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[Ampersand]

To be fair, you do usually get a weapon locker soon after you find a new weapon, so the game gives you a little time to test it out (what with the auto-switch and all), before giving you the opportunity to change.

The only real differences between the weapons are whether they do the most damage to Health, Armor, Shields, or Barriers. Hardly any of the enemies you come across have armor at all, fewer have shields, and still fewer have biotic barriers.

[3]

You evidently haven't played the game on Hardcore or higher yet. The first game I started was on Hardcore, and 90% of enemies had armour or shielding - even if it's not much, it does a good job of blocking powers and forcing you to think a little more tactically. Well, no, that's giving the game too much credit. Forcing you to use your powers on "appropriate" enemies, whatever they're supposed to be.

[Sir Pseudonymous]

The inability to actually see stats on weapons was also a big problem. You could individually test out every weapon against enemies with shields, armor, and biotic barriers, but since you can't backtrack, and there are no places you can go that just have enemies walking around for you to shoot at, the only way to test weapons are to take them on missions, meaning you'll only be able to have a good idea of what weapons to bring along on your second play through.

You take the newest. They're always a straight upgrade. Handcannon has less ammo but does significantly more damage than the pea shooter you start with. Tempest has fuckhuge ammo capacity and can shred an YMIR's shields in a couple of seconds, whereas the smg you start with is worse than useless. The autosniper has six times the ammo cap, and each shot does roughly a third as much damage; it mitigates the problem shields/barriers pose for sniper rifles, meaning you can take down a shielded enemy in four or five headshots, which comes out to quite a bit less in terms of ammo to the two or three the first sniper needs (5/60 < 3/10). The Widow rifle has an ammo cap of 14, and does more than three times the damage of the first sniper rifle.  So yeah, all of them are rather drastic upgrades.

Played an infiltrator for the rifle and cloaking shit, so I don't have first hand knowledge of the assault rifles or shotguns, but I'd guess they follow the same pattern.

[Ampersand]

I've already popped open the config file that contains the statistics for all the weapons, and no, they're not straight upgrades. I think you're underestimating the cost of having less ammunition in a firefight where ammunition is scarce. I don't really know why they felt the need to have this ammo clip thing going on though, when in almost all the situations where ammo could be troublesome, they have respawning clips not five feet away from you.

But when it comes to the Widow sniper rifle, or the Hand Cannon, I definitely run out of ammo often enough for it to become troublesome, and you cannot expect for every shot to be a hit. They are not direct upgrades.

[Sir Pseudonymous]

The only time I ever had ammo problems was near the end of the Krogan loyalty mission. And that was just because I had to dump everything I had into the thresher in order to kill it, and had already used all the clips lying around.

Hell, late in the game I barely used any ammo, both because my team tore through most smaller enemies without much help from me, or because I cloaked, ran up next to the enemy line, and opened up with the tempest/avalanche. I don't think I depleted either of those to even half capacity. So the widow and handcannon usually wound up being used on the tougher shit that the team seems to completely ignore or otherwise be unable to aim at. Like Scions, Praetorians, and YMIRs. >:|

The widow can kill a scion in three shots. You could empty the first sniper rifle into it without seeing much effect. >:|

[Zironic]

Just beat the game. Everyone lived.

[umiman]

Ignoring all the spoilers above.

I never really liked the first ME because it was so... redundant. The inventory was crap, vehicle section was crap, and it was quite uninspiring to play even though it showed promise. I find I'm really enjoying this second installment however. The shooting especially has been made to feel so much more like a regular third person shooter rather than a strange RPG FPS. Wish there were more weapon choices though, but I can live with the way it is. Also very glad they took the godawful vehicle sections out... though the probe one right now isn't really nice either.

[Asehujiko]

I liked ramming armatures off cliffs and then landing on top of them better then that awfully slow metal detector thin.

[Farce]

Probing has the benefit of not requiring two loading screens to clear a planet, though.  Four if you found a dungeon facility to clear.

I was hoping they'd have improved the Mako, instead of completely removing the thing.  Made it customizable or something, with equipment and stuff, you know?  Or putting flora and fauna and stuff on the planet, instead of a height map, ground texture and skybox.  Or water.  Or craters.  ...I guess that wouldn't have helped the no-atmosphere-ball-of-rock planets, though.


Also, I kind of miss elevators.  I'd listen to the news and team-banter in them.  I seriously rode up and down one of the Citadel ones for that.

Don't miss the Normandy's lift, though.  Goddamn that thing was slow.

[umiman]

Yeah, it definitely feels like my teammates don't regard each others' existence now except for some certain moments.

