"I just saved you from a nasty prison shower scene"
Shepard is so badass.

That's hilarious.
Been playing it for around 30 hours now. Many good elements, some weak ones. Here's a spoiler free "review":
- The dialogue system is worse than before which is my main worry: some dialogue choices are "renegade" for silly reasons and others are "paragon" when they seem the opposite. The first game sinned against this but the second makes it worse. I would much prefer to see complete lines instead of short sentences or words which are more often than not misleading.
- graphically, the game looks great, wonderful atmosphere, extremely smooth on my PC - what more can you want?
- The interface is dumbed down on PC. "Streamlined" they'll call it but it's annoying. To access your journal, codex, team stats, etc. you need to press ESCAPE to go to the head menu first. In the original game, you could set separate keys for each of those functions. There's no reason at all to change that. Bad decision.
- Combat is a lot better on one hand but on the other hand, it feels a lot like Gears of Mass Effect. It comes down to: run to cover, wait for enemy to pop in view, shoot, back behind cover, reload/recharge shield, repeat. You don't get to pick up different weapons as loot anymore (you do occasionally find weapon designs) and the ones you can choose from, don't even have stats anymore so it's guessing how much damage they do. Sniping no longer has a sway so you always shoot perfectly accurate. Guns no longer overload but now you have to reload them and ammo is scarce (they call it cooling capsules or whatever but it's really ammo in disguise). In the end, there's several improvements and several changes for the worse.
- RPG aspects have been almost completely eliminated. You can no longer sell anything. Omni Gel is gone. The whole looting system has been massively simplified: when doing a mission this is what you'll find:
- money in a safe or on a memo pad, both which need to be hacked first
- ore lying around in chests which can be used to research stuff
- ammo lying around
- schematics for items to research
That's it. Money and ammo is what you'll find 95% of the time.
Are there still shops? Yes, there are but not the kind you would expect. They sell upgrades and toys that can be displayed in your room (toy ships, fish, a hamster, etc.). But there's no trading. The upgrades are applied to your whole team. You can no longer pick armor for them or omni tools - their gear all gets updated with the upgrades. +10% Health for example. So you will no longer find cool armor which you can make a team mate wear.
The good news is that the locations are still good, the story is still strong, the game is well polished, the dialogue is still entertaining and the characters you meet are still interesting. This is Mass Effect: the Action Game basically. This is no longer a true RPG but really a third person action game with RPG aspects.

To be fair though, that applied to the first game as well, though to a lesser extent.
Someone seriously need to create a complex PC-centric RPG one of these days instead of the more and more consolised/simplified shooter stuff we seem to get nowadays.
Ah well, my copy should be arriving today, let's see if I enjoy this thing.

Paragon is on the top
Renegade is on the bottom
That's how it's always been, they can't fit the ten sentences of actual dialog in each option onscreen.
It takes one extra button to get to your journal or stats, which are the only two things you will actually use, occasionally. But the actual gameplay interface is ten times better than the first, which is what really matters.
How about the biotic powers bud? Those are more than half of the combat for my vanguard. Waaaay better this time around, I can toss enemies around however I want, freeze them, catch them on fire, slam into them from 150 feet away. And the best thing is, it takes real tactics, you have to hit the right enemies with the right powers based on their shielding and type.
Other cool things:
-Your squadmates will become loyal after you help them out with a personal problem. These missions are the most intricate and all of them will develop the team member in surprising and revealing ways. Once a squadmate is loyal they gain their most potent power, which you can later research and use yourself.
-The hacking games are actually fun this time. They're catchy.
-Mining for minerals is cool. For a while.

I like that a lot of the RPG stuff is gone. I always felt like I was playing the first one wrong.

No. Very no. Worst shit ever. Gdfsgsdfhgsdfghsdgfh.

