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So now that the final bit of ME2 is out I thought it would be reasonable to bump this up and see what other people think.
Myself? I was underwhelmed. + Show Spoiler +With something called "The Arrival" I guess I was actually expecting the arrival of the Reapers. Instead there was a 2 minute speech from Harbinger and a short conversation with Hackett. I guess we know that it could take years for them to get anywhere now, and I guess that war with the Batarians might loom, but it still seems lacking in my opinion. They could have showed them arriving after jumping and after the Relay was destroyed.
Overall, meh. Not a waste, but Lair of the Shadow Broker is vastly superior in terms of gameplay, story, and reward. Apparently the same guy that was really responsible for that didn't have any part of Arrival. It kind of shows too.
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Yeah the DLC kinda sucks.
+ Show Spoiler +The reason you can't bring your squad is bullshit since all you get for stealthing is an achievement. Also, when you try to save the civilians you can't, and then you get shit for it. It's an RPG, give me choice and some damn conversations. I'm pissed off that my Shepard has to be a sacrificial lamb for something that happened in a cutscene. If they're going to put me on trial then do it for the messed up things I chose to do, like killing the council.
Solo combat sucks, this is a squad based game and the whole thing was poorly written. There are lots of plot holes, for example, why was the whole place preserved if all the crew was indoctrinated? And it didn't even advance the plot or exlpain how the Reapers got here. They are in the Milky Way now, but so what? They wrote it so that it makes no difference whatsoever.
The DLC wasn't made by the ME2 team though, since they're busy making ME3.
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On April 01 2011 18:32 Sceptor87 wrote:
The absolute toughest enemy was a YMIR Mech. One at a time when I've already fought 2 or 3 at a time.
I'm pretty sure the health of that single YMIR Mech in insanity mode is way higher than previous YMIR Mechs in the game (I shot it with maxed out nuke and it only took out its shield and half the armor)
The DLC was way too short imo and only interesting part was+ Show Spoiler +which most people won't get to see on the first play through.
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Yeah, it was a bit of a "small bite" if you ask me. Looking forward re-beating ME1 and ME2 when ME3 comes out thou.
I'll never get tired of this game.
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I initially thought about posting in the ME3 thread, but everyone there's oogling Ashley and Miranda and busy discussing the demo, and we do have a ME2 thread ... so I'm going to bump this.
Having lived in in the usual Blizzard cave of gaming isolation, I hadn't played the ME series until very recently, actually only having finished ME2 a couple of days ago. Great game, wonderful story, really cool. My first playthrough was with a soldier on Normal difficulty and the fights weren't really challenging.
I decided to start a second run because I liked the game so much and foolishly decided to pick an Adept and Hardcore difficulty. And the fights went from challenging to utter frustration.
The squad AI is a nightmare. Instead of doing what I tell them or moving with some common sense, my squad will usually find the quickest way to get themselves killed. On normal difficulty this didn't matter as enemies didn't live long enough but on hardcore it's very apparent.
To top things off, I picked the wrong class. Adepts suck. Especially compared to soldiers. Biotic powers apparently only work well when there's no shielding or armor, but hey, EVERYTHING has barriers, shields or armor, even freaking husks! Which means my oh-so-awesome Singularity will rarely actually pick up stuff and I'm busy trying to kill things with Warp and my puny guns (limiting the Adept to pistols and SMG is pretty cruel, too).
Is there a decent Adept build? I have the passive skill and Singularity maxed currently and am working on Warp. Thanks to the bonus skill from the first playthrough (I picked Warp ammo), my guns actually do damage, but they have little to no range and suck badly compared to the assault or sniper rifles that made the soldier playthrough a walk in the park. I thought about picking up Reave ... but not sure whether that'd help.
Is there hope for Adepts? Or for the squad AI? Or is there a mod to change my class mid-game to something which can actually beat stuff without spending ages on non-boss enemies?
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I haven't played ME2 in a long time, but I've finished hardcore with an adept. It is pretty frustrating early on, just remember to bring someone with overload at all times, and try to have at least one character capable to dealing long-range death. Garrus is a good companion for adepts, and I suggest you tech singularity and warp (the warp-bomb is beast late game). Also have a few points in a defensive skill (barrier or shield).
