Dude, the first Red Dead game was Red Dead Revolver.
The issue with Charge is really only a vanguard issue and even then it only applies to lower difficulties. Reckless uses of charge in ME2 would be a death sentence on Hardcore or Insanity since you could easily find yourself in a situation where you're stunned or surrounded by enemies. In ME3, charging in every encounter is a good way to get killed by a banshee's sync kill.Not true in my experience, I would just wait and spam my best ability (charge). Other powers are pretty much ineffective until armor/shields are gone anyways.
The issue with Charge is really only a vanguard issue and even then it only applies to lower difficulties. Reckless uses of charge in ME2 would be a death sentence on Hardcore or Insanity since you could easily find yourself in a situation where you're stunned or surrounded by enemies. In ME3, charging in every encounter is a good way to get killed by a banshee's sync kill.
The bolded applies only to biotics and even then only for higher difficulties in ME2. On lower difficulties biotics will still always be relevant since you will always fight a fair amount of red health enemies. On higher difficulties CC abilities like singularity are weaker since enemies gain armor, but even then they still have uses due to their slow/stun and DoT effects. Tech powers on the other hand are very good at dealing with defenses like armor and shields, In ME3 though, this is basically a non issue since power combos gives every class a way to deal with every type of defense.
Is that a sequel though? I thought they were talking about Red Dead Redemption 1 -> Red Dead Redemption 2
Is that a sequel though? I thought they were talking about Red Dead Redemption 1 -> Red Dead Redemption 2
Witcher 1 to 2 was also a huge leap. Debatable which was greater.
I feel like you're typically really well spoken and I'd really like to know what about ME1's did work vs Andromeda. Because I cannot understand what is so compelling about exploring these worlds where someone took a terrain editor, clicked randomize, and then painted them with like one texture. They all play identically. You find the exact same three items on each one. I feel like your imagination has to do such a disproportionate amount of imagination there. There's just nothing to differentiate them other than color swatch. Like one of them has lava I think. That's it. What is there to explore.
Like I did like kind of existing in ME1's world, and I did it for that reason, just vibin, picking up the stuff that was there, and seeing if there was any new story thing, but overall it just kept being the same basic story things with only a little variation. I liked kinda exploring in a simple, completionist/explorer way, but it isn't something I would ever praise as anything special. I'm not sure how "unique" it is to drive around on some terrain deformation for 20 minutes and click A sometimes.
I'm sure others have different reasons, but maybe talking about how I play RPGs more generally, and highlighting my single favorite part of ME1, might convey why I continued to enjoy it over its more refined sequel.
I play RPGs primarily for the sense of exploration and adventure. Those "empty" open worlds people complain about? I've played many of them without fast travel. I spend a lot of time exploring the nooks and crannies, talking to all the NPCs and simply role-playing as an inhabitant of that world. I often chose non-combat options and savor the little moments hidden in slow-paced, aimless wandering others might find tedious.
I'm also a big sci-fi fan. Put those together, and perhaps you can see why ME1's Citadel still remains one of my favorite gaming experiences of all time. I repurchased ME1 years after its sequel just to revisit it, and still loved it as much as the first time. Much like real traveling, the experience at any given moment isn't particularly exciting (and sometimes it's genuinely a slog) but the opportunity to lose myself in a place like that is worth it.
ME2 definitely had better mechanics, a more structured gameplay loop and a generally more polished design. Most people would describe the moment-to-moment gameplay as more fun and continually engaging. The problem for someone like me is that I wasn't actually looking for that. It fixed a lot of (to me) secondary elements, but it also shifted the focus away from the (for me) primary draw.
I think it's very telling that it's abundantly clear which game someone prefers by how they describe their experience with ME1. We genuinely had fundamentally different experiences, and the (very legitimate) flaws mentioned by the ME2 camp are often not points I disagree with, but are simply areas I never considered all that important to my favorite aspects of ME1.
By contrast, I think the general experience we had in ME2 was probably much more similar. It offered a narrower range of experiences, and it did so very competently with fewer glaring flaws, but it also significantly reduced the opportunity for the "make your own fun" kind of exploration that drew me to RPGs (and ME1) in the first place.
To people who didn't look for that in ME1, or found the edges too rough to ignore, there's no question that ME2 is a much better game. As someone who adored that about ME1, I felt they threw out the baby with the bathwater.
Fucking NAILED it.
We probably have to attach the caveat that the proceeding game has to actually be good or else we can probably dig up some weird examples, like Sonic Unleashed isn't very good, but 06 is basically unplayable, so the jump is huge.
What's crazy about Street Fighter II is that it felt like everyone I knew shared this collective confusion over whether a Street Fighter I even existed. Nobody I knew had ever played the game, there was no internet access to be able to look it up, there would be unverified reports from the sketchy kid in school saying he saw a cabinet in a Pizza Hut in another state, etc.From a bizarre curiosity that would have probably been forgotten to a worldwide phenomenon that put a genre on the map. I think this is the correct answer and I absolutely adore Mass Effect 2 and the franchise as a whole.
It also doesn't help that one contemporary home port of the original Street Fighter is called Fighting Street.What's crazy about Street Fighter II is that it felt like everyone I knew shared this collective confusion over whether a Street Fighter I even existed. Nobody I knew had ever played the game, there was no internet access to be able to look it up, there would be unverified reports from the sketchy kid in school saying he saw a cabinet in a Pizza Hut in another state, etc.
