I am going to say something awful...
I played ME 3 for the first time in 2020, always suspected that it sucks and turned out it even worse than that. And I am playing Andromeda now, got it for 2$ in russian money on some sale.
Honestly, I had almost abandoned Andromeda after prologue, mostly because I just could not get over how ugly everyone is. But I tried to give it second chance recently. Now I am around 70 hours mark and almost done, already 100%-ed all worlds.
Thing is, I actually enjoy playing Andromeda after almost forcing myself to get through ME3 due to my horrible completionist itch. And doing point by point comparison, imho:
- Main character. In short, I hated what Bioware did to Shepard in ME 3. They took character that I have considered mine and turned her into some whiny tryhard Messiah with all galaxy just not shutting up about how awesome she is. I know that stroking player's ego is important part of any game but holy shit, when everyone in the story beside MC and his team are comically inept and/or crazy evil, whole thing goes from meh to cringe in the second.
- Story. Just one word - cutscene. Half of the ME3 is a long boring (and often unskippable) cutscenes where everyone sound like a broken record: Reapers, Reapers, Reapers, please save us Shepard, you are so cool Shepard, world is a grimdark and you are our only hope Shepard... Some game devs just don't get that "press ESC to skip" is half of greatness. Andromeda is throughout mediocre in its story parts but at least it drops stupid cinematic dialogues right after prologue and lets me play the game.
- Combat. Only thing that I truly liked about ME3. Combo system is cool, shooting is pleasant and huge choice of the weapons help it a lot. Mission maps are expanded from the corridors of ME2 and mostly range from decent to good. But this is also one thing where any original Mass Effect loses to Andromeda hands down.
Because Andromeda is on Frostbite and you can feel a shootery pedigree of the engine in every shot you make. No retarded enemies that do not know how to flank or how to change cover, no covers that you need to manually stick to each time and no grenades that spawn under your feet with 100% precision. Everything is fast, fluid and operates in real 3d at last with enemies being aware of verticality and smart enough to use the shit out of it.
And it also takes ME3 classes and makes them even better with free mix and match for abilities and its "respec on the fly" profile system. Only downgrade is the lack of direct of control over the squadmates but they are no longer retarded and actually sturdy so it is ok for me - I still do most of the work on Insane but here I don't need to babysit the second half of my combo all the time.
- Exploration. I am that weird person who liked to drive Mako over half empty planets in first ME. So I like to do the same in Andromeda, but worlds are beautiful, not nearly as empty, have working Hazard systems, verticality, small hidden stashes and quests and even some dungeons with environmental puzzles. Of course it is not a Gothic, but it also way better than trash like copypasted Assasin Creeds or ME2-3 endless drab corridors.
So TL;DR version, I would actually approve more Andromeda from Bioware, and less ME3 and DA2. Inquisition is a hard comparison, since it has the same problems as Andromeda with quantity over quality, better story parts but worse open world and boring combat.
PS I guess playing The Outer Worlds was really a breaking point to lower my standards enough to enjoy reviled Mass Effect Andromeda. Or maybe I had never liked Mass Effect 2-3 enough to be uber butthurt about getting Andromeda instead of ME4.