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Adept+Miranda+Garrus with Heavy Warps+Heavy Overloads is by far the easiest way to win Insanity.
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On February 17 2012 06:33 Praetorial wrote:
Adept+Miranda+Garrus with Heavy Warps+Heavy Overloads is by far the easiest way to win Insanity.
I have been running with Miranda and Garrus most of the time now, both for Overload and Garrus' sniper support. The squad AI ruins most of that potential, though. The final Harbinger/Praetorian fight on Horizon just made me quit the game after a series of frustrating deaths due to stupid squad + lacking damage + running out of medkits.
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I had absolutely no problems playing through insanity with an adept. I went with:
4 warp - unstable warp
4 singularity - wide singularity
4 pull - pull field
4 passive - nemesis
4 -stasis - deep stasis
And I know that's not even optimal; considering how I used stasis, I would've been better off leaving it at one point and maxing throw. And I'm sure that a good case could be made for the heavy warp/singularity evolutions too. I took Jack with me on just about every mission too and, aside from her quick pull, she's pretty bad.
My approach to basically every encounter was: shoot enemy in the head, use Jack's pull, then my own warp. Against tougher enemies like Krogan and YMIR mechs, I abused the shit out of stasis.
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On February 17 2012 07:31 Mindcrime wrote:
I had absolutely no problems playing through insanity with an adept. I went with:
4 warp - unstable warp
4 singularity - wide singularity
4 pull - pull field
4 passive - nemesis
4 -stasis - deep stasis
And I know that's not even optimal; considering how I used stasis, I would've been better off leaving it at one point and maxing throw. And I'm sure that a good case could be made for the heavy warp/singularity evolutions too. I took Jack with me on just about every mission too and, aside from her quick pull, she's pretty bad.
My approach to basically every encounter was: shoot enemy in the head, use Jack's pull, then my own warp. Against tougher enemies like Krogan and YMIR mechs, I abused the shit out of stasis.
Sorry, am I missing something here? How did you get FIVE skills maxed out? I finished the first playthrough at level 20-something on my soldier with 2 or 3 skills maxed, and my Adept is now 11 or 12 and has two maxed. Please remember that I'm not re-using an identical character for this, but instead started from scratch.
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On February 17 2012 06:01 Shockk wrote:+ Show Spoiler +I initially thought about posting in the ME3 thread, but everyone there's oogling Ashley and Miranda and busy discussing the demo, and we do have a ME2 thread ... so I'm going to bump this.
Having lived in in the usual Blizzard cave of gaming isolation, I hadn't played the ME series until very recently, actually only having finished ME2 a couple of days ago. Great game, wonderful story, really cool. My first playthrough was with a soldier on Normal difficulty and the fights weren't really challenging.
I decided to start a second run because I liked the game so much and foolishly decided to pick an Adept and Hardcore difficulty. And the fights went from challenging to utter frustration.
The squad AI is a nightmare. Instead of doing what I tell them or moving with some common sense, my squad will usually find the quickest way to get themselves killed. On normal difficulty this didn't matter as enemies didn't live long enough but on hardcore it's very apparent.
To top things off, I picked the wrong class. Adepts suck. Especially compared to soldiers. Biotic powers apparently only work well when there's no shielding or armor, but hey, EVERYTHING has barriers, shields or armor, even freaking husks! Which means my oh-so-awesome Singularity will rarely actually pick up stuff and I'm busy trying to kill things with Warp and my puny guns (limiting the Adept to pistols and SMG is pretty cruel, too).
Is there a decent Adept build? I have the passive skill and Singularity maxed currently and am working on Warp. Thanks to the bonus skill from the first playthrough (I picked Warp ammo), my guns actually do damage, but they have little to no range and suck badly compared to the assault or sniper rifles that made the soldier playthrough a walk in the park. I thought about picking up Reave ... but not sure whether that'd help.
Is there hope for Adepts? Or for the squad AI? Or is there a mod to change my class mid-game to something which can actually beat stuff without spending ages on non-boss enemies?
