but much less than the first game, at least for now.

Jason Moyer on 3/2/2010 at 16:09

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Yeah, I wish Bioware had developed the PC version of ME1 concurrently with the 360 version instead of farming it out to someone. I'm finishing up an ME1 replay right now since I never back up my savegames and it is maybe the worst port ever, maybe not as bad as GTA4 on release but certainly not as good as GTA4 after some patches.

foldy on 4/2/2010 at 02:33

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My computer is three years old now, and this game runs beautifully on it -- maxed out.

This is probably my favorite Bioware game -- BUT -- there's a total lack of variety here, and I find I'm only able to play it in short spurts. Every quest boils down to going to some facility and shooting everything that moves, and the battles themselves get old after a while, because they're awfully samey. Some enemies are a little more resilient or aggresive than others, but I want to see more variety on the battlefield. Also, I thought I'd be glad to see the vehicle portions gone, but now I'm kind of wanting them back just for the sake of doing something different.

I was initially pretty open-minded about the streamlining of RPG elements, but they went too far with it, I think, as they did in the past with Jade Empire. It's pretty ridiculous that I've been able to completely ignore buying any upgrades in the way of armor or research -- I mean, literally, I've not spent a single credit or resource on anything, and I was still breezing through the game to the point where I had to up the difficulty setting to Veteran. I really am digging the general vibe of the game and enjoy playing it, but Bioware continues to frustrate me, and I feel this is just one of those examples of taking a few steps forward and some backward.