Well thank you for the links but I managed it. It was a lot easier once I figured out to stay in place for the first parts of the fight and to run like hell in the final parts.
Heh I didn’t know that some ammo spots re-spawn. I never needed anything like that on normal on insanity after every wave of a fight I’m looking for those spots desperately scrounging before the next set comes.
So I just wanna say that I’m Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite shop on the Citadel.
Heh. I hope saying that about every shop in the area comes back to bite you in the ass in the third game. That could be hilarious.
I was actually expecting it to bite me in the ass after the fourth shop. I was surprised I was still getting Paragon points for it after the first one.
The only way I can justify it is that they all sell different stuff, so “this is my favorite [software | mod | etc] shop” is implied.
Anyway, I like the way they polished some of the morality in this game, my paragon doesn’t feel like such a damn boyscout anymore. I’ll be vague: use the paragon action option after you retrieve the wallet for the Volus antagonizing the Quarian on the Citadel. It is AWESOME.
At last! No-one left behind! Took long enough. Bloody women…
Anyway, now that’s done, what’d everyone do at the end, or rather, which ending will your ‘main’ Shep carry over? I usually end up flooding the place in radiation. Even though I don’t trust TIM as far as I can throw him, it seems naive to destroy a fount of information about an enemy we know next to nothing about. Although my crew seemed to dislike this choice because it gives Cerberus too much power.
I judged what I did in my ending basically on one thing; [spoiler] I destroyed the base, not simply because I didn’t trust the IM to totally screw over everyone except humanity, but because in the entire history of people working with Collector/Prothean/Reaper tech, zero people have not been fucked over except Shepard. If they aren’t mindwiped and enslaved, they’re just killed outright, both in terms of major plot characters and sidequest characters. Even Cerberus, when they’ve had that kind of tech in the past, have had it thoroughly blow up in their faces. There was just no reason to believe in my eyes that Cerberus would be able to control anything they found, as opposed to vice-versa.
There was also the hypocritial point, but that was only something you see afterwards. The IM’s all “Hey, only Shepard is good enough to do this. We must bring him back exactly, trust him to make all the hard decisions, he’s the one we need to do this”. He’s fine with each and every decision you make up until then - even in his private terminal or that communication system messages he says “Well, that might not be the choice i’d make, but I trust you”. And then he makes one choice - a choice, it should be noted, which is not unique in that it involves the Reapers but is unique in that it fucks over Cerberus - and presto, Shepard’s a loose cannon, he’s fucked them all over, the decision was wrong. [/spoiler]
With regard to potential crew conflicts,
I was between 75 and 80 percent in both paragon and renegade at the point where both the Miranda/Jack and Tali/Legion fights happened. I was able to use the Renegade option on the Miranda/Jack fight and the Paragon option for Legion and Tali. In each case, the option I didn’t use was greyed out. So it’s easier to tell the ladies to sit down and shut up, but it’s easier to get the techies to just play nice with each other.
For more general comments,
[spoiler]I’m sort of annoyed that I screwed up the big Liara quest on Illium - it’s none of the five, but you have to get all of the data points before that’s even an option to choose - because otherwise I think I made all of the choices that I wanted to, and I don’t know that I really want to play the game exactly the same way just to resolve that one item. I guess I can live without her if it comes to that.
There were some things that seemed a bit off and a couple just plain bad choices by the designers (put me on the planet scanning pile on), but overall this was an excellent game and I can’t wait for part three. The Joker/EDI conversation when he’s activating her, as mentioned above, was probably my favorite, but there were literally a few dozen heart-warming/laugh-inducing/heart-wrenching exchanges over the course of the mov… game.[/spoiler]
Oh, and if any of you are still playing male Shepards, you’re insane - Mark Meer is good, but Jennifer Hale is excellent, enough so that it makes up for not being able to make sweet sweet love to Miranda.
(Not that you can’t see everything when she’s got her clothes on, anyways.)
I saw this in a Bioshock 2 review, and had to agree with it; the “big” games of around the same lines coming out soon are really screwed. Things like BS2 and Alpha Protocol are going to be judged much more harshly than they might otherwise have been.
Kiros; Everyone says that Jennifer Hale is a fantastic Shepard, but for me, I just can’t forget that it’s Jennifer Hale. She’s in so many things that the illusion is ruined for me; I can’t not hear her and think “Ah, it’s her again”. Not her fault, but I suppose I should avoid her in games so I can have a go with female Shep in MS3. 
On my latest playthrough I [spoiler]blew the place up, TIM is a bit too interested in Reaper tech. In one of the novels he implants Reaper tech in a Cerberus operative for control. My crew, even Miranda and Jacob, were all supportive of the decision, which makes me think it’s the best one. Shep is probably right, TIM was probably interested in growing his own Reaper to ensure Cerberus dominance of the galaxy. My only quibble is that without the Collector base humanity has no ace-in-the-hole against the thousands of Reapers heading straight for the Milky Way.
