Wonderful characters, excellent environments, exciting action. But is there more to the story here?
That would be my greatest complaint if it pans out to be true. While the characters are for the most part interesting and their back stories creative and original, playing an entire game that is mostly team assembly and resource hunting isn't that fun. It's repetitive.
Basically this is how the majority of the game has proceeded thus far: Recruit team member. Talk to team member to get personal quest. Head to system. Scan planets (ugh). Perform personal quest. Upgrade team member. Rinse and Repeat this 10 times.
And yes some of the personal quests are really good ... Garrus' springs to mind. Dr. Solus is hilarious (get him to sing). Fighting the thresher maw is really exciting. While others, like Thane Krios' are just awful. His was especially disappointing because his character seemed so interesting.
I also don't quite know who thought that spending time scanning planet after planet for resources was fun. It's diverting, distracting and time consuming. Even after you get all the ship upgrades to expedite the process it still takes too much time to scan each planet. It is somewhat necessary too, since element zero is so hard to come by and is required for nearly all of the biotic upgrades.
Graphically the environments are much more varied and are well suited to their specific goal. The music is very good and the voice acting is excellent. The writing and dialogue do have their ups and downs though. Thus far, the story has been very good and had some truly surprising moments. And in story mode the lines are well suited and well delivered. The relationship lines however are still groan worthy. Like Lucas' dialogue in the Star Wars prequels, the romance scenes are really awkward and I have to wonder if the developers really think that people relate and speak to each other in this way.
The combat has been improved and is far and away the best part of the game. Although on the normal setting it is a bit easy. Setting way points for your team mates, calling up and using biotics or special ammo during combat and using the surrounding obstructions to your advantage is very intuitive and lots of fun. The enemy AI is pretty good although they will occasionally run right into your gunfire. Also, I have found if you don't direct your team mates to some degree, they are prone to not staying in cover. It's disappointing to watch a team mate standing in the open trading gunfire with a Krogan at close range.
If you've played the first game, having the ability to import your character (or characters) is a great feature. And your previous decisions really do impact on some of the character interactions and conversations you have in game. If you choose to do so, I think starting off with Mass Effect 2 will make the game less fun as you will have less of a connection with returning characters and locations and as such some of the events that take place will have less meaning. That said, playing straight off from Mass Effect 2 will still yield an enjoyable game.
Overall, I am happy with the game. But I do have concerns that the main story will be far too short for my taste. Hopefully that won't be the case and there will be as much to the story as there has been to building my team. We shall see. I will update this review upon completion of the game.
Random tip: Feed your fish.
Edit (added): Finished the game recently and unfortunately as I expected there isn't too much more to the game after you complete the assembly and upgrading of your team. Unless you have some strange desire to explore the systems you didn't have any reason to visit – which hardly seems worth the time and/or effort.
You meet one more team mate very late in the game who, while interesting has hardly any impact on the game itself. And sadly, much can be said for any of your team members. I found that it didn't matter at all who I brought with me on any given mission. I usually took the same two every time. And I suspect most people will do the same -- find 2 characters they particularly like and take them on missions most of the time. Sure if you want you can switch it up, but like I said, it makes virtually no difference who you take with you on any given mission. And that ultimately detracts on the point of recruiting and upgrading them in the first place. Although I suspect that if you haven't upgraded their loyalties at the end of the game, it may dramatically change how many team mates you lose during the final mission.
That said, the final missions are exciting, but again they are a bit too easy. The final fight was easier than some of the random encounters – even on the hard difficulty.
Finally, I would recommend this game to most people, but I would warn them ahead of time to not expect much from the plot. This game is 75% recruiting and resource scanning. Hopefully ME3 will have a greater focus on the story and less on recruitment.