I won't quote since it could break the forum :P But here's my reply:
Paragon may be at the top and Renegade may be at the bottom but it's still completely ridiculous. Did you even listen to the lines said that give you Renegade and Paragon points? More often than not, both give vital information so you pretty much have to use both or you lose out of valuable backstory elements. Heck, I got renegade points for asking if one of my crew ever experimented on living beings o_O. The left-side questions are always civil no matter where they're positioned so it's ridiculous to make them award renegade or paragon points. Poor system, full stop.
Also, you evaded my point with the "it's one extra click". It's one extra click which is not needed and which wasn't there in the previous game so how on earth can you defend that? It's going backwards, not forwards! No reason at all for it!
The loyalty missions are cool but they're a bit too artificial. Each of your crew has a single request to make - how convenient. Rescuing them = one mission. Loyalty = one mission. The original Mass Effect felt more organic - more realistic - that way. It's a minor complaint but in general I feel that this sequel is more mechanic in design. It's a lot more a game and less an experience.
Oh, and the hacking gets dull quickly and the mining even quicker. The mining: dear GOD. Fun the first 5 minutes but to get enough ore to research everything, you need to spend at LEAST 3 hours mining. I said "screw it" and just used a cheating program to pump it up. There's no challenge to it - it's pure patience. I haven't failed a single hack either (except once when I pressed the wrong key by accident) so that's more an inconvenience than actually a challenge. The original Mass Effect had better hacking.
It's still a very fun game but it does have quite a few obvious flaws. Oh, and the bastards killed off my fish even though I fed it after every mission!

I spent six hours mining the other night, and I really like it.

After I played ME1 I felt it was more of a movie than a game, ME2 feels alot more like a game than the first one but more of an FPS with a story than most FPS's. It's fine but not what I want out of a Bioware game. I expected this anyway so I'm not suprised and the game is fine for what it is.
Just like ME1 tho I won't be replaying ME2. (need to hurry up and finish too so I can finish up my replay of BG2 for the 3rd time).

I think the mining is better than just fly to a planet annd scan but I wish there was some skill involved rather than (in the case of the 360 version) hold in the left trigger than wiggle the thumbstick until the controller almost vibrates out of your hand.
Maybe they could incorporate some sort of basic reasoning game into it. Say you get a limited number of probes (maybe 5) and you get a topographical and spectral map, you see concentrations of blue in high areas and you might have element zero and it'd be worth a probe to find out, white in a low area could be platinum but white in a high area is likely just rock
When you have a task/minigame you can do with your eyes closed and not really change the outcome, its not really that fun

I have no problems with it. The only thing that really bugged me, is the first time you're introduced to the interupt system, the outcome is the same no matter what you choose. To be fair, in the first one, I just used escape, I didn't map the others, and I know a handful of other people who did the same. it's possible that the people who played the game just used escape for the majority, and they decided not to include a keymapping feature.It really depends on your playstyle, there are a few upgrades and special powers as well as armor that will allow you to run up to an enemy and punch them in their 4 eyed furry little faces. Yeah, I found it really odd that there were no guns in the gun store. As far as the weapon comment goes, they do have stats, via upgrades. They aren't hard stats, that you can see right there, but they do have differing stats and do different things. I found the nuke heavy weapon and I absolutely love it. Actually, I'd say this game is more of an RPG than most RPGs on the market because of how heavily it will weigh your decisions. I played through ME1 and imported my save into ME2 and I feel like I have played a very big role in the story; it's very much untraditional. Fuck loot, to be honest that's an absolutely silly way of doing things. Opening up a locker in ME1 gave you like a truckload of assault rifles, it's fucking ridiculous. and I am kind of curious what happened to all the fucking omnigel. to be fair, you can't pick the physical appearance of characters in a lot of game. Sure I miss the pajama armor from ME1, that was my favorite armor, it made Jane Shepard look so cute.Again, I think because of the decisions a player makes, and how those decisions determine the players role in the game, that this is more of an RPG than most games, because what you do and say actually has an effect.
In the PC version, unless you have a vibrating keyboard, this is not possible.

