Also, Vikacis, while the absence of a gay male option bothered me (more for the fact of its absence than anything else), you can (and I have) perfectly play a lesbian FemShep, by romancing Liara in ME1, ignoring the males in ME2 and going for Kelly Chambers.
Anyway, likes:
- The distinctness of the new classes. Playing an infiltrator now really makes for a completely different game experience from playing a vanguard, which is different again from playing a sentinel. Awesome!
- No more driving the MAKO up mountains, and palette swap planets. Yay!
- Tons and tons of continuity nods.
- The new NPC's. Some of them are surprisingly deep (Grunt, Jack, Mordin)
- The interrupt system
- The new Garrus, while overruling what you pushed him to do in the first game (if you're Paragon) is also a lot deeper.
- Wrex's welcoming moment made me all warm inside.
- Minor, but there: most cutscenes are skippable, which makes replays have much less 'coffee-time' (for the beginning, you can alt-tab out and the movies keep running)
- Tali
- The planet scanning (Duh)
- Unable to customize the unique armors
- Probably more stuff, but nothing I can think of right now.