Welcome to the sixth in a series of guides for the different starting classes in Mass Effect 2! If you enjoy this guide, please check out our other Survival Guides.

So, you want to be a soldier? Well, the good news is that despite some limitations you are probably picking the easiest class to understand and play with in Mass Effect 2. Unlike the first game where it was not advisable to play as a soldier on your first play through, picking the soldier class in Mass Effect 2 will have you running and gunning around  the galaxy like an intergalactic badass in no time at all.

The soldier class is also recommended for anyone that is more interested in 3rd person shooting games than in Bioware’s Role Playing Game heritage. If the series of menus and grinding that made up large portions of Bioware’s previous RPG’s have previously put you off, ME2 is the game to change your mind. Likewise, if the mention of ‘biotics’ and ‘tech’, leaves you running back to the safe familiarity of Modern Warfare, then the soldier class is the class you should set your sights on.

Soldier Starting Weapons: Assault Rifle, Shotgun, Heavy Pistol, Sniper Rifle and Heavy Weapon (i.e. Everything except the Submachine gun)

Soldier Special Ability: The Soldier class’special abilities is Adrenaline Rush. It can be described as “a boost to speed reflexes and weapon damage.” To put it more simply, and in words that Max Payne would understand, it’s Bullet Time. It allows you to slow time for long enough to pick the perfect headshot with your sniper rifle, or have time to unload half a clip (or more) of your assault rifle into your hapless victim of choice.

Adrenaline Rush evolves to either lasting for an extended period of time or works to reduce health damage when active. I found that once leveled up to level 3, that Adrenaline Rush lasted for a sufficient amount of time and opted for the reduced health option as it was a nice useful bonus. What options suits you best depends on your style of play and I will go into more detail about how I choose to use Adrenaline Rush in the following tips section.

Concussive Shot is a heavy blast capable of knocking an opponent off their feet. It is undoubtedly a useful skill, as I have seen my Krogan ally use it to good effect many times, but I chose not to put points into it from the very beginning. I have heard it said that it is a ‘vital’ skill but I think it a skill that you can do without. I would like to hear from someone that used this skill and is a big fan of it but I certainly did not feel I was missing out and it did not seem to suit the way I like to fight.

Soldier Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Deals more weapon damage than any other class
• Greater health and larger health increases than any other class
• Access to various types of weapons means you are well equipped to deal with any situation (and keeps combat interesting)
• Heavy weapons can really be a life saver.
• Can access third tier weapons for the Sniper rifle, Assault Rifle and Shotgun.

Cons

• No Tech abilities.
• No biotic defenses and limited biotic attacks

Soldier Tips

Being a soldier means that you want to be the main part of your squad’s direct attacking force. One given tactic is to team yourself up with a biotic and a tech (I liked teaming with Jack a lot and always took Tali, Legion or Mordin with me if ever I knew I was facing Geth) However, you can be equally effective teaming up with any two heavy hitters (like Zaeed or ‘Archangel’) but my favorite team (and the one I took with me into the final battle) was Miranda and Grunt.

When you add Miranda’s squad healing abilities to supplement your own high amount of health and the Krogans regeneration abilities & Fortification skill, you end up with a formidable fighting force that is very hard to kill (I do not think I had to use Unity once while using this squad tactic)

Adrenaline Rush can be, most effectively, used in one of two ways. The first, and most obvious tactic, is to kick it off as soon as you engage the enemy, giving you plenty of time to unload into targets before they get a chance to get into cover and attack you. The other way to make use of Adrenaline Rush is to ’save’ it for getting you out of tight spots (i.e. big motherfunking invisible Geth appearing in your face). This is the other reason that I advise going with the reduced health damage upgrade option with Adrenaline Rush.

You have three options for augmenting your ammo. Incendiary is for all round general use (it turns out nothing in the universe likes to be set on fire) and I kept these rounds in my Assault rifle 90% of the time. Disruptor rounds are great at attacking shields or synthetics and so should be used when fighting Geth or other robots. You can continually swop ammo types around but I prefer to stick with different ammo types for different guns and so keep Disruptor rounds in my sniper rifle.