You're evading my point. I flat out admitted that you were right when it comes to the parts of the interface you were talking about, saying it takes one more button press to do so. I then made the point that the overhaul to the combat and command interface more than makes up for the extra button you have to press to get to your stats or missions, which is used much less often and never needs to be done in a split second.
I misunderstood your point with the renegade and paragon points. And there was one time during Mordin's mission where I thought all of Shepherd's paragon choices were just him being a superior dick.
I love the hacking minigames personally. Especially the circuit board one. I just kind of get into a flow with it, it's sort of relaxing.
As far as whether or not it's a good RPG I think we need to clarify: Mass Effect 2 is not a heavily stat-based old school bioware Role-Playing game. It is a heavily tactical shooter where you do much more actual Role-Playing and that has a much stronger story than almost any game out there, but does not fit well with what we've come to think of as an RPG. And yes it may feel contrived that all of the characters have one mission that makes them loyal, but that's a small price to pay for a chance to experience the best character development and role-playing that gaming has to offer right now, and most importantly it makes every character feel like they matter. You can't knock the loyalty missions.

Just my 2 cents:
The Loading screens I can deal with, they really aren't that long. Because the original used elevators it made no difference how fast your machine was it was always slow and boring. Now the loading is less than 10 seconds.
The control mapping is very odd because it seems they streamlined it for the 360 version but then didn't support 360 pad support. I can live with it but since I just finished a speedrun on the frst game it's taking some time to stop myself pressing the wrong keys.
Paragon/Renegade interrupt is fine however it means that you can't skip these conversations which may be annoying in a future playthrough.
The Gears of War influence is obvious but I don't think it's a bad thing. People complained the orignal wans't a 'proper' RPG anyway and this is just Bioware going further down that road.
Ammo is extremely annoying, I don't know why they felt the need to add it it. Most things are shielded and bosses often have shields. Armour and Biotics before you get to their heath bar. With limited ammo in a bossfight you quickly end up with just one weapon and a few rounds left.
Graphics seem to have been given a boost which is always a positive and the lip-synching is very good. The soundtrack doesn't seem as memorable as the first though with the exception of the new Normandy theme that plays when... well you know spoilers. Characters are all great and memorable I would expect nothing less from Bioware. Zaeed is hilarious.
I'm glad they ditched the Mako there I said it. The whole Mako idea was ruined when the level designers made the mountains too steep and invariably put pick ups on the opposite sides of them, sadists. If I had to crawl the Mako slowly up another mountainside only for it to jerk wildly and fall back again one more time I would have screamed. Not happy with the new scanning for minerals thing though. It makes sense but the limited fuel and probes makes it more laborious than it should be.
I'm glad they ditched omni-gel and multiple armour/weapons. At the end of ME1 money was so plentiful everyone had the Spectre weapons and thats all you needed. There was no reason to be ending each mission with 50 different assault rifles you had no use for.
Hacking is great, Decryption is boring. I'm glad they allow any charater to hack now as I play a Soldier/Commando but a bit more variety would be nice.
Overall the sequel is an improvement on an already brilliant game and I highly recommend it. However it's not perfect. I hope they continue to fix a few things for the final game.

press space.Again, this depends on your class and how you play it, there are abilities, upgrades, and armor which will give you a different way to behave in battle each time. Playing through on normal, I did not have this issue. Either you aren't moving around on the battlefield enough, or you're a really bad shot.Don't you mean Canderous Ordo? he loves telling stories about the mandelorian wars. The mako returns in new DLC! Also, there are upgrades that make scanning for minerals easier. Exactly, I'm tired of bullshit inventory systems I can't keep track of.I find them both to be really boring. I like the old game in ME1 better.

You can't skip the parts of conversations where you actually HAVE an interrupt. I tried (during Mordin's loyalty mission). You can skip the rest, but not that part.
And ammo only becomes an issue if you don't use it properly. Don't use your SMG to take out armor. Switch to your Heavy Pistol for that. That being said, it sucks that the hand cannon only has two spare mags...