Mass Effect 2 Posted by TurboPhoenix , Sunday, February 7, 2010 at 4:55 PM, in Labels: Impressions

So for the past few days I've been totally absorbed in Mass Effect 2. It finally arrived from EBs online store... 6 days after it was released! For a pre-order, that's very poor... won't be pre-ordering from there again, I should have just dealt with the crappy salespeople. But whatever, it arrived intact and sealed so I'm not too annoyed.

First of all, I gotta say it is a brilliant game. All the reviews I've read have said it was a total improvement from the original, and it is. There were a few different things that I had to get used to, but after a couple of hours I didn't even notice those. The story is better, even though it is, at times, painfully linear. The character interactions were a surprise to me. I knew they would be in there, but it just seems like they are a gigantic step up from the first game. The characters themselves are also more interesting than the first game, and the character loyalty missions add more depth to them too.

The weapons system has been simplified... almost too much so. Now you only get 2 of each weapon, except for the few character specific weapons and heavy weapons. Gone are the weapon stats, finding new weapons everywhere and having to compare them to your current ones. I thought that only being able to change your weapons around  once or twice a mission would be a pain, but you never need to change anyway. It's disappointing, but it's only a minor part of the game overall.

As a whole: 10/10!