One year as passed since I first played Mass Effect Andromeda, which for me personally, it wasn't has bad as people try to make it (its a good entertaining sci-fi game), but in all honesty it wasn't a Mass Effect game and that for me was the main reason why the game failed and it's not up to par with it's predecessors. First of all I don't believe the graphical glitches and bugs were as bad as the generalized opinion and a few patches later 95% of them were gone, so why did the game ultimately failed to achieve the standard of the previous trilogy? In my humble opinion the real problem was at it's core, the real problem, it wasn't a Mass Effect game because of the three following reasons.
I. Heroines & Villains
In the previous Mass Effect games in spite of renegade and paragon choices you were always the heroine, the defender of the galaxy, the one trying to prevent and eventually fight an alien invasion to save every advanced sentient being from certain destruction. I know you could hit a reporter, summarily execute a bunch of people, condemn entire races to destruction, work with a terrorist organization and even deceive a race with a false cure making them fight for you. But ultimately as distorted as your methods were your final goal was to save the galaxy. The Heroine.
In Andromeda whether you like it or not, you are the invading force, you go to another galaxy where you by any standard have no right or claim to anything, try to strip planets bare from it's resources and appropriate territories by force, (excluding Meridian you don't actually discover anything, you only invade previously occupied planets), you even try to impose your way of government in galaxy where you shouldn't even be there. Kind of reminds me of the Reapers. The Villain.
II. Choices & Consequences
In the previous Mass Effect titles there was always an emphasis on choice, you were always thinking about the consequences of what you just did, how you acted when confronted with a certain situation, how you acted towards someone, details mattered and sometimes when you most needed the attention to those details and how you handle them was the difference between resounding success, partial victories or total failure.
One of the things that made me fear for Andromeda was the abolition of the Paragon/Renegade system announced prior to it's release. I started scratching the old noodle and arrived to an immediate state of apprehension ; "How are they going to implement choice without that system? Are they going to abolish choices all together?". And that is exactly what they did, no choices to be made during the game only the illusion of choice. In Andromeda you didn't make one single choice until the end and the choice you make really doesn't seem to matter taking into account that it's made after the end of the campaign.
III. Legacy & Spinoffs
The original Mass Effect had a cool ambience very distinctive, unique, different from anything you ever seen until then, even the strange blue hue in Mass Effect seems warm and very much in tune with the atmosphere of the game and the universe in which the action happens. The tapestry of colors, races and creeds so different like the mystical Asari, the warring Krogan, the ever wandering Quarian, the bioluminescent worshping Hanar or the logical Geth, that is the galaxy, the giant mass effect relays floating in space, only adds and enriches such a detailed environment and albeit a little reduction in the blue hue, sets the beat to the remaining two games. Twenty different races appear during the trilogy plus nine races that are only referenced during the games. You visit dozens of different worlds, with different environment and ambience, (even with the limited graphic of ME each world felt different), you actually discover a few inhabited planets in you own galaxy, even the "main" worlds are quite different, allowing you as the player to feel a very immersive experience, as a space explorer/archeologist/soldier in an epic adventure to save the galaxy
In Andromeda there are three native races and a fourth race which you never see in spite of walking around in their structures and vaults, add to that five races from the milky way and you have eight in total with plus one referenced during the game. From that taking into account that you can only interact on friendly terms with one of them, (the poor attempt at a kind of both gender faux Asari), the Angara, Andromeda feels empty right from the start. In Andromeda you visit seven planets, plus Meridian and the asteroid. When I clearly remember a statement by a Bioware producer claiming the game would have hundreds of different planets to discover and visit. Oddly if you recap your experience in Andromeda from the seven planets you visit in Andromeda, one you can never return, four are deserts, with one of them being a tundra and the final two are tropical jungles where you only visit a city and a small area. You don't actually discover any planet except Meridian. After an epic adventure across the galaxy, that you end up saving, you go play mercenary for an invading force, in a not so epic adventure, in another galaxy backyard... nine years later, (since Mass Effect), this is what they gave us! And remember this is a mass effect game so where is the mass effect? Not a single engine drive, relay, construct or apparatus making visible use of a mass effect field apart from biotics. The ambience also feels somewhat off even generical and uninspired at times, even the strange blue hue now seems aggressive and not in tune with the rest of the scenery. In the end feels like I'm playing a bad spinoff and not the deserving sequel that Mass Effect games should have had.
Note: I played the trilogy a lots of times as female Commander Shepard, but never played the all trilogy with male Shepard so my reference to Shepard is always as a female character sorry to all BroSheps but Femshep rules!