Prime example of lame RP choice (mild spoiler).

I understand that's what you're complaining about, but I'm wondering why you expected something different. ME1 had a lot of those illusion of choice bits (on my first round I was pleased with how many choices there were, replaying I realized a lot of them actually produced identical results/lines), but each game since then has stripped that away. Whether that's been bad or neutral depends on how any individual feels about playing an RPG versus a narrative game with RPG elements, but either way it's clearly been the kind of game that they've been producing for a while now.

You get a few dialogue/banter lines about that first outpost choice, but it doesn't amount to much. Later on their are a few choices that relate to who shows up in the final battle (and to which NPCs hang around on the Nexus - I don't want to spoil things if you're not there yet). So there are choices that change things, but if you're looking for huge differences to the core plot and characters, you're going to be disappointed. If you like seeing those smaller flavour differences though, there's some of that (not as much as I'd have liked, but there definitely are several of them).

I would say the main differences I've noticed aren't really in the plot itself.  Playing your Ryder with different responses really does have a noticeable affect on how that playthrough develops, from a personal standpoint at least.  It's minor, yes, but I've had the very strong impression that Andromeda was intended as a personal "journey, not destination" type of game.  The effects you have on the story don't really change, but "how you get there" can alter depending on how you choose your responses.  

It's subtle, yes, but I've played 3 Ryders so far, and all three were different in distinct ways.  Nothing major, obviously, but they were different.  I feel more freedom in playing Ryder like this than I ever did playing Shepard, with the Paragon/Renegade dichotomy limiting your options to "overly good guy" or "supreme dick-lord."

Having choices can only matter so much. If the choices were that meaningful, they'd have to write multiple games to compensate for those choices. Choices will always mean very little until the story arc properly ends and can accommodate that choice.

Sometimes, you get really shit RNG. I researched the Bio-Converter in a game, but because of the Bio-Converter bug I didn't actually get it. Went through two NG+ files because I randomly got two of them while looting crates on "Hunting the Archon".

I'm not going to call it a "lame choice" because it's multiple choices and not one, but Ryder is not very assertive, even to his squaddies.

The mission with the salarian ark is a perfect way to illustrate this. In my mind, picking the krogan is a really stupid decision over picking Raeka. I know exactly what I'm getting with the krogan (a few scouts) and that's not much. By contrast, with Raeka I'm getting a skilled soldier and a woman whose claim to fame is restoring biological diversity to a ravaged ecosystem.

That's freaking useful! I don't know what the other salarians with Raeka offer, but seriously, she's enough. And not only am I spending all this time apologizing to Drack, but freaking Kesh is giving me problems too? Seriously, I thought you were the smart one!

Same here.  I felt bad for Drack but, honestly, a few lost scouts isn't making me lose sleep (or no more than any other deaths).  I thought the salarians outright had lower survivability odds (krogan are much tougher and live WAAAAAY longer than salarians) so it made sense to save them and Raeka. 

Has it crossed your mind that MAYBE, SAM being part of the meta story for this new saga, means you cant make hard choices about it cause they are saving such decisions/conflicts for future games?

Considering what happens to Ryder on the final mission, I'd say giving us a choice to remove SAM at any point in the game would result in Ryder's premature death. So whatever dialogue choices they give you (or dont) regarding AI, the result is always the same, you are stuck with SAM. Live with it. Wait for a future game where you might have a chance to actually go against SAM.

In the OT you had a choice to voice your disapproval of EDI in many situations, in the end, she is unshackled all the same, no matter how you feel about it... And thanks for that! Cause she is badass and saves the Normandy and her crew plenty of times.

I agree that there are situations where more of this would have been VERY nice.

But.

The whole game isn't 4 shades of yes.  There are plenty of moments where you can disagree with people, or do things that royally piss people off, especially in your crew, and even with Nexus management.  There are moments where your decisions determine who lives and who dies.

By now, the whole "4 ways to say yes" or "4 shades of Paragon" have become memes, and very inaccurate ones at that.  I won't pretend that more options were needed in some points, and more "aggressive" replies would have really worked in places, but c'mon.  People keep spouting the same tag lines over and over, and they're not even true (for most of the game, some situations, I'll give you.)

True, there are good and bad examples.  Unfortunately, the bad ones are either prolific enough or in such significant places that it stands out to people, and at that point, it becomes an issue.

I would say this.  And this is my opinion, you are more than free to disagree with me.  And I'm going to use an appeal to authority logical fallacy, 'cause, hell, I can.  

I'm 40 years old.  I've seen bad writing, in movies, in books, in TV shows.  There's a very large difference between "not liking the style" of writing and it being "bad writing."  A good bit of ME:A's writing was intentionally on the lighter side, a more "casual" take on the MEverse.  A lot of people complaining about the writing, calling it teen fanfic levels, mostly picked all casual responses (I don't know what percentage, but I've asked a few and this was, indeed the case.)  Casual responses are intentionally Whedon-esque Firefly types of lines.  And I can understand why people don't like that style of writing, but most of those options I've picked weren't that bad.  A bit cheesy at times, but that was the point of 'em.  The other 3 options almost NEVER gave me a feeling of bad writing.

There was a lighter tone in most of the autodialogue, and I'm not gonna deny that, but the lines worked well in the situation (for the most part) and it's again a subjective thing.  Most of the "bad" writing spots I've seen in game are the ones that are constantly being pushed on review sites and YouTube videos, mostly for click-bait and views, and to be completely honest, there are not much more than a handful of spots in game where I just went "really?" over the writing.  Cora's loyalty mission was probably the biggest culprit of that, though.  

Having more options for different situations would definitely be better.  What we got may not be what people wanted, and they may have preferred other options, but for what it is, it works and works well.  That's not "bad writing."  That's "I wanted something different."  That's why I get tired of people saying "bad writing" as some universal truth, when it's nothing more than personal preference.  That preference isn't WRONG, per se.  This story isn't your cuppa tea.  I get that, and I certainly wouldn't complain if more options were given to appeal to "the other side."  But just because you didn't like it doesn't necessarily make it bad writing.