Ok my turn.
Inventory system in ME1 was horrible, but removing it altogether made ME2 feel less like an RPG and more like just a third person shooter. Loot and inventory should be integral parts of every RPG, and the lack of items to find and use detracted from what I would have preferred for ME2 "feel" as a game. I'll chalk it up to design choice though.
ME2 weapon retconning certainly did add an element of tacticality to the gameplay, I'll grant that. However, the implementation of
ammo thermal clips was done in a frustratingly simplistic manner. Here are the biggest flaws on it from my point of view:
1. Even though all thermal clips are exactly the same, they're assigned into an individual slot for the weapon you happen to have selected. This means if you run our of heat sinks on sniper rifle, switch to another weapon, and walk over a heatsink, it's by default assigned to the weapon you happen to be using. This makes no sense and results in frustrating stuff when you need to have your sniper rifle selected to gather ammo for it - even though the heatsinks are exactly the same.
*HOW IT SHOULD WORK: heatsinks accumulate in a generic pool you're carrying, and every weapon has access to the same pool - if you carry let's say 40 heatsinks, then you would have 40 shots for Widow, 40x8 for Carnifex Hand Cannon, 40x30 for a weapon that gets 30 shots per heat sink, etc.
Either that or really make the heatsinks different based on what weapon they are compatible with...
2. Even though they're described as "thermal clips", they are functionally ammunition - you can't re-use a heatsink once it comes out of the gun. And the number of heatsinks you can carry tends to be a bit too low. You can increase it with armour selection, but only so much, and at the cost of other armour features.
*HOW IT SHOULD WORK: You carry a number of heatsinks. Used heatsinks are stored until they have cooled down. Based on how many heatsinks you have the capacity to carry and how fast they cool down, you could fire at enemies, change heatsinks as they overheat, and once you run out of heatsinks you restart using the heatsinks that have cooled off. If you're firing faster than your heatsinks have time to cool off, THEN you would be forced to search for fresh heatsinks and use them.
If the only reason for retconning the weapon mechanics was to make the weapons more functionally similar to current ones, this would have worked just as well.
3. Weapons cannot be fired at all if you run out of heatsinks.
*HOW IT SHOULD WORK: Weapons overheat similar to in ME1, and take a while before you can re-use them with same heatsink. That would make the whole heatsink mechanism an actually sensible thing, since switcing heatsinks would result in ability to resume fire faster after weapon overheat. Now it's just annoying since previously you didn't need to worry about ammo consumption in firefights, just avoiding the overheating of the gun was enough.
The planet scanning was retarded, much more so than driving the Mako around random planets. The Mako was actually a fairly nice vehicle, like was said before it was the improbably jagged terrains that made the random planets really annoying.
Story-wise, I thought ME1 was in overall better. ME2 had better characters (and the loyalty missions were actually the bulk and best parts of the game); the main quest missions (especially the ending) didn't make as much of an impression for me as ME1's main missions did.
ME2 story would'be been better with the allegedly original story elements about the Reaper under construction... as it was, though, it was somewhat silly.
That should address my immediate thoughts comparing the two games.