1. Pick your team wisely when playing Adept. It is the most powerfull class once enemy defences are down, but striping defences are a bitch and you have to rely on your teamates.
2. Keep your teamates alive. Their AI is bad, but you can order them to stay in 1 place and they tend to live that away alot longer. While two guys with Incisor do decent amounts of damage, the most important thing the squadmates give you are powers.
3. Like you keep money low in Starcraft, you have to keep squadmates and yours powers always on cooldown. Always use them! They don't cost mana or something.
4. Basic gameplan for Adept: Strip defences with weapons and/or squadmates-> Setup for Warp Explosion-> Warp Explosion. Choose your powers to minimize cooldown, maximize warp explosion and also maximize Singularity because it is a very good CC and combo setup.
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Can't wait to start playing ME2. I bought ME1 when it was released on Xbox 360, but even though I had read the prequel book and was really pumped, I just didn't get the feeling that I had to play more, I was in fact quite disappointed with how boring exploration was and how messy the fighting system felt.
Just a few days ago, I suddenly got the urge to try ME2 though so I started playing ME1 again and it's actually quite fun now. The problems I had with the game are still there, but knowing that most of that is fixed in ME2 makes it easier to play on, and the games story sure is compelling. Playing Adept with Garrus and Ashley, I found it ridiculously frustrating in the start, you literally couldn't peek out from cover without instantly dying since adepts have horrible armor and health in the start... now when I'm on my way to Ilos, I feel broken, maxed singularity literally pwns whole rooms of enemies, barrier makes you unkillable for a while, and the improved armor sure makes a huge difference, with the amounts of shields you have later on, it doesn't really matter that your actual armor is crap. From the discussion here, I get the feeling this won't be the case in ME2, which is a bit sad since it's pretty cool how the class starts weak and becomes OP later on, so I wonder if I will stick to adept in ME2... no way I'll go soldier though, sounds really boring.
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ME2 was great, I didn't play through ME1 (started it but it was after ME2 and I couldn't get in to it) but I had a blast with 2. I just played the demo for ME3 today and I can't wait even if its the same demo they showed off at the last E3. Hope you enjoy it Tobberoth!
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+ Show Spoiler +On February 17 2012 06:01 Shockk wrote:
I initially thought about posting in the ME3 thread, but everyone there's oogling Ashley and Miranda and busy discussing the demo, and we do have a ME2 thread ... so I'm going to bump this.
Having lived in in the usual Blizzard cave of gaming isolation, I hadn't played the ME series until very recently, actually only having finished ME2 a couple of days ago. Great game, wonderful story, really cool. My first playthrough was with a soldier on Normal difficulty and the fights weren't really challenging.
I decided to start a second run because I liked the game so much and foolishly decided to pick an Adept and Hardcore difficulty. And the fights went from challenging to utter frustration.
The squad AI is a nightmare. Instead of doing what I tell them or moving with some common sense, my squad will usually find the quickest way to get themselves killed. On normal difficulty this didn't matter as enemies didn't live long enough but on hardcore it's very apparent.
To top things off, I picked the wrong class. Adepts suck. Especially compared to soldiers. Biotic powers apparently only work well when there's no shielding or armor, but hey, EVERYTHING has barriers, shields or armor, even freaking husks! Which means my oh-so-awesome Singularity will rarely actually pick up stuff and I'm busy trying to kill things with Warp and my puny guns (limiting the Adept to pistols and SMG is pretty cruel, too).
Is there a decent Adept build? I have the passive skill and Singularity maxed currently and am working on Warp. Thanks to the bonus skill from the first playthrough (I picked Warp ammo), my guns actually do damage, but they have little to no range and suck badly compared to the assault or sniper rifles that made the soldier playthrough a walk in the park. I thought about picking up Reave ... but not sure whether that'd help.
Is there hope for Adepts? Or for the squad AI? Or is there a mod to change my class mid-game to something which can actually beat stuff without spending ages on non-boss enemies?
Transitioning from normal difficulty to Hardcore or even Insanity is quite a big difference. Normal difficulty is just way too easy. I don't know what to tell you that you don't already know but here goes:
- Strip enemy protection with powers of squadmates or by shooting and then use pull/singularity+warp for warp explosion and double damage on the target + full damage even on protected enemies surrounding the target.