And there are countless other examples of much larger leaps even if you think ME2 is better. Street Fighter 1 to Street Fighter 2. Witcher 1 to Witcher 2 or even more-so Witcher 2 to Witcher 3. SMB2 (the real one) to SMB3. TES: Arena to TES: Daggerfall or more-so (IMO) Daggerfall to Morrowind. Gothic 1 to Gothic 2. I could go on and on.It's not even as big a leap as Biowares own Baldur's Gate to Baldur's Gate 2.
Like you, I also play RPGs and open world games without using fast travel, exploring every nook and cranny, talking to every NPC, seeking stopping to enjoy glorious vistas and generally play at a methodical yet exploratory pace.
That is a big reason why I was so surprised at ME1. Everything that makes a great RPG is simply not present in ME1. Outside of a few moments, the premise, ME universe, Citadel, planetary exploration, majority of characters and dialogue is C-tier at best. There are some A-tier moments, and ME1 is a sum greater than its parts I believe. My conclusion after replaying it fourteen years later is its ambition ultimately led to a shallow experience overall.
I do see where you are coming from though. While yes, perhaps the game is shallow for me, the sheer potential of exploring a galaxy and its nebulas and systems was prematurely abandoned and never fully realized perhaps for you? You would have preferred BioWare leaning into that aspect even further into that aspect of Mass Effect?
Eh, this really isn't true, atleast in ME1. Most of the classes were fairly samey and lacked a distinct identity. Soldier, Engineer, and Adepts were the pure Combat/Tech/Biotics classes, and Infiltrator, Vanguard, and Sentinels were the hybrid classes that had talents from both. It was ME2 that actually made them a lot more distinct by giving each class unique powers that set them apart and defined their playstyles (i.e Vanguards getting Charge, Infiltrators getting tactical cloak, Engineers getting Drones, Sentinels getting Tech Armor).
It's also not really accurate to say that you didn't need to shoot guns in ME1. While your biotics were definitely op, it was pretty unviable to rely on just using them in any difficulty beyond Casual since your cooldowns are significantly longer in ME1 than in its sequels. Warp for example has a 40s cooldown which means that you can't just rely on them to get the job done, unless you want to spend like half a minute in cover waiting for your powers to recharge while enemies mindlessly rush you. The game is designed around you using your guns while powers recharge. In fact the only game in the series where power only builds were viable was ME3 since that was the game where power combos were incredibly strong and you could get your cooldowns down to almost 2s.
Powers in ME2 and ME3 aren't really support abilities. Tech powers like incinerate for example are extremely good and deal a great amount of damage. While they may not be as OP as biotics in ME1, they're far from being useless and are still very powerful when used correctly. It's just that in ME2 onwards you actually need to strategize with your power usage due to enemy defense system and can't just spam powers whenever they're off CD like in ME1.
Yep and yep.It's always good to see people that can actually see reality. Good post.
But while it promises things, ME2 actually delivers on its promises, and so calling ME2 a much worse game than ME1 seems to not make sense to me.
ME2 promises on being a mundane corridor shooter with big production values and some nice dialog, congrats for achieving that but i still think that's terrible game design.
ME1 is literally the Bioware RPG experience of the time. Jade Empire, Kotor, Dragon Age Origins, etc.That is a big reason why I was so surprised at ME1. Everything that makes a great RPG is simply not present in ME1. Outside of a few moments, the premise, ME universe, Citadel, planetary exploration, majority of characters and dialogue is C-tier at best.
ME2 promises on being a mundane corridor shooter with big production values and some nice dialog, congrats for achieving that but i still think that's terrible game design.
This whole post actually very succinctly describes the one thing that I feel No Man's Sky is lacking.I can only speak for myself, but while I don't think anyone would argue that ME1's exploratory elements are fully baked, they succeed at delivering a hard sci-fi mood that I really missed in ME2 and 3. You really feel, a little bit, like an explorer in space - there is a sense of scale that is almost totally absent from the sequels, Shepard's armor looks a lot like a space suit, and the whole enterprise feels stripped-down and comparatively low tech. The emptiness of the uncharted worlds actually works to make you feel like you're at the fringes of civilization. The worlds are beautiful and alien, even with ME1's technical limitations, and combined with the excellent planet summaries and codex entries give the player (or me, at least) a sense of mood that, again, is present almost nowhere in the sequels. And some of the skyboxes are gorgeous even in 2021.
There are obvious issues with asset reuse, low-fi sidequests, and drab gameplay loops that to a certain extent dog all of ME1, but the series in my opinion never really recovered the sense of scale and mood that ME1's "exploratory" elements helped generate. In ME2 and ME3, you just load directly into small hubs or combat arenas when you can actually visit a planet, and all you get from the equivalent of the uncharted worlds is the probe interface, which feels very "gamey."
Edit - Andromeda, for its part, made an attempt to recover the sense of scale, and in some ways succeeded (I quite like the way your ship travels in first-person view, for instance), but its planets are way too dense with stuff to recover the sense of scale and mood that I enjoyed in ME1 - and then on top of that the stuff is very rote and MMOish.
We probably have to attach the caveat that the proceeding game has to actually be good