ME2 is the most ageless of the trilogy. A tight story with fun characters and cool combat. My biggest complaint is scanning for minerals. The suicide mission is a great plot gimmick that I’m glad they didn’t reuse.

By contrast ME1 is so sprawling and ambitious that replaying it is a letdown; because most of the choices don’t actually matter. The combat is fine but not as good as ME2. The first play through was amazing though.

ME3 suffers from the worst of both games that came before it. The story is a disjointed WW2 homage that never sticks the landing and kinda insults you. Instead of scanning for minerals I was grinding online battles to earn “war score” or something for the reaper war I’m ultimately scripted to lose.

That being said they are all still fun games, but to me ME2 is the best of the 3.

Mass Effect 2 frequently ends up in lists of the greatest games of all time.

I played it; was disappointed with how the gameplay was streamlined to where you don't need to TRY AT ALL in the last 1/3rd no matter the difficulty, but wanted to see it through for the story and then - bam - giant skellington.

They made the combat much better

I don't care whether shit looks cool when there's no challenge.