the ending ruins the overall experience
first peeve is the port. not only do you miss carrying over a mass effect 1 character. it's one of the glitchest games i' own, i've experienced all kinds of unexplained madness. i climbed into walls and explored outside the playing area, over 20 times. random sounds and dialog will randomly play at 10% speed. everytime you swing the camera in one direction, there is always popins. you can detect item's and enemies threw the walls. sometimes it wont render someone speaking to you. one time i was walking along with no enemies in sight, then all of a sudden i'm in the sky and i drop down about a hundred feet. while i didn't experience any crashes, it has an outrageous lack of polish on an otherwise awesome game.
second peeve : the ending.(DONT WORRY NO SPOILERS) okay i haven't played mass effect 3, but knowing that it had such a huge backlash puzzled me when i finally finished mass effect 2. the entire game is get characters, gain loyalties, buy upgrades, and do the 'suicide mission'. the entire game in terms of the overall plot is get stuff for a final mission(which is known within the first 15 minutes of the game). so by hour 45, i had literally everything done and thensome. all of that work, for about 3 corridors of enemies and a few cutscenes. a 45hour buildup for a 25minute ending. compared to the original mass effect which had a awesome and lengthy last act, me2s just seems lacking. seriously, even the final boss is even a joke. I would have rated it like a 9.3 before beating it, it renders the entire experience pointless and lacks a sense of accomplishment.
stuff i liked? the voice acting, the characters, the atmosphere, the music, and the combat. all of it's top notch and the game is entertaining throughout. i think my issue with it is i was expecting more. the first game had better writing, and it also felt a bit more open ended. you could actually explore most planets in mass effect 1, in 2 you can explore maybe like 10 non-mission planets, all of which last for no more then ten minutes. however, ME2 is faster paced and controls a lot better.
overall, well if you're going to play the mass effect series, the second one is a must. for ps3, its worth the 20 dollars i guess. if you have a pc/360, play the series in order. an advantage of the ps3 verison is written on the cover, over 6 hours of bonus content. it adds more to the game, but a lot of it like the firewalker missions just suck.