Quite well, actually. Especially next to the cumbersome inventory of the original. I hated having to trawl through that thing to change ammo types depending on the enemies you're faced with. Now you can change ammo types on the fly.

indeed ME1 was quite bad.

what i do read about ME2 is not that good tough. Someone said there are 19 different weapons in the game. that's a bit bullshit for an rpg imo.

The game's not really about loot. If you want loot then it's not really the game for you.

I think boycotts dont really work , take Ubisoft for example , I sure a whole lot of people decided not buy Assassins Creed 2 etc because of their appalling arrogance and their disgusting DRM , but guess what it did'nt make a jot of difference , they are still doing it and they hav'nt listened to their customer at all.

Boycotts might well have a huge impact on small companies , but for the big boys lik EA and Ubisoft that call the shots it does'nt hurt them at all it seems.

Everything was stripped down to make place for an action game. It's an interactive movie where you can shoot stuff and drink with your helmet on.
Also if you like inconsistencies, glaring contradictions, giant plot holes, stuff not making any sense, no story, collecting pokemons... then ME2 is for you I guess. I played through it twice before putting the whole thing down, it's just so painful for me to play it again.
ME1 had some charm and a solid narration but this feels like a sequel to the wrong game.

I'm certainly not upset with the lack of inventory in ME2. I always ended up rather annoyed having to scroll through a ton of items I'll never use cause I have an upgraded version available. When you're out on planet missions those items stack up and then you have to either spend a bunch of time converting it to medgel, or trudge all the way back, get in the Normandy and go sell all your outdated crap. It was just a hassle to me that I'm glad to see gone.

Same with the planet missions. I hate the Mako with a passion, I really do. It gets stuck in things, it doesn't control the way you want it to and for something they make shirts of with it climbing up a vertical slope, the thing couldn't scale heights to save it's life. ME2 introduced the Hammerhead which is a nice little upgrade indeed. I didn't hate it at all when compared to the Mako.

I'd say the other thing I actually miss aside from my previous comments of party interaction in the world, is the various ammo upgrades. in 2 when you play as say a soldier you've got all the nice ammos that can harm anything you come up against. I play two characters, a Paragon soldier and a Renegade Vanguard. Whenever I jump back to my Vanguard I have to sulk a bit because they can only use incendiary ammo and thus only do a decent amount of damage to organics and armor. I end up really missing the disruptor ammo which is for shields and synthetic damage. Outside of that ME1 had the neat ammos like the poison damage ones and such. I would set my pistols to be geared against organics and my shots against synthetics.

I come to Bioware for a engaging story that I can play a role in. They seem to be moving more towards a more sedentary position for the player where you instead watch characters instead of play them, I had hoped we would have a game which combined the openness and epic questing of BG2 with the choice and depth of dialogue of PS:T, but instead we get dialogue wheels and preset roles.

Though to be honest I also think that I am getting a bit tired of their recycled layout they've been using since KotOR, if I play one more game where I am told to go to four mission hubs before then going on to the final mission sequence I will scream and punch someone seriously.

I care about stories in games more than most people I know. That doesn't mean gameplay is unimportant though, far from it... it's the combination of narrative and the interactive that makes games so special.

Dragon Age was unique in that it was a different kind of RPG from the norm now-a-days. We don't get tactical CRPGs anymore. To throw that out and make another tired action RPG, if that is what they have done, is pretty blah if you ask me.

The whole point of the thread though is that I will still like it as an RPG. I still liked ME2 as a shooter and I still liked Splinter Cell Conviction as a shooter. The question is: am I contributing to everything being turned into an easy action game by buying them? Despite liking these simplified sequels would it in fact be a more effective statement to not buy them?

I really feel the same way here, DAO was a big dissappointment to me from a gameplay perspective. A cool story, and when I first started in the mages tower undertaking the harrowing I was very excited, but the more the game played out the more I just felt limited.

I really agree with a lot of what you've been saying here, and felt much the same about ME2 sacrificing the qualities of ME1 that turned it from a shooter to an RPG. Although I also still enjoyed the story, I felt I hadn't paid for what I was expecting, and that can certainly leave a bitter taste in one's mouth. :(

The solution? Buy on sale, somewhere down the line where no-one's making much profit. Your statement is made (and personally I believe such statements are more important for our own sense of moral integrity; the world, I fear, mostly doesn't care) and you can still enjoy the game for its own merits. I'm still waiting for the new prince of persia game to be cheaper, to a point where I feel its cost is equal to its value. Unfortunately I think DA2 is headed the same way (and I've had BG2 installed on whatever rig I've had built for years now, I'm a fanboy myself), but the last bioware game I loved was kotor, and as much as I enjoyed dragon age and mass effect, they're obviously not what we were hoping for.

Don't feel bad about supporting the industry transforming though; as much as our patronage is our strongest voice, I think if the industry viewed the voice of gamers like us as relevant we wouldn't face this dilemma.

I buy games if I'm interested in them, if not I don't. Games getting simplified to be more casual may annoy me a bit but if I still enjoy the game it doesn't matter all that much to me. Would I have liked ME2 to be a bit more RPG than it is? Sure, but I loved it as it is but there are other RPGs to play so it isn't a big deal to me.

As for Dragon Age 2 I have it preordered it but will definitely cancel if I can only afford one game at the time as I'm much more interested in Deus Ex 3.