AP is also an alternate universe Mass Effect where the game-play never got better. Choice and Consequence is a central part of the experience and AP does it great, but it fundamentally fails to build a compelling game to hold together the story and reactivity. Bad gameplay is one of the worst sins you can commit as a game designer. There is no reason AP actually has to be an RPG in the mechanical sense of using dice rolls, nor was it a requirement to have ultra-gamey abilities. Ludicrous kill chains where you run up and shoot people in the face or kung fu them to death while being literally invisible in the middle of a well lit room detracts from the experience, although I'm certainly not going to argue that implausible and silly shit like that isn't traditional RPG stuff. But at this point it feels like Obsidian is holding themselves back just for the sake of having RPG stuff, not because it makes their games better.
The fact that ME2 came out so close to AP did it no favors. Not only because it was marketed better (although it was), but because it took the opposite approach - focusing on improving mechanics and polishing the game. It resonated with far more people as a result. The tragedy is that AP didn't have to suck as a game, and ME2 didn't have to have a shit main story. Unfortunately we don't live in a world where both studios made better choices, but ME2/3 are eminently more playable and enjoyable experiences than AP was for me.
The gameplay in Alpha Protocol was
much better than in Mass Effect 1. Mass Effect 1 had all of the disadvantages of statistics-heavy combat mechanics without
ever making use of the advantages that those sorts of systems can bring to the table.
The shooting was still really janky and relied on dice rolls, the balance was absolutely
atrocious and after you select your character class there is
never another point in the game where you have to make a hard choice about how you choose to advance. Every single Biotic ability is a slight variation on the exact same disable/ragdoll CC effect - Except Warp, which is instead useless unless you're fighting a Krogan on Insanity, in which case it is necessary if you don't want to spend five minutes per fight. There was a big stat sheet full of hundreds of bubbles you could fill in with skill points, and 75%+ of those bubbles did nothing but add 2% to one stat. There were
never any non-combat, non-scripted resolutions to enemy encounters.
Alpha Protocol is just as bad with the overall 'feel' of the combat (having to stand stock still in order for your aim to stabilize makes it worse; being able to get actual locational damage where headshots will kill enemies makes it better), but it absolutely makes up for it when it comes to using the RPG mechanics to present the player with actual variation in gameplay and actual tough choices to make.
Stealth/Pistols is overpowered, but other specs behave and play
differently, instead of ME1 where suboptimal specs are just less effective versions of the optimal ones. Shotguns feel different to play, so do Assault Rifles, so does Unarmed, etc. You again have a skill sheet with dozens and dozens of bubbles to fill in, but every single bubble affords you a novel, noticeable upgrade to the skill in question; it's frequently very difficult to decide where you want to stick your skill points. And when you reach a high level, you aren't using the exact same disable/ragdoll CC that you had in the first hour of the game, but three times as often - you actually gain skills that feel very meaningfully powerful - like being, on paper, according to the stats, such a stealthy motherfucker that you are effectively invisible to enemies as you beat them down, even where the game doesn't have representation of any cover for you to hide behind. You have a limited number of equipment and item slots you can take with you on any given mission, and you're allowed to pack light if you want to play stealthily, heavier if you're willing to sacrifice stealth for stronger direct combat ability, etc.
There's also a fairly robust stealth system in place that allows you an alternative to directly confronting (non-boss) enemies in combat,
and the game's statistical side ties directly in with the dialogue/influence systems by giving you a variety of small perks for basically every different solution to every problem in the game, who your current handler is, which missions you've done before, etc, which adds another layer to the statistical customization of the game.
I probably enjoyed ME2 more than AP overall too, and that's largely because Bioware produced a really nice, polished set of core action mechanics, but there's no denying that it was absolutely
anemic in terms of gameplay variation based on player choice, after you pick your character class at creation. Many of the best aspects of Mass Effect 2's gameplay are matched or improved on in other, dedicated shooters, while there's really not a whole lot else that even
tries to do what AP does in combat, let alone games that actually do it
better.
