So I've gotten a few missions done... rescued a trio of assistants so far (I don't count zaeed among them since you don't rescue him, you freaking fall over him) and gotten about 8 hours under my belt.
Purty.. so so purty... This game is gorgeous. The revamped Normandy is fun to explore. The new planet mining thing is... different. Easier than ME1's finding random cache's of metals, but more time consuming in the end. I just got an upgrade to that though which will hopefully make it easier.
The characters are amazing. Morton and SuZe are my favorites (note, so far I've only gotten those two plus Zaeed and Archangel). Morton because he's more ruthless than you'd expect, and SuZe because... well, she's a LOT more ruthless than you'd expect. And you set your ruthless bar pretty high to start with for her. But under all the tattoos and lack of hair, she's still human. Maybe. I think. It remains to be seen.
The controls take a little getting used to, and if you played ME1 a couple times, you will die a lot in the first few missions. This scenario happened to me countless times: I'd get into a fight and behind cover, want to switch weapons, and by habit hit the spacebar. In ME1 this brings up your screen to change weapons and select your parties powers. In ME2, spacebar will put you behind cover. Or if you are already behind cover, you'll stand up and face your enemies, and they love you for it. All you'll hear is "zotzotzotTWOOM" and when the missle hits you, your screen goes red and you'll be taking a nice little dirt nap.
However, stick with it, your mistakes and deaths will teach you soon enough what not to do. And once you've got the combat system under your belt, it is a whole heck of a lot smoother than ME1's. You can still map powers to your 1-8 keys, but the neat thing is you can also map your squadmates powers. If you want them to overload an enemy, you don't actually have to pause if you have their power mapped. Just hit the key it's mapped to with the target selected and they'll throw it off immediately. Very very handy.
I'm still trying to pick out the 'loyalty' system, how to get your squadmates to open up and really like you. Haven't gotten to far into that yet, but knowing how Bioware RPGs work, they'll come in their own sweet time.
The interrupt system works very well, and adds an interesting level to the whole cutscene. I find myself doing some renegade cutscenes even though I run a paragon Shepard, but it doesn't feel out of place. Everyone looses patience eventually, right?
So all in all I'm really enjoying it and would recommend it to anybody who likes a good shooter, or a good RPG. It's well balanced, just when you're starting to get bored at all the chatting they throw in some 'ohshit' moment battles, and when you need to give your trigger finger a rest they put in some good exposition. A real epic and I can't wait to get back to it tomorrow.
Purty.. so so purty... This game is gorgeous. The revamped Normandy is fun to explore. The new planet mining thing is... different. Easier than ME1's finding random cache's of metals, but more time consuming in the end. I just got an upgrade to that though which will hopefully make it easier.
The characters are amazing. Morton and SuZe are my favorites (note, so far I've only gotten those two plus Zaeed and Archangel). Morton because he's more ruthless than you'd expect, and SuZe because... well, she's a LOT more ruthless than you'd expect. And you set your ruthless bar pretty high to start with for her. But under all the tattoos and lack of hair, she's still human. Maybe. I think. It remains to be seen.
The controls take a little getting used to, and if you played ME1 a couple times, you will die a lot in the first few missions. This scenario happened to me countless times: I'd get into a fight and behind cover, want to switch weapons, and by habit hit the spacebar. In ME1 this brings up your screen to change weapons and select your parties powers. In ME2, spacebar will put you behind cover. Or if you are already behind cover, you'll stand up and face your enemies, and they love you for it. All you'll hear is "zotzotzotTWOOM" and when the missle hits you, your screen goes red and you'll be taking a nice little dirt nap.
However, stick with it, your mistakes and deaths will teach you soon enough what not to do. And once you've got the combat system under your belt, it is a whole heck of a lot smoother than ME1's. You can still map powers to your 1-8 keys, but the neat thing is you can also map your squadmates powers. If you want them to overload an enemy, you don't actually have to pause if you have their power mapped. Just hit the key it's mapped to with the target selected and they'll throw it off immediately. Very very handy.
I'm still trying to pick out the 'loyalty' system, how to get your squadmates to open up and really like you. Haven't gotten to far into that yet, but knowing how Bioware RPGs work, they'll come in their own sweet time.
The interrupt system works very well, and adds an interesting level to the whole cutscene. I find myself doing some renegade cutscenes even though I run a paragon Shepard, but it doesn't feel out of place. Everyone looses patience eventually, right?
So all in all I'm really enjoying it and would recommend it to anybody who likes a good shooter, or a good RPG. It's well balanced, just when you're starting to get bored at all the chatting they throw in some 'ohshit' moment battles, and when you need to give your trigger finger a rest they put in some good exposition. A real epic and I can't wait to get back to it tomorrow.