As for streamlining I’m talking about things like removing the absurd ammo mods in ME1. What really sucked in the original was that every time you entered a new area with different enemies you had to pause, open character menus for 3 different people, scroll through all their weapons, put the right ammo in, unpause and only then could you actually play your character in a min/maxed setting. ME2 still allows you to modify the ammo your squad fires but instead of spending 3 minutes in menus you simply activate the ammo with a single hotkey – streamlined to produce the same effect in a much more friendly way.

As far as leveling goes, ME1 maxed out at lvl 50 on the first playthrough and 60 for a second. Now that gives you a fair chunk of talent points to throw around right? Except half the talent trees are absolutely useless and hold no gameplay value (http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/First_Aid). ME2 removed the absurd idea that as Earth’s elite warrior Shepard you had to learn to use a pistol to actually hit something 10 metres in front of you and instead gave value to your level ups, increasing the potency of the talents while reducing their number. ME2 talents are cleaner while being much smarter, you make intelligent choices of area overloads versus heavier overloads, a wider shockwave versus a thinner but more powerful burst, a shorter cooldown versus a heavy hitting warp. These are *much* more interesting talents than “You repair an extra 200 points of damage while in the Mako” and actually (*gasp*) have an impact on the gameplay.

RPGs are supposed to be about options, ME2 has something like 5 guns…TOTAL. Almost every FPS has more weapon options than ME2. And there are only like 10 items you can buy in the entire galaxy. Do you have any idea how depressing it was for me when I opened up the first new area and went to a shop and they only had one item to sell?

RPGs are also about character customization. I want to choose perks, upgrade the stats of my choosing, and when I level up I want to actually see my character progress. I in no way felt that with ME2.

Instead I’m stuck playing an interactive story with fewer RPG elements than many shooters today.

Again; ME2 wasn’t a bad game. If it had been the first game in the franchise, I probably would have loved it (as an action game).

Now I know how nerds who grew up loving Star Wars felt when George Lucas made Episode 1.

I see in the post a decrying of the loss of the inventory management system, which was absolutely horrid in ME1, and a replying comment regarding the loss of sandboxed planets to explore – again one of the worst aspects of the first game. Rose-tinted glasses only work when you squint. ME1 wasn’t exactly a free roaming galaxy either; you landed on a planet, took a linear path to your mission objective and then took off. Hardly a free of rails, do-it-your-way type of game when compared to say, Fallout 3 or Oblivion.

The decisions Bioware took with streamlining ME2 were the correct ones, we don’t need talent trees with 15 different abilities, we don’t need terrible vehicle exploration sections or inventory management for their own sake. There comes a point when needless, sometimes needlessly complex, systems don’t add to a game – they just become another layer of bloat.

ME2 had enough off storyline missions to keep me entertained, a clean and crisp combat system but what’s more it played as my story, I was Commander Shepard. Isn’t that what we want when we look to an RPG?

For the second chapter Bioware and EA instead choose to follow the path of Gear of Wars, adding during the process several bad design choices: 8bit-era galaxy exploration, planet scanning, ridicoulos conceived final mission (I am still asking myself why all the game is based upon recruit 12 party members..), badly emplemented reserch system; no party customization, scaled down weapons and armour selection/management, no exploration, no looting, a more limited dialogue system, end-mission screen, loading screen, no real in-game maps etc…
The second chapter of ME2 has become a bland corridor TPS with dialogue cut-scene and very limited (ZERO!) connection with the first chapter…

But ME2 seems to be a critical success… I feel so distant from this point of view! Fortunately it seems that I am not alone, a lot of people around the web share this point of view.

The result? I lost my faith in Bioware.
For example I will skip DA2. And I am more that sure that DA2 will sell less than DA:Origins.
Regarding ME3 I will see… My mood now is very negative thoward all ME franchise and Bioware/EA in general.

I think it’s a change or die situation, but i don’t think it means the Genre has to be ‘Mass Effected” in order to survive. I don’t know if anybody here plays portables, but Radiant Historia just sold out in a week. Literally. That’s a clasic JRPG with some interesting twists to the formula. It’s my opinion that JRPG designers has simply stopped pushing the envelope because they can make money just sitting in their established formula. That plan is failing however, and they need to do more stuff like this to recover.

People name drop FF7 a lot, and there’s a reason for that. Square Enix took a HUGE risk with that game and it paid off. Problem is, since then, it’s never happened again.