Were Profiles the Right Way To Go?

There's little point to be spreading your skill points around like necessary to play with multiple profiles until around NG+.
You don't have the the points to be going anything but a singular build for the first 30+ levels unless you intend to gimp your character just for the novelty of it.

Mixing and matching of abilities from all classes are a good thing, but I'm still not sold on the whole profile switching thing.

I can never really unlock everything my first go, so not really. But if I'm honest, the class system of Mass Effect was never a serious factor in replay value for me.

Replayability for me isn't about using new classes. It's more about making different choices, having a new LI, things like that. I could honestly play every game on Vanguard and not care. I never really used the profiles anyway, because you could blow through the game on Vanguard. I think I switched to explorer once because everyone was talking about it, and I just wanted to see it.

But even though I didn't use different profiles, I'll never say anything that gives a player more choices and freedom in how they play is a bad thing.

The system would be completely broken if not for those cooldowns.

Profiles removed the chance of any class specific recognition, like with shepard it was at least attempted (engineer in omega dlc, biotic some small references, etc.). I felt that in ME1 combining the pre-service history with the class gave you a decent deal of customization, and thus replayability.

Ryder seems the same character (even the dialogue options are just different wording) no matter how different you try to you play it. Moreover the profile system is lorewise just a cop out, and it's ridiculous how the "andromeda explorer" class is a jack of all trades supersoldier.

The system is completely useless with them.  You are better off waiting on whatever powers you currently have to come off cooldown than to switch to a new profile.  The only thing profiles really add value to is switching powers between combat and only in having the convenience of not having to go to the powers screen to do it.  I found from a gameplay perspective I am far better off just focusing all my points on 3 powers (primer, detonator, defense) along with supporting passives and gun skills and ignoring the profile system all together.

Now if powers were ready to go when you switched profiles, but you had a cooldown on switching to another profile then you could take a broader range of skills and set up profiles for specific situational usage and actually use that profile when the situation arises.  As it is now though I find profiles an utter waste of time.

Profiles were ruined by the cooldown on switching. It's too clunky for the cost in points so I ended up using a main build only.
It was an effort to give us more options in combat but caused the opposite (we now have only 3 abilities).

I agree with your general points about replayability, but, for me, I did not find they applied to MEA. I just have not found it convenient to switch between different builds types with the same character; it gets expensive after a while. Actually I have been just treating the profiles as if they were classes, so I guess there is no difference for me.

Its DAI that really crashed replayability, that was where your companies had the same build structure as the main character. Furthur you could paly the game from the viewpoint of any of your companions. There was no excuse here for not experiencing all play types in one playthrough. MEA is nowhere that bad.

I definitely don't believe profiles were a mistake. Once I begin to build profile builds I found myself using them depending on the situation I was in. I provided quick and seamless method to swapping out powers without having to respec a character.

I also don't think it hurts being able to replay the game. If nothing else, it allows for a new experience by swapping out powers within each profile.

Agreed it's a tricky one really because if you want to stick to one you still can but you also have the ability of mixing things up if you like where you can maybe d oa combination of 2 classes which I think now is kind odf cool  as we did have squadmates in the trilogy that were kind of a mix of 2 like Garrus for example in that he hada soldier ability like co0ncussive shot but he also had Overload as a power as wellwhich is a tech skill Miranda as well had Warp a Biotic skil and like Garrus also had he overload ability. I did a mix of 2 classes in my first playthrough as I kind of set my Sara up as a biotic Infiltrator which was cool using a sniper rifle that fired grenades also using the tactical cloa kto get sneaky and get in close and toss enemies around with shockwaves as well. was planning a mix of Soldier/Engineer for my first Scott. But I'll likely keep it relatively simple and go Vanguard for my 2nd Sara

Isn't it set to the f1-f5 keys to change profiles?