A lot of improvements and fun, but what happened to the story?
In Mass Effect 2 I was definitely curious to see what was the reason behind the disappearance of the human colonies but when I got to the final conclusion it felt like BioWare ran out of creative juice. SPOILER!!!...I felt as if the explanation of the creation of how the Reapers take the most advance qualities in a species to upgrade themselves was rushed and not explained well. This also goes for the humanoid Reaper. It just seemed like it was the easy way to end the game. It looked like a huge Terminator so design wise it wasn't outstanding, but again the explanation and build up to it seemed to fall short for me. Kidnap humans for genes to make big scary human robot. I mean come on. I haven't taken the time to think of other ways it could have ended better but I am sure that there were better options.
While it may seem like I am a little upset, I did enjoy this game a lot. The graphics were greatly improved, and the new interruption aspect in the dialog added some more freedom to decision making. While this is not new I still think that one of my favorite elements of Mass Effect is interacting with others in the game. It is so innovative and it does such an effective job of making me care about what I do.
I thought it was amazing how BioWare was able to carry your original character from the first game over to the second and further more give the sense that your actions do effect the Mass Effect universe. I also felt for the most part as if BioWare paid careful attention to the different type of classes that your character could be. I only played as an Adept, so I am not certain how the other classes turned out, but I found the Adept to be quite balanced and fun to play as. To take the game further BioWare upgraded the combat system so it is now faster and more frequent. The diverse amount of side quests / loyalty mission served as an effective way to care about your crew and to suck players into the Mass Effect world. However probing for minerals was tedious. Customizing the armor was a nice feature, but I felt as if there weren't a lot of selections of armor and weapons. I either sucked hardcore and didn't find a lot of new things to purchase, but in the end I only ended up with pretty much 2 types of each weapon except for the heavy weapons where I got 5 different types. I just wished there were more weapons and armor to choose from.
Overall I had a blast playing this game. I admire how BioWare really paid attention to what fans had to say and tried their best to make changes to improve the game. However the story was just not as strong as the first Mass Effect.