My Shep did have a score to settle for Akuze and Admiral Kahoku, though. Not to mention being set up on the Collector ship. Betrayal repaid, Illusive Man.[/spoiler]
I was a bit disappointed with the reunion with Liara. As my romance in ME1 I was expecting a bit more (emotionally speaking, of course) than a quick smooch then hacking a few computers. My main Shep is the kind to stay faithful, but Liara didn’t seem to particularly care. Almost as rending as the meet-up with Ash/Kaiden. One of Shep’s responses to Joker after the meet sums up my feelings exactly; “Just another reminder of how I lost more than two years. I don’t need this garbage!”
I haven’t finished, but I’m beginning to wonder if Bioware is going to end up (in 3) subverting the hell out of the All Reapers Are Evil thing. If you think about it, Mass Effect is a reconstruction of Sci-Fi. One of the biggest parts of this is that each alien is not defined by their alien-ness. “They’re jerks and saints, just like us.” Asari are neither promiscuous strippers, or wise level-headed mentors. Liara and the Shai’ira are different, Alina throws a wrench into even the most basic connections. Garrus and the Council Turian may as well be different races in a normal sci-fi game. Hell, even the “completely evil” Batarians have a member that doesn’t like the whole genocide thing and can be swayed away in the exact same mission they’re introduced in. I wonder if the Reapers really are so truly alien all of them are evil (or appear to be evil), or if we may meet some Reaper “freedom fighters” so to speak.
Obviously I’m not talking about having a Paragon Shepard get the ability to turn the final battle into a big Carebear hugfest, I’m simply talking about whether all the reapers truly wear the “extinction of all organics” hat.
The best part about this game is that it makes you actually care about your character and crew members.
For example, I let “Archangel” go through with his loyalty quest and a week later, I still feel bad about it.
As far as the end:
I just irradiated it and let TIM have the tech. Why? Because I couldn’t help but thinking that “Jed Bartlet” would use Reaper tech to a bad end. I still think I should have blown it up.
But then again, difficult decisions are a big part of what makes this game great.
Heh. Every time the Illusive Man said “humanity” (“yoomaniteh”), I cracked up. It’s just too distinctively Barlet to my ears.
I finished it. Lots of fun.
I played a female Shep and ended up romancing Garrus. (Which was unexpected.) But it did lead to some damn funny dialogue.
[Spoiler] Mordin talks to you about it, and gives you some advice, books, and lube. He warns you that since Turian and Human biology is different, you have to be careful.
“Just don’t. . . ingest.”
[/spoiler]
ATTN:BIOWARE
Not everyone is playing on giant HDTV screens. Some of us actually have SDTV’s that are perfectly functional and it’s utterly ridiculous that you have to make things so hard on people that don’t throw out their perfectly functional electronics just to get shiny new stuff. Anyway, who do you think you are? Capcom? This ain’t Dead Rising. Please stop it with the tiny hard to read text. You used to be cool, man, I mean, look at Mass Effect, totally readable, even on old TV’s. What happened, bro? At the very least, next time plaster a big FOR HDTV ONLY UNLESS YOU LIKE EYESTRAIN sticker on the box. K,thnx,bye
I’m in two minds about the game. I quite liked the story, it’s beautiful and all, but some things just don’t quite work. I much prefer ME1, for several reasons. I thought the story was better, resource gathering too (I actually liked the Mako), I’m a loot hound, so I really liked the variety of armour, weapons and ammo.
I’m more keen on playing through 1 for a fourth time than finishing my second playthough of 2.
I’m doing both! Playing through ME1 again (for the Nth time) for a fresh renegade save, and then doing ME2 again
I enjoyed both aspects of loot, actually – ME1 loot appealed to my Skinner-box cravings. Loading the sniper rifle up with high-explosive ammo and turning it into a mini-rocket-launcher was super fun. The streamlined approach in ME2 appealed to my impatient let’s-just-kill-and-watch-the-story-when-the-hell-is-Half-Life-2-Episode-3-coming-out-etc side of things. The main stories I thought were about the same in quality, but ME2 did far better with the characters.
I hated the Mako, though. I also hated scanning planets, but it didn’t take too long to gather what you needed. But the Mako can just burn.
This is now the norm. It sucks, but you’ll need to upgrade your TV.
What are the female Shep’s romance options? Is it all male aliens/humans or females too?
I’m also curious about the whole paragon/renegade thing. If I get a flash for a paragon act does that mean there’s also a renegade act for that thing too? Im guessing not. My Shep seems to be almost equally par/ren. I sometimes get the renegade popup and I sometimes get the paragon one. Funny thing is, I’m trying to play as a paragon but when the quest or conversation is over I get rewarded for being a renegade. Heh, maybe I need my morality gauge adjusted.
Anyone else having a hard trim killing the Praetorian on the collector ship? I had to put the game into Easy mode for this kill.
Garrus, Jacob, Thane and Kelly (yep!). Fans lament that Joker is still off-limits.