The Real Problem with MEA is that there are too many good things in it!

OK.  Hear me out!  This is not a unicorns and rainbows post about how this game is in fact perfect.  But i honestly think that one of the biggest issues is that they tried to do too many things at once and the whole ended up being less than the sum of its parts.  Some of this is because by trying to do so much with the game they ended up clearly rushing in certain areas, such as the facial animations, in a way that created significant problems.  But also, if you look at all the element of the game lots of them are good but a complete lack of streamlining means they all get somewhat lost in the shuffle. The game has great combat, a massive open world with lost of stuff to do and explore, a fun and engaging central story line and really good character based side quests.  It also has an overly complicated but interesting crafting system, an overwhelming but fun skills system, mining and resource management systems geared around building up colonies etc.  

The problem is its too much.  As someone who writes speeches (well sermons actually) as part of my job, there are some basic rules in how to write an engaging speech.  One of the main ones is don't do too much in one talk.  You may have lots of great ideas on a particular subject but focus on one or two at a time.  If you try to put five great ideas in one speech they all suffer and get lost in a confusing shuffle.  

Ultimately I think ME is a storytelling game about choices, with regular combat.  By trying to do too much and make this an open world, crafting, mining, resource management, colony building game as well, essentially Dragon Age Inquisition in space, it lost a lot of the good stuff in the mix.  I think if you took out or minimized these elements and focused only on the core game play this would be a much better game.   

Hopefully Bioware will build on all the great parts of the game and follow it up with more streamlined story DLC and sequels that focus on the core elements of the game - story, character, choices and combat.