I have dozens of hours in Mass Effect Andromedia
I have dozens of hours in Mass Effect Legendary Edition
I enjoy them equally but for different reasons.
Andromedia is really two games.
Mass Effect the military campaign against the Kett.
Mass Effect the diplomacy and terraforming game that also has some combat.
It is possible to play them almost independently. I completed the Kett, military storyline and the end credits ran, I stepped away for a bit then.
I have since later discovered I have dozens of hours of diplomacy, problem-solving, and creating worlds that change as I interact with them vs being single mission use disposable worlds. There are also plenty of "search and collect" games one can play if you enjoy them, but leaving most of them will not prevent the main two storylines from progressing. The reward for working the planet missions is dealing with the mystery of the father's memories and the hidden secrets of how the move to Andromedia happened.
If you start with Mass Effect LE (or legacy versions) will be used to most missions outside of some open-world planets being a directed path, with enemies shooting at you as "the bread crumbs." When you get to the end you will often get to watch a short movie of your frantic escape, or will just finish and end up back on the Normandy. Some missions have so little choice, that no map is provided.
In Mass Effect Andromedia, you have to save yourself. Your mission has a set of easy-to-find goals and map indicators, that used with the quick travel points can be used to complete them efficiently.
What I like best about Mass Effect Andromedia:
I enjoy the humor, the voice acting of female Ryder, the beautiful worlds I get to explore and improve.
Mosty the combat is better in real-time, while the weapons acquisition can get very detailed. I miss the access to all my powers vs mapped powers in combat but the rest works well.
MEA has better combat and a better world for your characters to exist in. It is an open world, so needs the user to pay attention to the journal and maps vs letting the game just get you to the next point. But in this, it also means you can come at your combat and discovery in any way that you choose. IMELE tens to make your follow a path, even if you see where you want to go, you have to stay in the rope line like in Disney land waiting for a ride. In Andromedia you can leap and climb. Its not a full Assasin's Creed. There are things too steep etc to climb but never will a 2-foot pipe or box stop you from moving forward.
The choices are more about tone than morality. But I have had a few where I stared at the options and realized one that seemed best for the planet, but I as the new species would be enforcing my views on the existing residents. No good solution, only choices that had moral implications.
If you turn up the combat, Mass Effect Andromedia is a very satisfying RPG shooter. But it is also a very deep game of deep space exploration and diplomacy.
If you only like the format of the Mass Effect 1-3 trilogy, you may not appreciate the huge amount of choice, problem-solving, and discovery, thus making the game feel unbalanced if you try to play all the missions, some are very different from MELE.
MELE Has better-developed characters and a clear moral set of selections. It also has a great musical score. The story over three games has a heroic story arc, that so far Mass Effect Andromedia has been denied by orchestrated hate campaigns.
If you remove that comparison and realize the excessive early bugs that made headlines are gone, This is one of the best RPG games out there. But it is a change from the Mass Effect Military Mission format of 1-3.
I give this 9 stars. Some more depth in a few more characters would have earned it a 10.