First Time Insanity Playthrough; ME1 and ME2:

So Ive come to the end of my Mass Effect 2 playthrough on insanity, my first time doing this as I had played originally on normal and did a Male and Fem Shep playthrough (Paragade for both mostly).

I wanted to share my thoughts as I was very unsure if I would find things very difficult in 1 or 2, it's probably worth noting I only got the LE 2 years ago or so and had never played the series before. But I loved it the first time so I thought an insanity playthrough would be good and plus I'd get the trophies and whatever.

(I'm soldier class for this btw)

For ME1 I found that you just generally have to be more careful and stay back, letting squad mates do more and take a bit more of the heat. While also managing your power usage and weapon cool-downs to ensure your not caught of guard with no powers or an overheated weapon. Basically everything was just that bit more deadly, especially if you got rushed by multiple enemies at close range. In general the only areas I died more than once or twice on where the fight outside the mine of Therum, the Thorian fight, and basically any time I had to fight Rachni or Krogan because they were both lore accurate imo. The fights with Saren and Benezia weren't that hard and I beat them both first try. ME1 is a lot easier when you've got weapon and armour mods and your crew are similarly equipped, so overall not more hard than I had thought.

ME2 on the other hand was a good bit more difficult, I found that any time I had to deal with Mechs was really annoying especially the Ymir ones like in Garrus' loyalty.

Besides that the Collectors missions were among the times a I died the most. The fight on Horizon was a hassle for a while against the praetorian. The collector ship was a nightmare especially on the platform section and the derelict reaper was very irritating at times. Funnily enough the final base was actually much easier than those other two but that may have been because it as used to them by now or just was stronger overall.

I was using soldier so my main strat was just alternating ammo types between weapons, the Mattock, Geth Shotgun and Widow were doing work every mission. Adrenaline rush was very useful and I changed my Additional ability between inferno grenade, flashbang, Reave and Neural Shock.

I didn't really have any consistent team as I sort of brought who I thought would be fun depending on the mission, but for Collector ones I found that having Miranda Kasumi Zaeed and Garrus as a rotations group where good picks.

Also because I'm full renegade I killed about 6 people and more will go in ME3 so that should be fun.

(I killed off Kasumi, Jack, Thane, Legion, Grunt, and Zaeed. Plus the entire Cerberus crew and Chakwas :(