It only matters if you want to get the “best” ending.
From my point of view, I’ve had the “best” ending and the “worst” ending and several endings in between, and I enjoyed them all.
Well, I’m certainly doing my best, but I am not looking up stuff about it. I have a good crew, very loyal(all loyal except Legion who I just got). I’ll get him loyal next(thank you for telling me to do that) and then continue from there.
And it’s been noted upthread, but as a reminder - if you don’t already have all of the Normandy upgrades unlocked, do so NOW.
If you don’t have full loyalty and all the upgrades, you run the risk of one or more of your party members dying during the final mission, and they won’t appear in ME3.
I appear to be near the end-game. I’m going to go ahead and move forward with it. I did do the Legion loyalty mission.
I also did the “Joker” mission, but the entire crew was killed, including Kelly the yeoman who I was kind of hoping would become a squad-member in the next game.
OK, I’ll get to the final mission today and let you know how it all works out. I have most upgrades to my ship and the entire crew is loyal, even Tali, who I calmed down after the Legion mission.
I’m going in blind and just going to hope for the best.
omg you’re going to kill us! You’re in the endgame and there are huge decisions to be made and we have to WAIT?!?
Did it. Made it through. I don’t see any major characters that died in the finale. Samara was awfully close, though. She had a force field protecting us and she nearly collapsed. I also barely saved my second team by reaching these green buttons in time.
However, it is over, credits rolled, I appear to have survived with the core crew alive. Even Kelly Chambers was back on deck at the end. We pulled her out of the coccoon.
My clock reads 30 hours on Mass Effect 2.
I will load up Mass Effect 3 once I get a chance later today.
Looks like you got the best ending.
My worst (successful) ending ended up with only Grunt and Morinth alive. I capped it off by having a romantic interlude with Morinth (i.e., “GAME OVER”). 
I am surprised as I was mainly guessing who to send on each mission. I’m not sure it matters, but I used Legion as a tech specialist guy, Garrus to always lead team 2, Samara to be the force field person for me and the team. I took Miranda and Tali with me at all times and rushed as quick as possible to save Garrus’ team when they needed a cooldown.
I found the final boss fight to only be OK. The human reaper at the end was attacking like mad at first, but then it seemed to only attack a little and I could freely shoot at his eyes/weak-spots and kill him.
I was close to running out of ammo during the final mission, though. First time I felt a real crisis for ammunition.
You lose characters during the attacks on the ship in the early part of the mission if you don’t have full ship upgrades. Then you can lose more if you don’t assign the right people to the right jobs during the on foot stages of the mission. For example, you have to send Tali, Legion, or Kasumi through the vents, and they have to be loyal. If they’re not loyal, they’ll be killed, as will anyone else chosen for that task. Some of the “wrong” choices that lead to people being killed aren’t terribly obvious. For example, I learned that apparently Zaeed isn’t qualified to command the remainder of the squad in spite of the fact that he’s the veteran co-founder of a major merc outfit, and someone I don’t remember who bought it at the end of that segment.
The first time I played through I lost Miranda when I used her for the biotic shield.
I had everyone loyal. Zaeed can’t lead the group? That makes zero sense. I picked Garrus and he made it through, though I swear I was ready to reload if he did not.
Right?!?
Team 2 leader has to be loyal Garrus, Miranda, or Jacob. Biotic specialist has to be Jack or Samara (or Morinth). Anyone chosen for one of the specialist roles must be loyal.
Also, if you dick around at all after Joker loses the crew, you’re too late to save Kelly and the rest. Which is a bit sad, because there’s a ton of hilarious dialogue from taking Legion into places where Geth aren’t very welcome (like on Tali’s loyalty mission) but you can only get that if you abandon your crew to die.
Some thoughts on ME2
- much, much better than the first game. Much.
- if ME1 was a 6/10, this was more like an 8/10 or 9/10 ranking.
- I did not find talking to everyone laborious at all this time
- did not hate the Mako, but barely noticed it was gone this time
- scanning the planets and mining was a slog
- Great game, just really great.
Miranda? That does not seem logical. I would never pick her to be in charge. Biotic was more obvious. Jack and Samara indicated they could do it.
Your companions have a surprising amount of conversation they can make with you. For instance, if you keep talking to Mordin, he’ll tell you that he regrets being so sexually appealing to aliens (turians love his skin tone and krogans love his flexibility) but he only likes you as a friend.
I…did speak to everyone every single mission. I said I didn’t find it laborious, so I gladly did it. He even sang his Modern Major General song for me. Twice.
I think I got most of the relationship conversations avaialbe to me with everyone.
I took Tali on the Shadow Broker mission, by the way, and he specifically called out his surprise at seeing her since she is such a failure. More unique dialogue.
I took her on the Legion Loyalty mission as well and she has a fair amount of unique dialogue there, obviously.
Clearly you have more patience than I do in hearing Garrus say “Can it wait? I’m calibrating the guns right now”!
Ha, he was a pain. It’s so true. Tali kept calibrating or cleaning an engine as well. I didn’t trust Kelly to tell me when people need to see me. I always went adn spoke to everyone every single time.
I was able to get their upgrades this way as well.