Frustrating mix of good and bad
The good:
- great graphics and looking alive locations
- one of the best story seen in years with cutscenes to match the emotional impact
- fluid, alert and nasty combat situations. The powers had been downsized and share a universal cooldown, but this is more fun. You`re not supposed to jump straigth into enemy lines and survive heavy fire like in ME1.
- huge background information about technology, species, weapons, etc.
- stable engine
The bad:
- no more looting and direct weapon/armor customization, a bad choice for a RPG. Also, there is not enough diversity when acquiring pieces for defence and combat, including guns, armor and mods.
- long loading screens
- running inside the ship to heal companion`s emotional scars get cumbersome after a while. We are on a military ship, make them come to Shepard.
- they spent around 125 billion credits on Project Lazarus and Normandy 2, but refuse to give Shepard a mission fund. As such, you are obligated to bypass, scavenge, hack whenever possible for `huge` rewards (I got a safe wall with 125 credits once. It really saved the day !)
- Paragon points for lies and violence (!?)
- every NPC is cold, even your companions sometimes. The only ones alive enough were the doctor, after a shot of brandy, Conrad and the asari matriarch bartender from Eternity, Nos Astra.
- boring minigames like planet scanning, bypass and hack
- Esc as menu is always a bad choice. Make Enter the default key
- you don`t exit the stations/planets to Normandy. Instead, the ship is leaving, making the comeback another lost time.
- no easy acces to companion levelling and weapon swap
- NO SAVE GAME INSIDE A MISSION. This is the least FPS desirable point in a RPG, because Autosave it`s not good enough.
I believe ME2 is slightly better than ME1, but a lot of work should be invested in a more intuitive and fast gameplay.