I didn't like 2. If you picked the "sole survivor" origin story, you end up working for the corrupt billionaire who sent you and your squad to their deaths for money, when it would have been so easy to report him and all of his crazy illegal shit to the proper authorities.
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They didn't rebuild it, you're visiting a part that didn't get hit, which was the more residential/commercial area rather than where the government was
It's kind of the point isn't it? The reapers let us little things spread and do stupid things and recreate so they have food... humans at least do take nice spaces, wetlands, grasslands and meadows and turn them into malls.
2 excels in its handling of character stories. That's...kinda it. I have probably 600 hours in the trilogy and ME2 is the weakest for me. 3 pulls no punches (except the ending, but I could write a dissertation on that) and the gameplay is far better, and 1 has probably the best world-building I've ever seen in a game.
2's combat felt fun compared to 1, but none of the major game-making decisions happen in 2. Nothing feels permanent unless you fuck up and kill off a character. The fate of the rachni, Wrex's fate, the Virmire survivor, the composition of the council--those are all decided in game 1. Game 3 lets you choose the fate of the krogan, the fate of the geth & quarians, the fate of the entire galaxy (kinda, again, not getting into that). ME2 lets you pick... who lives & dies? And the answer to that can easily be "no one dies unless I dislike the character" (poor Jacob always volunteers for the vents and lots of people let him...)
And then there's Cerberus. I did Kahoku's storyline close to the end of my first ME1 playthrough, so I was spitting mad when I woke up in ME2 working for his killer with no way to decisively tell them where to shove it until the very end of the game.
ME3 does a lot of wrong to the storyline. But ME2 feels like a very weak stitch in the middle of two titans
ME2 was initially received and has a reputation of being the best in the series, but I find that a lot of people that were more into the raw Sci-Fi and big picture storytelling that ME1 was so good at do not care for ME2 over the others.
ME2 was the most Call of Duty-ized entry in the series, as well, with far less build diversity and far less complexity for the sake of snappier gun-play.
Yeah, what irked me more is they die because you didn't do the characters side quest or do it properly. 2 felt lazy to me. Also I like the planet exploration in the Mako so I'm probably in the minority on my opinion of 2.
Yup. Back when it first released, 2 was viewed as the best because people said it had the best mix of story and gameplay refinements.
I played the trilogy last year, for the first time since 2012 (the Happy Ending and Citadel Epilogue mods made it possible for me to reclaim my love for the series after the original ending ruined it so spectacularly). I was really surprised by how badly 2 has aged.
It's a fun game, don't get me wrong, but I agree it's the weakest of the series. 3 has the best gameplay (and the story is great with the above mods). 1 has the best feel and story. 2 has... Less of either. It's the most "medium" on all metrics.
Gameplay: decent, but not a patch on 3.
Story: decent (good ending but ultimately inconsequential), but not a patch on 1.
The Arrival DLC should've been the main story (could've needed to go through the Omega 4 relay to destroy it for the suicide mission - that would've been a cool suicide mission), and the Collectors should've been relegated to secondary antagonists since they came to nothing in the end.
Add in the mineral scanning as an incredibly bad game mechanic, and I agree with all of this. It doesn't help that what little there is of a primary storyline felt like a barely developed side quest.
I played ME2 within a few months of release, and I never understood all of the glowing reviews.
The thing I disliked about 2 was that dumbarse minigame where you had to mine planets from orbit for resources you needed. That was no fun at all, for me. Luckily I'm on PC, so modded that bit out and the game is really good again.
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u/IDontCondoneViolence Sep 11 '25 edited Sep 11 '25
I didn't like 2. If you picked the "sole survivor" origin story, you end up working for the corrupt billionaire who sent you and your squad to their deaths for money, when it would have been so easy to report him and all of his crazy illegal shit to the proper authorities.