Retcons or contradictions that you have noticed

Fixed.

So, I don't know if this was discussed already. The 'helius Cluster' is puzzling me a bit. I understood that it was jsut one group of stars, like hades Gamma cluster in the MW..

But none of the MW clusters has its own black hole.. this suggests helius is really a dwarf galaxy or something. Does this make sense? Or did Bioware really mean cluster, but someone decided having a black hole there was cool?

So, I don't know if this was discussed already. The 'helius Cluster' is puzzling me a bit. I understood that it was jsut one group of stars, like hades Gamma cluster in the MW..

But none of the MW clusters has its own black hole.. this suggests helius is really a dwarf galaxy or something. Does this make sense? Or did Bioware really mean cluster, but someone decided having a black hole there was cool?

Oh man, where do I start?!?

I mean, I kinda like the game on it's own but they should have made this a new IP or a reboot or a parallel universe or something because it just doesn't fit into the ME universe as we knew it at all (and I say this despite the fact that I usually despise reboots and parallel universes and that sort of thing).

Let's start with the premise: Why go to Andromeda? In 2185 1% of the Milky Way is explored. You don't need to be 600 years in cryo and take the most stupid-ass risk in history to get a fresh start or satisfy your inner urge to explore at that point. I am not through the game yet and maybe there is some secret reason (I am just saying: reapers) that would make this more believable but even if there is, the whole "fresh start/pioneer spirit" thing seems to be motivation for most low level people you can ask and that already makes no sense.
This by the way is also a problem while playing because to me, all those people in the AI aren't brave, they are simply stupid. For example, when we arrive at the Nexus and are supposed to be like "Oh noooo, this can't be happening!!!", I was outright laughing at them thinking "You idiots!!! This was so completely unnecessary and stupid, you deserve what you got." (and if I think my own protagonist is stupid, it doesn't help with identification wither(.

Then, there is the technology they used: An ODSY drive would have made a HUGE difference for the original trilogy plot. Not only could the Milky Way people have outmaneuvered the reapers to some extent, who clearly don't have that technology. The bigger problem is that even the faint possibility to cross dark space and travel to other galaxies makes the reapers' cycle of extinction scheme a complete and utter joke. "Yea, we'll keep the Milky Way in check with the cycles and if synthetics develop in other galaxies, where they are a couple of billion years ahead of us in development because we just hibernate and do the same shit all over again every 50.000 years without progress, I am sure it'll be fine" It's even more BS now than it used to be. And Shepard doesn't even mention this (well, it wasn't retconned yet at the time, right?).

Tech Nr. 2: SAM. SAM is a complete and utter violation of council rules on A.I. but all four council races built one without the council stepping in? Did they keep it secret? Oh, I am sure the council didn't mind them building "SAM nodes" into their dreadnought sized ARK ships without supervision or control. Governments usually don't care, right? Oh and what about a bunch of private investors building a space station almost as big as the Citadel itself just like that within 10 years that is also capable of flying to another galaxy? I am sure that was easy.

Timelines: When the Andromeda Initiative was founded, humans had interstellar space flight for just over 20 years. and first contact happened 15 years before. Yet, a private human businesswoman has the cloud to start the most ambitious undertaking in the history of at the very least this reaper cycle (if not all cycles) as a multilateral cooperative endeavor evolving almost all MW species. She did this despite the fact that the other species and their galactic economies are millenia older and more advanced? I mean, the ME timeline was always shoddy at best but this brings it to a whole other level.

They take Krogan to Andromeda and try to cure the genophage (by trying to run gene therapy during cryosleep, which is complete BS on its own but ok). I mean, I am sure the salarians and turians on the initiative were thrilled about that idea, right?


I could go one for ages like this, those are just some points from the top of my head.
While I do agree that the Asari male thing is just stupid and takes away from the species' interest factor, at least they just decided to call themselves something different, I can worl with that even if I think it was unnecessary and stupid.
I do not buy some of the fundamental premises of this setup though and while I do really like the game itself, I'll never be able to play it without some measure of contempt because of those issues.

I am not entirely through the story yet but if they don't come up with something absolutely amazing at some point, calling this Mass Effect is a bit of a farce.

Meh, all bugs in the universal translator.

And we know that thing is bugged, as it repeatedly refuses to translate 'Keelah selai'

There is a fine  line between realism and game feature. The ability to craft a gun at your ship is a game feature. Extrapolating that to game realism should not be done.
I'll use extreme examples:

In game realism
Real time travel time. Remember the ME1 elevator music? Weren't those fun?   Therefore changing it to game feature introduces fast travel and loosely speaking, 2-minute travel time between clusters. Brings us back to the topic at hand, the probability of the Nexus having a factory/industrial/manufacturing section is highly unlikely.

In game feature

Crafting weapons and armor is a game feature. Question: Does a soldier go to war only with a pistol? He is then tasked to upgrade his pistol later on to pistol X. If he meets the quartermaster at the camp where he is deployed, he can buy rifle 1. If you find that humorous then why wouldn't you do the same for the crew of the Tempest? Why would anyone deploy them ill-equipped?
Therefore this process of gearing up is an RPG game feature.

The idea of bringing a 'factory' component itself is highly unlikely. I can think of two scenarios. 

A) Settlers. Lets say in todays context you wish to settle in a new continent. Do your settlers bring along assembly line stuff to setup buildings to produce war machines? You can bring some military crew to protect your settlers, that I agree is viable.

Conquerors. Same scenario but you wish to take over a continent via military force. Do you again bring the same said assembly line setup? Highly unlikely. You bring military personnel & equipment, equipment that is built back 'home'.

Therefore in conclusion I speculated that the Nexus' voyage is of the Settlers type but even if I was wrong, they would have hyperspaced in several dreadnaughts for protection's sake.

It's always confusing for me when people say that because Asari have no gender or are monogendered that there would be no Asari word for different genders.  First of all, we don't know that all life on their planet is mono or a-gendered, so they could potentially have had names for those genders for tens of thousands of years or more.  

But the most damning thing is that we KNOW that they have had contact with species with multiple genders, and so it makes sense that they would come up with words for them in the Asari language.  Just because they hadn't seen them before doesn't mean they wouldn't come up with a word.  If a society evolved in a desert with no large bodies of water and then encountered, through migration or whatever, a lake or an ocean, it's not like they would say "Well damn.  We have no words to explain what this is.  Guess we'll forever be guessing if someone means a glass of water or a whole landscape of water."

I'm just waiting till they give us an alien species with a culture that frowns on progessive ideals like homosexuality and interspecies relations. I mean even here on earth in some advanced societies they still see these things as "unnatural" or "unacceptable". It's being overly optimistic to think with all the different species in both galaxies they would all have ideals such as ours.

Then again I mean I haven't seen anything about salarians or Krogan being so open but i honestly can't remember. Turians are logical considering the strong military and strong bonds between soldiers, Asari is irrelevant being monogendered, and of course us humans.

Uhm, have you read their descriptions? They are all already visited by exiles/Nexus when we scan them. That's what I was talking about.