It took me a lot to get hooked because the actual meat of the game are the companions and I don't mean this in a "that's the best part" but rather almost the entirety of it and while I can guarantee one of them will be interesting, you can fuck yourself if the order you chose blindly doesn't end up being interesting for you but don't worry, you don't need to wait 100 hours for it to get good, just get the companions on your ship. After that, the companion missions + the rest of the story really is good.

My only complaint from this game is that the two companions that come from ME1 ended up being those that to me had the least interesting personalities in that game and while they're enjoyable here in ME2, I was interested in literally everyone else but those two but to be fair that allowed me to actually care for the other squadmates as I was trying my best to find one that I enjoyed and I gotta say, I don't know what they were cooking with Thane but that mf is incredible. I legit never got a crush on any male presenting character ever, this mf being the exception. I love you Thane but mass effect 2 doesn't let me be poly so I had to stick with Liara, and that's one of my issues with mass effect 2 aswell because it's not until the dlc that you get to do something with Liara if you had a relationship with her, and while it's great, it's not as much screentime as I needed to be satisfied which really left me thinking "grahh I really hope ME3 is worth it with the relationship content" (spoilers: it is, but I really wanted to see Thane stuff)