A satisfying second installment.
The gameplay changes pace in combat a little, but overall it's a pretty similar experience to the first game. The ability to more effectively micromanage your teammates is great, however. The first games teammate ai was pretty much crap, and most players just ignored the teammates and left them on auto skill usage, as I did. However, I greatly enjoyed being able to manually control the more streamlined skill sets of my team playing through on hardcore first time, as it was almost required. Not having the higher difficulties locked out was a blessing for me, as i don't like a game that doesn't kill me now and then. The biotic abilities have been streamlined in a pleasant way, allowing for a very effective adept experience, in a very cover heavy combat experience.
The other greatest difference in the game is the exploration, which has been basically reduced to a silly minigame in the second... merely a different flavour than the first. In the first, the exploration was nearly pointless other than for a little extra experience, as the loot was never really worth the time spent driving up mountains. The resource scanning was an interesting idea in the newest installment, but it feels like they failed to put in enough rewarding "hidden" content and/or rewards for actually doing it. The player can get away with probing for hardly any of the available resources and still upgrade everything.
All in all though, what has always drawn me to spend my time in this developing series, is the story.. which is wonderful as always, and will not disappoint. A satisfying expansion to the mass effect universe, can't wait to live out the rest.
8/10