In the end I actually overall liked the game, but it definitely played quite differently from the first. I read some early interviews saying they’ve listened to criticism from ME1. That really shows! They addressed those criticisms sure, but not in a good way. Each battle in ME2 works really similarly, where as in ME1 the environments weren’t so predictably laid out as to where you take cover. Toward the end of course since there were so many battles, there were a couple good ones but nothing as memorable as the ME1 which I still remember as if I played it yesterday.

The art/lightning/sound direction is much more thought and carefully done in ME1. In ME2 there’s a feeling of “quantity over quality” though overall it’s still way better than say Dragon Age snorefest.

The “resource-game/exploration” they put into ME2 is a particular example of them just addressing criticism from press/fans without playtesting to make sure it’s any fun. If they’d done a carbon copy of Star Control 2 which had exact same game element of resource-gather+exploration, that’d been way better/fun/challenging than this snorefest even though it wouldn’t have been realistic in any way.

However since ME1 had it’s share of problems as well, I’d say they rank similarly on my scale.