Now is the time to come back to ME:A or play it for the 1st time!

Um....No. They were placeholders that should have been replaced but weren't either because of time constraints or cash. Either way, this was an appalling error on BW's part and personally is the most jarring aspect of the game visually as it's not a bug, it's a decision.

If all human males or females looked alike nobody would be giving it a pass. Actually, that's not true. I'm sure the usual suspects would be queuing up to justify it.

I guess it's a question of perspective more than anything. I can't speak for everyone else but the face thing for me is a minor irritant - I wish there was more, but it doesn't actually register for me in terms of my enjoyment of the game.

Regarding why people 'defend' it - I guess the problem with making it out to be a huge 'appalling' issue is that it's not new. The entire trilogy had this issue (e.g. aside from Garrus and Saren, every male turian was in the same boat). For the argument to work, you'd have to have dropped ME1 midway through your first run if the outrage was realistically enough to make a deal out of it now.

You may have actually done just this so I'm not going to say you're wrong on it, merely that argument makes no sense if you were happy to run through the OT with the same issue.

The stuff about what would have happened if they'd done this with humans is not really relevant, as they didn't do it with humans. 

I'm inclined to think that the decision to make them all look alike has a story purpose... that of re-introducing the notion from ME2 that the asari are indeed able to alter their appearance to suit what the viewer wants to see as ideal.  Since an individual's perception was what an ideal face doesn't change, if the asari are sending out signals that alter their appearance to please the person seeing them, they would all appear essentially the same.  They would all appear differently to different individuals but we only ever see them through Ryder's eyes.  PeeBee appears different because she wants to be perceived as someone different from the average asari, so she's sending out a different signal.  The bottom line is that we don't really know what asari actually look like... which is something that may be revealed in a later game.  Also, in reality, they don't all look exactly alike... they sport different facial paint patterns and as I worked my way through the game, I really stopped noticing the repeated facial structure and started seeing them more individuals based on their facial markings.  That said, I even think they have been tweeking the shaders on some of them to make those differences seem more obvious and give some appearance of a little variation in the facial structures as well.

Was that a good decision on the part of Bioware?  Obviously not... the fans have reacted badly to it and, more importantly, if I am right about it, it should have been explained somewhere in the game... effectively - a repeat of bachelor party scene in the ilium bar somewhere in the game.  So, you can certainly let it prevent you from trying out the game a second time... that is your prerogative for sure.  Personally, I'm quite happy overlooking it.

 Other than the major asari characters (like Liara, Samara, and Aria) they have all looked the same in the original trilogy.

People who enjoy Dragon Age 2 have come to terms with each cave being 'The Cave'.
The same reconciliation will happen for MEA, in my view.

Being reconciled to that =/=liking it.  It's just being willing to tolerate it.


 And "I can tolerate it" isn't exactly a mark of pride for a game.

They probably ran out of time to further develop morphing asari faces, but it's not about engine or mechanics limitations. I was delving into modding Andromeda and looking around the modding scene, and someone managed to use an asari face for the main character - and made it morphable as well by using the human head mesh as a template and sticking the asari characteristics onto that. This means that the option to edit asari faces was almost in the game. It's not there completely, but it's not far out of the realm of possibilities either.

So yeah, if a modder, an unofficial content creator (not having the inside knowledge developers have) can almost do it, developers certainly can. It's just a matter of not being able/willing to put time into further developing the feature.

Personally I think it's a shame they didn't give the asari unique faces, but it doesn't ruin the game for me either. It's just a mild annoyance, like the DA2 cave(s) SofaJockey mentioned.

Well - If a modder almost did it, it means it is possible, but not ready yet. So I think it's indeed some limitation in the base code. If it was that easy, that modder would have succeeded (because it would be simple to replace/expand a number of faces if it simply was some data replacement), but he did not. I think there is still a lot of work to do, and (as said) they simply have run out of time. It is fully possible they had planned it for a upcoming patch, but where forced to do the improvement of animation first (following the outrage and "funny" YouTube "reviews"). Combine that with bug hunting and a scaled down and thus scarce workforce (certainly if a bunch of them are working on some kind of DLC too and are not free to do something else), it is obvious it will be not their first priority.

It is fully possible we will see improvements later on with an upcoming patch, but if or when that will be, is any ones guess.

This comment isn't even close to fair. Asari were my least favorite alien race of the ME trilogy and I didn't care about Liara like most other people did and yet even I'M really bothered by the the Asari clones in Andromeda. This game actually made me miss Liara and the other Asari from the original trilogy, I didn't even think that was possible.