I think my favorite characters personality-wise are Grunt, Jack, and the assassin guy. I'm just really glad they got rid of needing specific skills to open crates or scan stuff, so I could finally stop being forced to bring Tali around everywhere like the first game (or you'd miss half the loot). Not that I dislike Tali, but she's not exactly useful in combat much.

I think the rest of the characters fill their role well, but aren't as interesting. Except for Joker and the AI... hehehe. Oh, and your assistant. Haha! Love the assistant!

[Farce]

Hell yeah, Kelly and Joker/EDI are awesome.  It's pretty sweet how he actually has something to say besides his backstory this time.

Speaking of, they nerfed Tali bloody HARD in this game.  I mean... she had a massive shield, shotguns, and her abilities messed robots and shields UP.  Now she has that stupid drone that prevents you from using anything else for way too long, hacking, and shield vampirism - which are usually unusable due to that damn drone.

I'm not sure why, but Tali seems a bit less interesting this time, too.  Outside of being adorable and shy, I guess.

So yeah, that's lame.  I usually brought her and Garrus along with me once I got them - before that I'd just use Miranda and Jacob.  I don't think I've ONCE used Jack except for her loyalty mission, which is a shame.  Tangentially related, it'd be awesome if we could've had a Biotics duel.

I personally liked Zaeed.  Grunt's a bro, but outside of that I wasn't too interested by him.  Mordin is awesome by default.



I also liked the crewmen pair in the engine room.  After missions and stuff I'd go down and listen to their walk-by banter.  Also awesome was the Turian in the entrance area of the Citadel, and the game shop up on the top floor.  I still want that Shepard VI, though.

[Sir Pseudonymous]

Speaking of, they nerfed Tali bloody HARD in this game.  I mean... she had a massive shield, shotguns, and her abilities messed robots and shields UP.  Now she has that stupid drone that prevents you from using anything else for way too long, hacking, and shield vampirism - which are usually unusable due to that damn drone.

I'm not sure why, but Tali seems a bit less interesting this time, too.  Outside of being adorable and shy, I guess.

So yeah, that's lame.  I usually brought her and Garrus along with me once I got them - before that I'd just use Miranda and Jacob.  I don't think I've ONCE used Jack except for her loyalty mission, which is a shame.  Tangentially related, it'd be awesome if we could've had a Biotics duel.

I personally liked Zaeed.  Grunt's a bro, but outside of that I wasn't too interested by him.  Mordin is awesome by default.

By the time I got around to recruiting Tali, the drone cooldown was barely noticeable. She was still pretty useless against almost anything though. Worked well with Legion on its loyalty mission, did horribly on her own. But the drones were awesome, drawing fire, knocking shit out of cover, and generally tearing things apart.

I usually wound up taking Jack, and then either Garrus or Miranda. Jack's great with disruption, and last second "pull that fucker off me before he can shoot" saves. Garrus and Miranda also did that pretty well, with concussive shot and pull, respectively.

Never took Grunt, Thane, or Jacob, except for their loyalty missions. I think I used Thane once in an actual combat situation, didn't like him. Couldn't get the DLC working before I started playing, and didn't try again until I was going to start a second playthrough with another ME1 character, and it magically acknowledged it all, so I've never used Zaeed. >:|

[Ampersand]

Oh, by the way, they haven't really taken the Mako and the planet driving stuff out. They're just selling it to you in the form of the Hammerhead DLC.

[3]

I noticed the conspicuous "vehicle controls" section of the key bindings menu when I first started the game up, heh.

Personally, I mainly find myself using Zaeed or Garrus (as they're virtually identical functionally - do we really need two Infiltrators and two Infiltrator/Soldier hybrids?), or possibly Legion later on (just for flavour, he's comparatively useless). The second team member I usually pick at random - it still works, even on the harder settings, and I liked most of them characterwise.

The only point I really found myself slipping up is on Tali's loyalty quest - that bit where you're at the top of a balcony in a small room, and tons of Hunters flood in the lower door. Holding everything off there without heavy weapon use is probably nigh-impossible on the top two settings.

Take any of the (I say again) four team members who can use sniper rifles and they'll pretty much kill everything for you. Conversely, I found Jack/Jacob useless in terms of damage potential, simply because the AI doesn't seem to know how to use a shotgun and neither of them can take much damage. Jack's slightly useful due to Shockwave, but I still feel better off taking a pure biotic/tech user or none at all. Grunt is a different matter entirely.

[Farce]

Oh, by the way, they haven't really taken the Mako and the planet driving stuff out. They're just selling it to you in the form of the Hammerhead DLC.

Bah, DLC is always some COMPLETELY isolated sidequest, that doesn't count.


Wait, what?  Has that been released yet?  I don't remember seeing it in that computer thing at start up.