ME2: Game finished. Brought Mordin and Kasumi with me for the finale, Mordin because he is the coolest and Kasumi because I like watching her warp across the battlefield to backstab dudes. Also I spoiled myself on the ME3 PC roster and if I am going to be kicking it old school by design there I might as well use the new kids while I can. Amusingly, Kasumi has no trouble surviving outside the barrier during the segment where you move along a narrow patch of safe ground. Guessing no one on the design team considered her presence in that sequence!
Endgame plot:
I nuked the Collector base. Like I'm letting my boss get his hands on toys like that. Humans in this series have such a great track record of inhabiting ancient alien wrecks and not going insane/turning into monsters/getting eaten, right? By this point I consider it a favor to the as yet undevoured to destroy any ancient spaceship I get my hands on.
So if new Reapers are supposed to look like their victims why do all the other Reapers look exactly the same? Because it saved the developers effort on producing extra character models for a brief cutscene? Seriously, ancient evil robot dudes, there have to be more efficient ways to make more of yourselves. I know you are all grimdark HATE HATE HATE and whatnot but you don't have to build your young from a composite of liquefied people just to impress me. Seriously just use metal, it's okay, I'll still respect you.
But whatever, all I ever expect from Bioware plot is an excuse to hang out with cool people.
Huge cast is huge, so naturally not everybody clicks, but there's enough. Mordin is obviously the best! He is hilarious, intelligent, morally conflicted but resolute in his personal decisions anyway. Great stuff. Grunt probably fares the worst. I appreciate that he's able to at least acknowledge there's no value in killing without a cause (look he's a krogan I'll take what I can get) but still, there's not much there. Am glad everyone has their personal quests this time around since the Mass Effect games are less banter-focused than previous Bioware games I've played and any extra opportunity for personal growth is appreciated.
Very good game. Much improvement upon its predecessor on every front. Plot missions are actually pretty consistently creepy, even random bystander chatter is much more amusing to listen to! Hidden timer for Bad Things to happen is a pretty dick move that I would encourage people to look up and prepare for in advance, but otherwise whatever gripes I have are nitpicky ones--wow those exp/money/discovery popups are obtrusive, mildly frustrating not always being able to do something with a level or having leftover points at the end (oh noes delayed gratification), etc. Seriously minor stuff, not worth caring about. Not having to dig through ME1's Big McLargeHuge inventory was a relief! I spent most of the game in armor tricked out like Samus Aran, pity I wasn't running a blonde (didn't though, ethnically indeterminate w/black hair).
Running into someone from ME1 was always nice, even just for minor piddling stuff. Look forward to seeing where everyone ends up in ME3. I know not to expect anything from the finale (which I YouTubed to see what the fuss was about back when everyone was shitting bricks about how dumb it was) but I assume at least there's plenty of game before that to wrap up all the personal details that interest me way more than Plot anyway? Also what is most different class from Soldier and Adept. Chucking gravity wells at people is pretty cool but I saw enough of it over the course of this game.
