After playing ME2 LE for a while, I have a few thoughts about the improvements - and the things that still bother me about it.
LE improvements:
HDR integration. The more HDR games I play, the more I'm learning to appreciate the impact of having such powerful colors and deep blacks (I'm using an OLED screen which obviously helps). The ME HDR integration is among the better examples of this, as well. I think Zero Dawn is still the best I've seen, though.
Ammo changes. There's a clear difference here and it's for the better. In the past, you really struggled with Sniper ammo for the first few missions - to the point where you couldn't reliably focus on it - which sucked as an Infiltrator. It's significantly more generous now. I hardly ever have to use weapons I don't specialize in or want to use.
Visual changes. They're more subtle than ME for obvious reasons, as ME2 is the more recent game. But textures are really quite well done - though I don't see that much difference compared to the available mods - but it's nice to have it all in one package. Shadows also seem less glitchy.
Load times. For whatever reason, these are FAST. They might have been limited to animation speed in the past - as the actual animations are also much faster. This makes a bigger difference than one would think - especially on the Normandy where you're constantly changing decks.
ME2 issues that remain:
FOV is rather atrocious, but thankfully this can be easily fixed with a mod - which I HIGHLY recommend doing for all the games.
The whole "one button to do everything" is still there. I hate that sprinting and going into cover is using the same key - and I'm constantly struggling to get out of cover as ME2 is one of the earlier examples of copying the popular Gears of War cover-shooter formula. Later games learned to make this transition much more natural.
The minigames - particularly scanning planets. Oh my, how I hate these. I'm ok with the circuit minigame - but the planet scanning and hacking stuff is just terrible.
When on a "combat mission" - you can't interact with most stuff without drawing your weapon. This is so annoying. For instance, if you want to listen to an audio log - you must draw your weapon first, which is very noisy and will block out the first few words of the log. Also, when you click log #2 - Shephard will draw his weapon AGAIN - as if it was holstered. Argh!
Way, way too much filler combat. But that's me. ME2 has particularly predictable combat scenarios. It's literally one room talk, one room fight - and cover is placed in such an obvious way that you will know when something is coming well before it happens - and that makes the whole ordeal worse. It's just too rigidly set up - and it's the same challenge over and over. Shielded enemies or armored enemies. Big challenge = both shield and armor.
Shared cooldown on abilities. This pisses me off to no end. Why can't I cloak and use my powers, for instance? I HATE shared cooldowns
Writing remains a mixture of neat concepts but with pretty awful and cringe Bioware melodrama. Almost no character is naturally introduced, except perhaps for Jacob. All other characters instantly shove their "edgy" personality down your throat and every other sentence will be there to remind you that this person is really special in his or her own particular way. To me, that's pretty terrible writing - but I concede that it's above average for a video game from that era.
I still miss exploring with the MAKO - even if the execution in ME sucked for the most part. But it's my favorite part of ME1 and Andromeda - as exploring strange new worlds is exactly the kind of thing I adore about sci-fi.
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That said, overall I'm enjoying myself - mostly because of the strong sci-fi atmosphere and the thought of finally completing all three games in one go, once and for all.
While I still think 60 Euro is steep for such old games, it's not as unreasonable as I first thought.
Of course, I didn't pay that much for it - but now that I've seen the changes I might have.
I know people are arguing that it's a great deal because of all the DLC - but I happen to think the price and nature of the DLCs were always very unreasonable. They're all either trivial crap like added items - or story stuff that most definitely should have been part of the complete package.
Having them all in one package is neat, yeah - but that doesn't make it that great a deal.
Not to me, anyway.
