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I’m playing Mass Effect on insanity now, and that indicates how much I like the game. However, playing on this difficulty level really highlights two major flaws. First, the AI allies are as dumb as bricks. That’s expected to a degree, so I can forgive it even as I lament how much it artificially increases the difficulty.

There’s something else that I can’t forgive: the rewards you get scale based on your level. That means if you go out and fight the hardest battle possible, you get the same rewards as if you fought enemies that roll over and die when you approach them. I spent quite a bit of time working my way through a building that way was beyond my capabilities at this point in the game. The “easy” guys in the building killed me in two hits, and it took focused attacks from my entire team just to outdamage the enemy regen. A typical enemy took twenty point-blank shotgun blasts to the face before he died. After slogging my way through this incredibly difficult mission, I ended up with a bunch of items that were complete crap and negligible experience rewards. If I came back when I was level 40 instead of level 12, I would have gained way more experience and loot without any of the difficulty (despite difficulty related NPC scaling). That’s just wrong.