The answer is always take Tali with you when you can. She’s the best.
I think I said this in the other ME:L thread, but I love taking Tali on missions because her drone is a GREAT distraction for powerful baddiest during a firefight. I can let Geth Destroyers play with her drone while I take out the annoying flamethrower dudes etc. etc.
Alas, I did that one right away when I got there.
Here’s a video of BroShep completing that mystery with Tali in the party. It’s even better if you have Kasumi in your party, if I remember correctly. She’ll be astonished that Tali can jack people’s suits in the manner she suggested she would to the volus, and asks to be reminded not to piss Tali off.
In this scenario, Jack, Zaeed, Miranda, Kasumi, Jacob, and Garrus will all have something to say about Tali’s threat.
Every time I play ME 2, I get excited by the possibility of using her AI Hacking ability and then I get disappointed that it doesn’t work until you strip all shields and armor off first.
…until you get to ME3 and she hacks the engineer turrets and then the REAL fun begins
I’ve never played with Kasumi (don’t have the DLC), but Miranda is a pretty good all-rounder: Warp is good against biotic barriers and armor and Overload is good against shields. Also, if you’re playing the Soldier class, you have access to Squad Disrupter Ammo to boost your team’s effectiveness against shields and Squad Incendiary Ammo to boost effectiveness against armor.
I did swap out Kasumi for Tali now since she partnered with me the entire last game. I went to Illum and ran into:
Liara - she wants me to hack some terminals. Gosh, maybe show me their locations?
The creature I did not exterminate in game 1: It took over a woman’s body. I actually got +2 Renegade after talking/listening to it.
The lady who I helped arrest the guy on Nuvem: I helped her bust a merchant.
I am about to do Miranda’s loyalty quest since she is with me and I want her extra power.
Since ME:L has all the DLC, you can do a mission with Liara. It’s fantastic.
Yeah, but she does not come back to the ship and join my crew, I guess? Shame, she was the other squad member I stuck with.
No, it’s just the one mission. Afterward, you can choose to re-kindle your romance a little bit, though, or have her chew you out for moving on and choosing someone else.
I did Miranda’s loyalty mission and also a bunch of sidequests around Illum.
This game is massively better than the first one. I’m super impressed with this game and finding myself slowing down even more to take everything in. It’s a great game.
Kasumi has a great power where she warps to an enemy and does a super hard punch to them. It’s great for tagging dudes who keep hiding behind something. Though it does have a distance limit.
Yeah, I just added her back to my party with Miranda since Kasumi does that and also is loyal. That power is great. “Going dark!” always makes me happy.
They definitely made a lot of improvements (e.g. in terms of pacing and level design). But this is as good a place as any to list some of my gripes.
Story gripes:
Gameplay gripes:
Bonus gripe:
It’s loyalty mission after loyalty mission for me right now. Not complaining at all, to be honest. They are great chances to mix up the crew and experience great single-player stories.
Loyalty missions completed: Miranda, Kasumi, Mordin, Grunt
Still to do: Jack, Jacob, Thane, Samara, Tali
Make that single character stories. Still a squad.
Tali’s my boo.
Tali’s drone thing is a great distraction to enemies. Did she have any similar power in game 1?
Don’t miss the Paragon interrupt moment halfway through Tali’s loyalty mission. You don’t get a long time to push that button.