Beat Mass Effect 2 recently and managed to get all but 3 achievements: Insanity — Beat the game on Insanity difficulty; Overload Specialist — Use Overload to destroy a shield 25 times (only did this 22 times); Warp Specialist — Use Warp to destroy a Barrier 25 times (only did this a few times). I probably could have gotten Overload and Warp, but didn’t realize that you actually had to finish off the Shield/Barrier with Overload/Warp in order for it to count. That and not many enemies had Barrier.
I ended up putting in just over 40 hours in my first playthrough.
At the end it tells you that you can keep playing and will now have the option to use this character for your next playthrough (basically New Game +). I had already done well… everything so I just ran around listened to the conversations and then decided to start a new game to see what carries over.
What carries over:
- Level/Experience
- Guns — both Heavy and Regular
- Skills — Your skills look exactly the same as how you left them on the save before you imported, minus your bonus skill (Tip: Use Retrain Powers before you save and import, that way you can reallocate everything when you start).
- Armor — All the armor pieces and sets you have are still there
- Bonus Skills — Each of the squadmates that were loyal to you had a bonus skill that you could use, you get to pick which you want when start a new game
What doesn’t carry over:
- Paragon/Renegade Points — This was the biggest disappointment to me
- Upgrades — Anything you researched will need to be researched again
- Money/Resources — I finished the game with over 50k Element Zero, 300k Iridium, 250k Platinum and Palladium, and 44k Credits — all gone. However, you do start with 50k of each mineral and 200k credits.
- Squadmates/Loyalties — Not surprising that you don’t get your buddies as getting them was a large part of the game, or that they aren’t still loyal
Since I beat the game at Level 30 (which is the level cap), I don’t know if I’ll do another playthrough as that character. Yeah, I still need to beat the game on Insane mode and having a fully leveled character will help with that, but I’d rather try out a different character class. I was an Infiltrator and rarely used my Class Ability (Cloak), though the time slowdown when zooming in with the Sniper Rifle was great. I’m thinking of being a Sentinel next, that way I have both Overload and Warp on my character.
Any readers played/playing/beaten Mass Effect 2? What class did you choose and did you like it?
Tomorrow’s post will contain some more thoughts on Mass Effect 2, specifically, the composition of my End Game Team and how I kept everyone alive!