- max out warp and passive first + singularity to trigger explosions and then go from there.
- I took reave as bonus skill for further protection removal, stasis and barrier as defensive options seem decent as well. Haven't tried warp ammo.
- I didn't experience any problems with squad AI in my playthroughs. They pretty much did what was expected. If they are out of position order them to cover otherwise just manually spam the shit out of all powers (no auto-powers)
- I would not recommend changing the class midgame. A lot of people made it through insanity with adepts, so it is very possible to go through hardcore with an adept. If you are dead set on changing the class there is a savegame editor out there, just google it.
- Roll with miranda and garrus or miranda and grunt
On February 17 2012 19:09 Tobberoth wrote:
Just a few days ago, I suddenly got the urge to try ME2 though so I started playing ME1 again and it's actually quite fun now. The problems I had with the game are still there, but knowing that most of that is fixed in ME2 makes it easier to play on, and the games story sure is compelling. Playing Adept with Garrus and Ashley, I found it ridiculously frustrating in the start, you literally couldn't peek out from cover without instantly dying since adepts have horrible armor and health in the start... now when I'm on my way to Ilos, I feel broken, maxed singularity literally pwns whole rooms of enemies, barrier makes you unkillable for a while, and the improved armor sure makes a huge difference, with the amounts of shields you have later on, it doesn't really matter that your actual armor is crap. From the discussion here, I get the feeling this won't be the case in ME2, which is a bit sad since it's pretty cool how the class starts weak and becomes OP later on, so I wonder if I will stick to adept in ME2... no way I'll go soldier though, sounds really boring.
Adept was broken in ME1, even on higher difficulties. In ME2 adepts are still broken on lower difficulties but considerably harder to play on higher ones. The combat system in the first one just wasn't that exciting. The combat and shooting in ME2 is a lot more fun than it was in ME1. Therefore having a wide arsenal of weapons and ammo powers is pretty cool and playing a soldier is not as boring as it might seem.
Most fun for me was Vanguard tho. The playstyle is very different from other classes. Charging in (and dying) like a madman 24/7.
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Biotics are the best if you know how to use them, essentially because their crowd controlling. The damage output and health of the character aren't as good, but if you've got the right squadmates and the right skill trees, than you should be able to blow your enemies all over the place, preventing them from even getting the chance to fight back. It was even more ridiculous in Mass Effect 1. I had a combo as a Sentinel/Bastion/Singularity with Kaidan & Liara as squadmates, and at level 60. Essentially I had 2 singularities, 3 throws, 3 lifts, 3 warp, etc etc => on Insanity, it takes a while to kill people, but you never ever get shot back 
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If adept is too frustrating on hardcore, I recommend trying adept/vanguard on insanity. It'll be a lot more fun.
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On February 18 2012 00:21 HaXXspetten wrote:
Biotics are the best if you know how to use them, essentially because their crowd controlling. The damage output and health of the character aren't as good, but if you've got the right squadmates and the right skill trees, than you should be able to blow your enemies all over the place, preventing them from even getting the chance to fight back
Biotics were OP in ME1. Doesn't work that way in ME2 though.
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On February 18 2012 00:46 ZeaL. wrote:
If adept is too frustrating on hardcore, I recommend trying adept/vanguard on insanity. It'll be a lot more fun.
Yeah ... right.
I've gained a few more levels on my adept and it's become a bit better; Heavy Warp really does help combined with Nemesis. But it's so incredibly boring playing the crowd controller and waiting for cooldowns to finish. And any fight where I can't abuse the terrain to the max usually spells out my doom.
The extra weapon spec gained on the Collector vessel is what really keeps me in the game right now; having picked the sniper rifle, I now actually have an option besides shooting Warp around corners and trying to kill things with my puny SMG (which still sucks, even at 5/5 upgrades). The class would have been much more fun to play had I had more than two weapons from the start, and if it weren't so focussed on CC but more on combat efficiency.
