Honestly, should Andromeda been a bit more alien?

both points make sense though...

I understand your point.  You are saying that the narrative of the singular cluster doesn't preclude additional races because they could have come from other clusters, like in the Milky Way currently clusters have multiple species even if they didn't originate there.  Like the Kett.  However...

Think of it this way.  The Helius Cluster is not heavily populated.  There are some Angara settlements, and the new Kett invaders, but otherwise it's pretty sparse.  Wouldn't it make sense for the Initiative to choose are more deserted cluster for colonization than risk the 100,000 travelers trying to get in with a native species that may or may not be hostile?

I mean, if their tech could detect which planets were habitable to the point that they could describe each Habitat fairly specifically, you would have been able to detect a heavily civilized planet.  So sure, they would avoid civilized clusters to go to ones where encountering other species was less likely.  

This is one main reason I want more Andromeda. Imagine what could be in the next cluster?

Why do you keep saying two?  Remnant are a new alien race.  And so when you go from ME1 to ME2  you get Drell, Vorcha, and Collectors in the base game.  So ME2 is equally as lazy to ME1 as MEA is.  Right?

It only makes sense.  No point putting anyone at risk.

But, like I've said, critical thinking is scarce here, in favor of gut-reaction.

The Solar system wasn't heavily populated, but when they found the relay and turned it on, it was all there, same principle.  Just because the Helius Cluster isn't heavily populated, doesn't mean the rest of the galaxy isn't established with means to travel around.

We never see Jardaan.  Remnant are those robots we fight in all the Vaults and whatnot.  And yeah, we take them out because they are aliens that exist in both games.  

Yeah, the procedural planet idea wasn't the best, although using procedural tech to generate the basic layout of a planet isn't a bad idea, just trying to make the whole cluster explorable was. But they've likely learned their lesson.

Fine, so call them Geth.

Truth is, the environment doesn't make for an interesting new scenario. There's no groundwork being laid out in the same way as ME1 did, to make this an interesting journey. There's nothing novel about it. Nothing new to discover. The supposedly unhabitable planets are already populated by our good old Milky Way species, with the Angarans being the only new addition, suffering under the Asari clone desease. And I don't even go there, how these species were able to establish themselves all over these planets within a short 12 to 14 months.

It's taking the lazy approach and all attempts at making ends meet only excuse lazy design choices for a less than convincing scenario.

You obviously don't get it. ME1 introduced the races, MEA just carried them over to a new Galaxy where we still play Milky Way instead of having a new exciting environment with new races being introduced. No matter how many races they carry over, it's still Milky Way and I almost feel sorry for the Angarans, if people are content with playing the same old with just a label of different galaxy slapped over it.

Well, no. It's not a new game, so it doesn't need to lay the groundwork exactly like ME1. More like ME2 or ME3. Using a lot of established groundwork. That's how sequels work.

I think there's an interesting journey. All sorts of new stuff to discover. The true nature of the Kett. Capabilities of the Remnant. Pretty much everything about the Jardaan and much about the Angara. There are so many mysteries in Andromeda, more than at the end of ME1. There was nothing to discover after ME1, just a threat to prepare for. Fact.

The species also didn't establish themselves "all over the planets" in 14 months. There's a few working outposts and basically 1 "City". That's it. You don't land all over the planet. You land in one spot. You drive for a short amount of time. All the civilization in Andromeda is pretty centralized.

You can call it lazy, but nothing you have said supports that claim.

Yup, very much so Everything feels very... human-like, one of my complaints is that in the Andromeda Initiative, you could literally replace every alien npc model with a human and it wouldnt make a great deal of difference. It feels like they upped the alien with the kett and angara but forgot about the milky way races, their inter-species relations and general idk racial personalities I guess would be a way of saying it... in the previous ME games it was like every race almost had a purpose or a unique trait, and their positions werent really interchangeable, like you couldnt have had Krogan dancers on Omega, or Geth being the aggressive race which were victims of the genophage, it just wouldnt work... in Andromeda though its like 99% of what makes the races in Mass Effect unique are gone, and the alien species we have in Andromeda arent too special either. The remnant are just machines, the Kett are a race of religious aliens who want to convert everyone else, and the Angara are the ones who are being attacked/fighting back... I think we've lost a lot of alienness, but also a lot of complexity and uniqueness of the alienness too

In terms of the environments, the only one that really struck me as alien was Havarl, because I got Pandora vibes... other than that there were 2 deserts, an ice planet, a weird swamp-type-planet and idk ive probably forgotten some I havent played the game in a long time, but most of the locations were like ones you could find on earth, nothing special and mostly empty. They could have made it more alien by having more urban areas beyond small outposts... I mean if an alien came to earth and was like "Hi! I want to know things about you", you wouldnt send them to a desert or a swamp or the arctic somewhere, youd send them to a city because for better or for worse, a city is where you learn most about a culture, and its missing in MEA. Large empty places with earth-like environments doesnt feel alien. Like there was nothing actually alien about them apart from the remnant vaults and idk maybe some plants. Between a black hole, the scourge, advanced alien technology and a completely different galaxy, it would have been really easy to create some unique planets. Even the descriptions of some you could find in ME1 were more unique than the planets you could explore in Andromeda... the maps were fine to drive around in, but not so good at conveying a tone of an alien world I dont think