I watched my friend playing the game for about an hour and a half, yes he downloaded it. You won't get any spoilers from me, but one thing becomes immediately clear about this game from watching it.

It's far more superbly handled than Mass Effect 1. What do I mean? Well, how about when you have a certain objective to complete and you actually complete that objective. Now it's time to go back and report to whoever to let them know that you succeeded. Know what Mass Effect 2 does?

You automatically transition there and the cutscene begins to push the story along. Just feels like there's far less down time than was ever the case in the first ME. I saw this happen multiple times as well, so it truly seems to be a design decision they opted for this time around.

It saves you the tedious walk back to where it is you need to go. The walk back in a lot of cases in ME1 always felt like an excuse to make the game longer than it truly was, but with Mass Effect 2, it appears they've got so much more to show here that they don't mind sparing the player the walk back. Also, collecting all the various minerals now actually means something. I saw him surveying a planet and collecting materials so he could have enough to improve the armor on the Normandy.

And, of course, combat is far improved. What I found cool as well is that you no longer appear to level up your talking through a character menu. You level it up through actually playing the game, making decisions, talking with people.

Based on what I saw, I'd have to disagree with that tacked on rpg statement.

But before I get to that, I don't know if you're getting the point with regards to the armor upgrade on the Normandy. Why go overboard with the customization of the ship, when it won't play quite as significant a gameplay role as upgrades like character skills, weapon upgrades, ammo upgrades, armor chest plate upgrades, helmet upgrades, leg related upgrades, etc?

I saw the convo my buddy had with that squad member who told him about the normandy armor upgrade and, long story short, it was just a simple, "the ship needs to be much tougher due to so and so reason".

You see that menu where you can customize your shepherd's combat and casual look? Maybe Bioware just did it so cleverly that you overlooked it, but there's a massive amount of RPG depth masked into that very simple looking system if you pay attention. As it was explained to me, if you actually research to create the various upgrades that can be applied in there, or if you find or buy them. I didn't see my friend buy any, but I assume you can? As my friend described it, "it isn't like I'm finding armors and just putting them on, I'm literally making my own from the various upgrades I'm finding during missions or researching in the Normandy tech lab, like this head piece for example that raises my headshot damage by 10% or this armor chest plate that increases the recharge time on my shields"

It's a far more RPG like system if you ask me. You are making your own stuff ;D I imagine you can likely also find new suit patterns and what not throughout the game.

Also, the leveling system i saw is MUCH better than the one in the previous ME and it's one that will lead to a more unique character.

How do I defend such a statement? For the 1st level of an upgrade you need 1 squad point, for the second, 2 points, for the third, 3 points, for the fourth, 4 points. You may get away with doing things a certain way early on, but it isn't hard to imagine that if you want to truly do something special with your character and make them as unique as possible, you're going to have to be strategic about how you spend those squad points.

You don't necessarily get to get away with the same sloppier method used in the first ME, where a single skill point automatically improved the given skill in some fashion.

That then means that when you level up and get however little squad points, I think it's 2, you won't necessarily have all you need to improve any one particular skill to, say, level 3 or level 4, unless you refrain from upgrading because, again, you need 3 or 4 squad points to take that specific skill to level 3 or 4. Just because you may have 3 squad points doesn't mean you get to unlock level 3 of a skill because you have to go through level 1 and 2 first. So what you are put in the position of potentially doing then, is holding off on bringing up other skills or any skills at all, so you can save it for a later level up so you can use the combined squad points to get that level 3 or level 4 upgrade.

It's less choices than Mass Effect 1 for what you can upgrade, but those lesser choices, from what I saw, are much better implemented and fleshed out than was the case in Mass Effect 1. The class and upgrade system is actually made to mean something in this game. The class system is more strict and also more unique. In combat I saw my buddy use all kinds of cool abilities and combination attacks and, despite how early in the game he was, it seemed to me like he had much cooler and wider range of options at his disposal than appeared to be the case with level 30+ characters in ME1. The characters he was playing with were like level 5.....

From what I saw, I would describe the difference between Mass Effect 1 and 2 like this:

In Mass Effect 1, there is a bunch of crap that exists for virtually no reason at all, just things to pass the time with. RPG mostly in name and recognizable characteristics that one has come to expect of an RPG, not so much in the way of worthwhile content. In Mass Effect 2, even the smallest of things are made to seem more significant than would otherwise be the case in ME1. I also saw him bring back a bottle of brandy to the Normandy doctor and it actually led to some fairly meaningful character development.