So I started a new playthrough after taking a break

Typical response - can't defend Andromeda, so attack the trilogy to make Andromeda look better. Lame.

why is it the more i hear about him the less I like? Yet he seems to be one of the fandoms golden boys.

Apart from the simplified combat and the reused environments I love DAII for it's story and the companion interactions. Can't say the same about MEA. It's the opposite. I love or highly like what they did to combat, but that's not why I play Bioware games. I pretty much dislike it for it's companion interactions, the overall character writing and what you call humour.

HOW DO YOU LIKE BOTW AGAIN!? It's story is worse than MEA's story. Generic plot, no intrigue, and no motivation sounds like every Zelda game to every exist. 

Sometimes I can't tell if you a guy who just on whatever gaming bandwagon most gamers jump on or not. 

That was never their strong suit. Provided you did play DAII, did you care for Bethany or Carver snuffing it in the first ten minutes? Did you care for Starbrat, who was rubbed into your face as the one and only kid in the whole series to make an emotional point? The only times I did care was if some of my companions didn't make it through the suicide mission in ME2 or Mordin dying while curing the genophage. That may have been the saddest moment of all Bioware games.

I agree that the game got certainly more hate than it deserved. I found the gameplay much improved over the trilogy and enjoyed shooting kett into the face (to kill them, not to piss them off, I was professional Scott). The writing didn't do as much for me as the gameplay though.

However...

As far as the internet hate train is concerned, BioWare certainly helped to create it. Remember the trailers with crappy animations like Sara's disarm scene or Peebee's gun? I can't remember when I last saw an AAA trailer with such obvious flaws, and in my opinion, there's two possibilities here - either the bad animations were the result of a bug or some other flaw that was not representative of the final product, or the game as a whole has a lot of low quality animations and the trailers were representing the overall quality of the game's animations.

Either way, people picked up on this and criticized it and it was obvious that the game and its animations would come under a lot of scrutiny upon launch, more than the average AAA title. Now there were again two options - BioWare could fix the animations before launch and prove the critics wrong, or publish what they had and hope for the best. We know which alternative BioWare picked, with predictable results. Now if the game had had stellar writing, people might have gone easier on the animations and amount of bugs on release, but alas...

If there was a conspiration of haters out there, BioWare helped creating it by releasing flawed trailers that drew attention to the game's quality before launch, and then publishing the game in the state it was in on release. They essentially painted "kick me" on their rears and ran out into the youtube comment sections.

Can you at least get creative in your trolling?

Well it's a matter of taste I suppose but I quite liked Liam's loyalty missoin for it's humour but also Drack's I felt was quite funny in places too.Admittedly they don't have quite the same hype of those missions in ME2 but still I quite liked them.

That's assuming it really was the lack of polish. In a sense it was, but only in combination with a failed PR effort of pushing Origin Access. That's what opened the door to all the memes and the SJW bullshittery before the game even was released.

I for one am perfectly aware that next to no game is perfect in this day and age at it's release. For me it's no biggie, since I know that companies are ironing the technical issues out within a few weeks or months. But no patch on earth can take care of my issues with the game. Which is a rather bland overall aftertaste after playing it. As compared to previous Bioware games.

The shitstorm could have been avoided. More by not publishing parts of it prematurely by early access than by pushing it back to a later release date. But the story and character elements would have been just the same. Which is the real divide here, since the bugs and glitches shouldn't even be a topic anymore. That's water under the bridge. The game's solid, the animations are for the most part fluid and facial expressions have been taken care of.

Please stop the bickering now.

Just saying...

For me, the biggest problem with the writing in this game lies in the pace. I don't really care about the more lighthearted tone of ME:A in comparison to the trilogy, except for the sometimes extremely cheesy and forced lines, but the pacing is what completely ruined the game for me. This isn't really a writer's issue though because the real culprit here is the Open World. Even though a lot of the side content is optional it still feels forced that you have to clear enough quests on each planet to create a settlement and increase the viability to 100%. This, however, takes way more time than the Main Story and completely detracts from it. Instead of playing the game I felt like doing chores. Doing the same stuff again in a different lifeless environment. Especially the Architects stand out in a negative way here. Just rehashing the same boss-fight on every planet is just so incredibly... meh. I expected better from Bioware to be honest, especially after all the criticism DA:I's Open World had received. Might be because I actively waited 5 years for this game but I just have the feeling that, overall, I set the bar too high. The OT are my favorite games of all time and i'm just a little bit salty that I currently can't place ME:A next to those, even though I would really like to.

So in the end I could just never get immersed in the main story because every mission was followed by a ton of sidequests on every planet. And yes, those are optional, but I'm a perfectionist so I can't help it that I force myself to do them. I do all the sidequests I find in every RPG I play. So far, only Inquisition and Andromeda have made me ragequit because the sheer blandness of said content. It just feels as if the content is of MMO-tier quality. Unnecessary travelling and loading screens, lazy zoom-ins, choices which don't matter and generic enemies and mechanics. Almost none of the sidequests stood out for me. Even the bigger ones like contagion and firestarters. I wouldn't care if Bioware would have significantly toned down the Open World, and instead focussed on quality in sidecontent and pacing. Now, 'exploration' takes up the biggest part of the game but that's what actually makes me stop playing it. Whenever I continue with the Main Story I feel inclined to play again, but that's only a short adrenaline burst in a sea of bland and meaningless filling.

So call me negative, call me a hater or call me a troll. I don't care. I care about this franchise and I simply refuse to join the circlejerk of praising this game into heaven whilst I believe there are still many things on which Bioware dropped the ball with ME:A. Silence would mean that nothing will change in the future. By posting here and starting discussions in a normal, calm and rational way I hope that Bioware actually learns from the feedback people provide so that they can actually do something with it in the future. I don't really care about things like no-saving, the lack of a stash, the buggy animations and not being able to change your appearance. Those things can be patched, and Bioware actually patched almost all of it, so kudos for that.

But that doesn't change the fact that myself and quite a few other posters have problems with other, unpatchable parts of the game. May it be the story, pacing, side-content quality, asari clone army, open world design, characters or something else. That doesn't really matter. What matters is that, even though opinions about these things will always be subjective (opinions being subjective, wow!), it doesn't mean that negative ones are automatically invalidated. (just like the positive ones.) Just defend your opinions with actual arguments instead of personal attacks and keep it calm.

/rant

Well for one it would  have assured we didn't have all those memes polluting the internet. That was truly a disaster. And it just fueled the haters and gave them more reason to rant on as if they were proved right.

The game is still an overall very good  game. It might not be some people's cup of tea. Some of the choices might not work for some. The story could still use work. But the game is still a very good  game and  if it were not ME/BW, my guess is it would have gotten great reviews. In fact, if this was a new IP, people would be bouncing off the wall with optimism and excitement. There might be some reservations about some of the choices, but really, it would have been a huge hit. Without the comparisons and the hate on BW, this title would have seen quite likely record sales.