Why MEA did not work for me

Eye for eye is a badass attitude vs turning the other cheek and trying to redeem and forgive and "understand" etc.

There is no Dark vs Light Path in the game, because if I remember it correctly everyone and their dog was dead-set against the black & white quest resolutions for the last decade or so, and here we go! All gray.

You have choices to shoot first and to hells with it all. Ryder can act cold-blooded (wait for the sniper to take a shot at Sloane) and hotheaded (shoot Akksul) and just don't give a f**k about anyone (take AI for himself). Emotional-casual + "if you are not with me, you die" Ryder worked well for me as a male lead. He was unusual, and far more dangerous than the Inquisitor who indeed was an upstanding citizen no matter what you've tried.

And, yes, I also liked Renegade Shepard in ME2 and ME3 (not that I can be accused of being a young female). ME1 was imo a prime example of why so many players were asking to stop going white vs black, helping little old ladies across the street or kicking puppies. Renegade Shepard was a classic example of evil-stupid; s/he was much better in the second and third one, growing pragmatic and cold.

As for any sort of comments on the lack of raw masculinity in the character, to please women (????) well, that's cannot be true by definition. These protagonists are designed as either a male or a female alter ego, so you simply cannot put down a male Ryder without putting down the female one, except in the gender-specific romance, and if any Ryder was treated in romance like a dolt, it was a female Ryder with Jaal turning her into a complete embarrassment to play. Male one delivered just fine in his romances.

Is Ryder young? Yes. Is s/he a nice person? S/he can be, but does not have to. Will anyone like him/her? No.

But all of these except for the youthfulness is true of Shepard, and youthfulness was a part of many a BioWARE lead, including their very first one, the Bhaalspawn that started out younger than Ryder (who did not just have to see his or her mentor die, s/he actually did not have a control and could do nothing but to ignominiously run away crying when that happened) and the Last Monk (who admittedly was made of tougher stuff and actually fought when his/her happy littl' village was burned down).

Ryder was what s/he was, but s/he was not some sort of an exception, but very much like other protagonists in BioWARE games.