1's weapon system > 2's weapon system

just sayin

ALSO GRENADES

ME1's combat and inventory are pretty janky, but the overall story and squad interaction was better, in my opinion.

Eh, #1 felt kind of slow to me.

Also, I can't even get past character creation in #1 right now, so we'll see how that goes.

ME1 was slower-paced than ME2. It was more of an RPG in the gameplay sections(Especially if you, like me, have a strange drive to do literally every sidequest in the universe) and focused on developing the universe and characters, whereas ME2 was much more oriented to the TPS aspects in gameplay, and since the characters were mostly already introduced(As awesome as Garrus is, it's not a coincidence three of the best-developed characters in it were the returning characters, and all the ones that fell flat were all new), focused more on the individual character relationships and expanding the characters in the story.

ME1 had to introduce you to everyone and the universe around you, and teach you the elements Bioware's famous for. With those all established, ME2 could go "Alright, here's the motley crew. You know Garrus, Tali, and Joker, these are the new guys. You know the heart and soul of our games already. Now lets cut straight to the gameplay, and get to know the characters a little better."

As for the clunkiness, that's just natural with a sequel - they learned a bit about what did and didn't work, what the demographics did and didn't like in ME1(On that note, be prepared for the Mako - it's a riot to watch someone drive, but dear god those physics are messed up, while I do miss planet exploration, I don't miss driving it), and fix those problem areas up a little bit.

Necro, I'd beaten ME three times already. You don't need to tell me what happened. I'm just doing it again so I have a continuous file for ME3, since they all got deleted.

(on an unrelated note, I love the Mako.)

Oh, alright then - I figured you got it after playing ME2, so you were fresh into ME1's systems.

(Maybe it's just because I suck driving with a keyboard or controller that I hated it XD)