What was Andromeda missing?

I would probably attribute this flaw to 3 things:

• Art direction and concept art - it's too lost in details and not inspired enough.
• The score is very, very modest.
• The scenario/narrative direction. It's no space opera. It's a vapid attempt at one but the context isn't strong enough.

Also, I love blaming Mac for things. He ruined the trilogy

But for real though, the way I've started to look at his involvement in the franchise is that I think he represented a very important component to the original trilogy but that component doesn't represent the series as a whole. He needed other perspectives of the other writers and other leads to balance out his own vision for what Mass Effect is because I've noticed across ME3, his comics and writing in Initiation that Mac's version of Mass Effect is grittier and more grounded than the general tone of ME1 or 2, and when there's sci-fi or space-lore it's more akin to something you'd see in a roland emmerich movie than ME1. It has a sense of warmth in the banter between two hardboiled characters, like Shepard and Garrus in ME2, but that warmth isn't really found in the general depiction of the world. Mac was a good aspect of the trilogy such as Afterlife or Cerberus, bounty hunters and mercs, smugglers and warlords, but when it comes to paving the way for the series's general tone as a director he still tries to push that aspect too much, and in Andromeda it shows; it's too gritty somehow. Too grounded, it's lacking that wondrous, magical and hopeful feel that is typically in the other games minus ME3 and its doomsday tone (but then in the parts written by Patrick or Dombrow of resolution and beating reapers with alien friends). I feel like that's the issue with atmosphere and tone in this game. It feels too dark without brevity despite its attempts at having this lighthearted Marvel-esque tone, and that's because it's all made under Mac's direction. He means well but he only represented 1 aspect out of perhaps 5 of those writers that created the original Mass Effect.

Meaning that you'd prefer them to add fake urgency the way ME1 did?

Regarding the lack of urgency, again, this was a deliberate choice made by the team and which Mac Walters said was a conscious choice. They wanted to enforce a sense of being able to go off and do side-content without a feeling that time would run out or the universe would burn if the player did this, just for immersion. It's misguided and personally it makes me shake my head, but that was how they saw it.

Isn't that what the "romances" were for?

Why the quotes there?

The urgency in the trilogy's main plot was one of its weaknesses. Especially in ME 2. "Shepard the collectors are out there kidnapping human colonies" "Can't deal with it now I have to go sabotage a robot factory"

Paradoxically MEA had the opposite problem. The main plot you could take mostly at your leisure but a lot of the side quests are now now now ordeal.