There's no denying that
Mass Effect 2 is a success. It has sold more than 2 million copies and reviewers loved it. And with a lot of people talking about it being a good candidate for the Game of the Year award when 2010 is done in terms of videogaming, some have wondered how it would be classified.
The initial answer is that it's a role playing game with shooter aspects but there are also voices who are saying Mass Effect 2 is a third person cover-based squad shooter with dialog and character development.
It's true that a whole raft or RPG elements are missing from Mass Effect 2. Players cannot customize the armor of their party members and the weapons they can choose from are pretty much linear upgrades. There is no inventory and even the customization of the loadout for Commander Shepard is limited.
The number of abilities for each class and character is limited and it takes more than one level at times to upgrade an ability. Most of the non-dialog bits in the game involve shooting enemies in clearly battle designed areas, with little exploration and with mostly linear progressions. The cover-based shooting is too good to be classified as just an appendage of a role playing experience.
On the other hand, rarely have I felt that I inhabit a character like I feel when guiding my Commander Shepard around the galaxy. I'm not, as I often did in Baldur's Gate 2 or even in the more recent Dragon Age: Origins, min-maxing and choosing paths in order to become more powerful.
The choices that I make are those of my character with his background, in the first and second game, influencing them and with the potential future of the universe always at stake. I am role playing in the best sense of the word and the immersion is powerful enough to bring sadness to my eyes when I lose Solus on the final mission (I solved that with a replay and a slightly different choice at one point).
Mass Effect 2 might not have all the ceremonial trappings of what we have come to call a computer role playing game but to me, it certainly has the soul of a RPG. It's ultimately up to players to experience it and decide what they want to call it, other than an extremely good game.
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