4.5/5 ★ – Tye_Boy's review of Mass Effect 2.

Improving and polishing up from an already-great first game, Mass Effect 2 delivers on a engaging, cinematic science-fiction game. While part of me can’t stop feeling that the story overall didn’t reach my favoured heights of the original, this sequel more than makes up for it with a cast of truly diverse and memorable characters. Through the game’s writing, performances, designs, and loyalty missions, you really get to know this crew you put together by the end. Playing this from 2021’s Legendary Edition, the game looks gorgeous, lens flares and all. The environments and characters look great. It controls well, but occasionally there’s a bit of clunk when going from movement to going into cover. I found it awkward to have to climb over ledges upwards after going into cover to move to a slightly-elevated part of the level, instead of having something much quicker in place of that. Combat, while solid albeit a bit samey, could have had more weapon variety. I don’t know if I didn’t look around enough or not in my nearly 35-hour playthrough, but I really didn’t get a hold of too many weapons to use. If there’s one thing I am very much satisfied with here, it’s the improvements this game makes from the original. Gone are the clunky, padding “open-world roaming” sections. There’s less jank in here too, but still a tad bit. Voice clips cutting out near the end, dead enemies T-posing, and falling through the world a couple of times after dying took the immersion out of things a fair bit. Still, the fluff that was removed from this series after the original cannot be understated. Ultimately, I had a blast with Mass Effect 2. It was great to see returning faces again (Garrus my beloved), and to meet and get to know the new ones too. It looks great, plays fairly well, and boasts a fitting score, but little things come up throughout the game which irk me a decent amount. Nevertheless, I cannot deny the overall step-up this game takes from the first. Even if that step isn’t an all-too great one, in my eyes.