Good points in this thread all around. One thing that hasn’t been mentioned much is just how cool it is to go down to planets and drive a vehicle around. Explore strange new worlds. Andromeda gave me that aspect better than any other Mass Effect, which is why it’s my favorite in one aspect.
For linear story-telling, the original Mass Effect is the best. For branching dialog choices, Mass Effect 3 is my favorite, except for the ending, of course. Mass Effect 2 kind of sits in the middle on everything, so it’s not my favorite in any aspect, which is why I always think of it as the weakest game in the series, I guess.
But I loved the open world/really wide corridor gaming in Andromeda. Get out of the vehicle and use my vehicle as cover to kill some guys, get back in the vehicle and come at the enemy base from the other side, and kill some enemy there. A game is more than the sum of its narrative threads. It’s this feeling of gameplay freedom and the feeling of exploring worlds that just elevates it in my mind above the other games in the series in a lot of ways.