If its a new protagonist every game...

True. The Lazurus project (How? Resources!), forced working for Cerberus, human reaper, crippled inventory and skill system, planet scanning, minigames and a main plot that was pointless were all masterpieces of story and design.

Take out (some) of the characters and ME2 really loses it's lustre.

For the way it all ended up.


I still managed to play it over and over again, for everything but the ending.

Bah, you're right. As much as I disliked the ending (and the beginning), I still enjoyed the majority of the game.

with Andromeda, I don't judge it against the trilogy, that would be unfair. I judge it against ME1. It's worse in some regards, better in others. Either way, with both games, I liked the character (Shepard/Ryder) enough to filter out the things that didn't work for me. ME1 definitely has the edge in terms of the supporting characters, and MEA takes a hit against it for its faux open world, but beyond that, there's not a great deal in it. Certainly not enough for me to deem one game to be a true ME game and the other not.

Yvonne Strahovsky was in it.
I rest my case

Tali story alone was enough.
There is nothing like that on andromeda

Tali vs Miranda vs Jacob in battle of the "Who's been screwed up most by their daddy issues" stakes.....

The problem with any new story is working out what the players motivation/role is in context of actual game play (travelling,fighting,gathering resources).If you have a ship,a crew that follows and enough status to get access to the game world then any new character needs to have some importance.In ME your a spectre agent,a cerberus agent and in DA your the grey warden,the Inquisitor etc......so in MEA,unless your a pathfinder....your what???......who would have enough influence,,power and access to resources other than a pathfinder???

I don't think your strawman argument changes the reality of the situation,
I can't alter what would or what would not surprise you. 

I think that further Andromeda games should also have the current crew returning. Garrus and Tali took shape on ME2 more than ME1, the main protagonist started to be seen as a relevant name and even the Normandy felt more home (true, it was a new ship), particularly after taking time to upgrade it (an element that should be back at some point, I think).

The game hints at a very nice number of unexplored sides on the characters and even the Ryder twins, so it would be nice to develop them further; perhaps in themes that are not necessarly exploration but perhaps power play, politics, diplomacy and so on.

I thought Mordin's was the best of the lot there. Fighting the geth in ME2, heck fighting synthetics at all, was kind of annoying.

Cause Bioware are a buncha pussies who want to please everyone instead of making potentially abrasive decisions.

Given what we saw of Shepard's character in ME1 destroy canon is exactly what he'd do.

The protagonist should have been Alec Ryder.