The last type of rounds were Cryo rounds capable of freezing a target on impact. I deliberately completely avoided assigning any points to this skill. I may have been put off of this skill by it’s underwhelming performance from the first game and while it may have been improved it did not really fit well with my Renegade attitude (I haven’t got time for you to stand around, I want you dead already!) Again I did not miss it and I would always advise to level skills all the way up rather than spreading you points across various skills. When it comes to killing, it is better to do one thing really well than to be bad at doing many things.

When you get the opportunity to steal one of your teammates skills I chose to learn the Barrier skill. While I could have taken an offensive move, I opted for a defensive one, despite being quite defensive already. It means that with all the defensive moves I can make use of I am nearly impossible to kill. (Top tip: When using Barrier it is tempting to engage the barrier as soon as you encounter enemies, when using it as a soldier you can wait until you lose your shields and allow your shields to return while the Barrier defends you)

Soldier Weapon tips

The assault rifle is a soldier’s best friend. Accurate over medium distances, with a high rate of fire and heavy amount of damage. You should be using the assault rifle for the majority of the game, only ever choosing to switch out to the sniper when enemies are out of range and saving the heavy weapons for emergencies (if you just died, then that was probably one of those emergencies). You have no real need of the pistol (unless you run out of ammo) and the shotgun is a little underpowered. I only made use of it when low on ammo and facing husks, or those robo-dogs. Really and truly though, nothing should make it through the range of your assault rifle.

The heavy weapons is where the greatest freedom of player choice is given. While some weapons are good for certain purposes, it will mainly come down to personal preference. I did not like the [flamethrower] as I found it to be much shorter range than most of the other heavy weapons and therefore meant I would have to get much closer to dangerous enemies than I found comfortable.

The M920-Cain is the most powerful weapon in the game and is best described as a handheld nuke. The only problem being that if you want to fire it you may need to book an appointment! It takes FOREVER to fire and this is longer than most of the enemies will allow you to stick your head out. It definitely saved my butt a couple of times but there were more times when I wished it had not been the weapon I had with me, and so I stopped taking it with me.

Again showing my anti-cryo biasis, I made no use of the M-622 Avalanche (a cryo gun or freeze ray as it would have been called in the 1950’s) I took it out on one mission, did not use it and never took it out again. Leave it out in the cold, you won’t miss it.

The M-100 Grenade Launcher is fine and can come in very handy in the earlier levels but is redundant once you unlock the missile launcher. Due to it’s large ammo capacity, greater damage and ability to home in on a target, the ML-77 Missile Launcher soon became my heavy weapon of choice.

When it came to choosing a weapon specialization I went for the Assault Rifle. Could have as easily gone for the sniper rifle option but the Assault Rifle picked up here was still my number one choice by the end of the game. Again I applied the same principle to this decision as I carry through out my leveling up – don’t be a Jack-of-all-trades, be a master of one.

Collector Edition Footnote

The Collector Edition version of the game came with a Collector’s Rifle and a really ugly freaky looking Collector’s Spacesuit of armor. The rifle is better than the ones you start the game with but I actually preferred the rifle you get from choosing the assault rifle  specialization. The armor is great on paper with a boost to rush, a 20% health boost and 10%  health regeneration. Despite having a great practical use (keeping you alive more) I opted not to use it for the majority of the game for two reasons.

The first being that I would not have had a clear picture of the game to help write this guide but the larger reason (and the more relevant one to you) is that it looks like they let the work experience kid loose on this one. There is nothing in this whole game that is designed as badly as this suit of armor, it’s DAMN UGLY and, as it covers you face, detracts from any cut scene that it appears in. All that said I still took it with me for the final mission – it’s a suicide mission for godssakes, not a fashion parade.

That’s all for the Soldier, if you enjoyed this, check out our other Mass Effect Guides!!

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