User blog comment:Legionwrex/Comparing the Mass Effect Trilogy!/@comment-3492791-20120921192248

ME1 was a hard RPG. That kind of micromanagement of powers and equipment was to be expected, as it's kind of a hallmarks of the genre. You get 50 new upgrades and equipment per level, you look through it to see if anything is marginally better than what you have, then marginally better than whatever crap you gave your squad, and you sell all the rest. ME1 had an actual curve. Throughout the game your equipment improves, your powers improve, and your offensive capabilities improve. There may have however been some issues in enemy scaling. As in it wasn't there. You do a couple of side missions and get tons of money, you could by specter weapons before you even do two main missions. One of the things I hated about ME1 was that the powers too like five minutes to recharge. Maybe it was to make it so you couldn't rely on a single power, but it sucked so much I barely used powers because of it.

ME2 was a large shift do to the franchise being handed to EA. It be came a real ACTION-rpg. There were no upgrades, only 2-3 different weapons in each category that were all more or less equally effective, and fell heavily on cover based combat. The main issue with this is there was little to no character enchantment. From the minute you are given all your available weapons, you don't really ever improve in combat. It relied much more on player skill than equipment quality. Headshots alone were an example of trying to "mainstream" the gameplay. Also, what happened to grenades? Only Zaeed and Kasumi got them, like it was an after thought. Mineral scanning...I need say no more. Interrupts were a good idea, but feed into a bad system. With the removal of Parg/Reng skill from the skill chart, they were only improved through using interrupts and some general dialogue. This in a way removed the ability for personal choice, as most normal people are not all good or bad, and would fall somewhere in a 60-40 range. However with only 60% in Parg/Reng you couldn't use a lot of the conversation options associated, and thus players had to make decisions they may not have personally agreed with in order to gain skill in either Parg/Reng so they might be able to make a decision later. Powers were better though because they ran on shorter timers, but all used the same time to prevent spamming. Side missions, if not as many, were much better. Without having to roaming barren wasteland X, looking for base Y, to kill generic enemy Z, each side mission actually felt unique. There were even a few that strung together into their own little story lines. But let's not forget the most important thing of all...What in the name of all the gods it up with those damn thermal clips?!

ME3 tried to tie all the good bits from the previous game together and, to a degree, succeeded. They added lots of varying weapons, mixed up the diversity of powers, added the reputation system to counter my above point about Parg/Reng, re-introduced upgrades, and added some level scaling (for at least weapons) by not allowing better weapons to appear until certain parts of the story. The however still clung to, and in fact added on to, cover combat, yucky thermal clips, and headshots. But the biggest break came in the weight system. They took out one of the major factors in the class balance, weapons. Any class can have any weapon, as long as you lose power recharge. To a Soldier, this isn't a big deal, as your only real powers are ammos and grenades, which require little to no recharge. However when a Vanguard carries a lightish sniper, and can still use biotic explosions and such, it becomes a bit strange.

ME1 presented a very RPG-ish system. ME2 tried to streamline it to appeal to mainstream gamers. ME3 tried to prefect the the ME2 system to appeal to fans of both games.