A could be 10 just has too many flaws
The Good
- The universe of Mass Effect is very immersing and amazing
- Cool story and decent setup for sequels
- Creative races and characters and locations
- Cutscenes are epic, especially the latter ones
- Dense amounts of information about explorable planets
- Good dialogue system. The good versus evil "power" selections in dialogue are very inventive and are a great add in
- Romance subplot
- Ability to get to know pretty much every important character in the game pretty well through dialogue
- The main mission environments
-Character creation
-Ability to replay with the same character and keeping stats and inventory is a genius move
-Different character types add great replayability
-Beautiful graphics compliment the beautiful environments
The Bad
-This game feels like the devs were really ambitious, and then they just got lazy and called it quits and as an effect, the game is deceptively shallow. Many planets are identical, all "dungeons" and hideouts are identical, places like Noveria's port and the Citadel are VERY small environments compared to how they realistically should be.
-Its curious that, with how advanced the races are, and man, being much further behind the other races and yet still very advanced, that there are only 3 or 4 settlements in other galaxies and Earth and the Citadel both have unbelievably tiny populations compared to what they should logically be.
- Money has no value
- Weapons lack variety, and after you get the best weapons 3/4 of the way through money becomes obsolete and the aspect of improving weaponry is gone. This follows through multiple game plays. Weapons that top at X should go to 30.
-Effects on bullets, weapons, armor, etc. should make more drastic differences and add different abilities. As is, they don't affect strategy and don't make any kind of difference.
- The tank is a really bad version of the Warthog.
-Annoying glitches that will frustrate you, like getting out of your vehicle on a slope and not being able to get back to your ship.
-Boss fights lack anything creative or challenging, simply just shooting the boss
-Achievements are brutally annoying and require AT LEAST 3 playthroughs which include exploring every nuance. Each playthrough exploring everything takes at least 30 hours, and when half of that goes to driving around on barren and uninteresting landscapes, it is very cumbersome
-the races of the Hanar, Elcor, and little dudes are introduced early in the game and then completely abandoned after the first 3 or so hours.
-Trading is the biggest flaw of this game. they make markets but everyone sells the same thing! Make specialty stores and sell things not required for the player. Also, don't make us enter dialogue everytime we want to trade!
-the shield ability of enemies on harder difficulties is unnecessary and utterly annoying, it shouldnt take 1 mintue to kill an enemy when you are at point blank pumping him full of shotgun lead
I would hope that for 2, they let the player travel to fewer locations, but detail those locations to the fullest. Get rid of the planet exploration if you are going to half *** it. Add depth, let us see the home worlds of other important races (Hanar would be sweet). Add more weapons and abilities. Eliminate lag and glitches and create a smoother experience
The game devs are certainly capable of making a perfect 10 for Mass Effect 2, they just need to commit and realize their flaws, all of which can be corrected with work.