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On February 17 2012 17:46 Shockk wrote:Show nested quote +On February 17 2012 07:31 Mindcrime wrote:
I had absolutely no problems playing through insanity with an adept. I went with:
4 warp - unstable warp
4 singularity - wide singularity
4 pull - pull field
4 passive - nemesis
4 -stasis - deep stasis
And I know that's not even optimal; considering how I used stasis, I would've been better off leaving it at one point and maxing throw. And I'm sure that a good case could be made for the heavy warp/singularity evolutions too. I took Jack with me on just about every mission too and, aside from her quick pull, she's pretty bad.
My approach to basically every encounter was: shoot enemy in the head, use Jack's pull, then my own warp. Against tougher enemies like Krogan and YMIR mechs, I abused the shit out of stasis. Sorry, am I missing something here? How did you get FIVE skills maxed out? I finished the first playthrough at level 20-something on my soldier with 2 or 3 skills maxed, and my Adept is now 11 or 12 and has two maxed. Please remember that I'm not re-using an identical character for this, but instead started from scratch.
At level 30, you'll have 51 squad points to distribute. That's 5 maxed skills + 1 left over. That was a character imported from ME1 and started at, IIRC, level 3.
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On February 17 2012 06:01 Shockk wrote:
I initially thought about posting in the ME3 thread, but everyone there's oogling Ashley and Miranda and busy discussing the demo, and we do have a ME2 thread ... so I'm going to bump this.
Having lived in in the usual Blizzard cave of gaming isolation, I hadn't played the ME series until very recently, actually only having finished ME2 a couple of days ago. Great game, wonderful story, really cool. My first playthrough was with a soldier on Normal difficulty and the fights weren't really challenging.
I decided to start a second run because I liked the game so much and foolishly decided to pick an Adept and Hardcore difficulty. And the fights went from challenging to utter frustration.
The squad AI is a nightmare. Instead of doing what I tell them or moving with some common sense, my squad will usually find the quickest way to get themselves killed. On normal difficulty this didn't matter as enemies didn't live long enough but on hardcore it's very apparent.
To top things off, I picked the wrong class. Adepts suck. Especially compared to soldiers. Biotic powers apparently only work well when there's no shielding or armor, but hey, EVERYTHING has barriers, shields or armor, even freaking husks! Which means my oh-so-awesome Singularity will rarely actually pick up stuff and I'm busy trying to kill things with Warp and my puny guns (limiting the Adept to pistols and SMG is pretty cruel, too).
Is there a decent Adept build? I have the passive skill and Singularity maxed currently and am working on Warp. Thanks to the bonus skill from the first playthrough (I picked Warp ammo), my guns actually do damage, but they have little to no range and suck badly compared to the assault or sniper rifles that made the soldier playthrough a walk in the park. I thought about picking up Reave ... but not sure whether that'd help.
Is there hope for Adepts? Or for the squad AI? Or is there a mod to change my class mid-game to something which can actually beat stuff without spending ages on non-boss enemies?
I didn't have too much of an issue on insanity with my adept. I brought Garrus and Miranda with me everywhere since both have Overload (and Miranda has warp for extra beatings against armor and big damage, I think you can swap either one with Kasumi or maybe Thane and do fine too), picked a Snipe Rifle for my extra weapon, and Reave for my extra power. You need to be very slow and methodical in combat, and you need to be careful to delegate your squad's power usage properly (set squad power use to off so you have complete control over when they use them and what they use them on... you'll spend a lot of time in the power wheel but its necessary. Designate what they shoot at and what they use powers on each step of the way). Adepts can control space really well with Throw/Pull/Shockwave/Singularity while your followers strip shields/barriers/armor away. If you push too far forward too quickly in a combat situation the AI will tend to try and get right on top of you, and then you're dead. Don't be afraid to give a little ground sometimes and try to section off enemies. I tried to focus down the biggest threats first whenever possible (Krogans, Heavy Mechs, etc). The only times I really found myself in really difficult situations were when there was a heavy mech + a lot of normal guys. The big mechs are so resilient on Insanity. In fact the hardest fight in the entire game for me was the Heavy Mech when trying to free Jack. Even the big floating armored Collector things weren't as tough for me to deal with for some reason.
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EPT
