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I don't have anything approaching a retort, just a smile and appreciation.
Yes, I do value the trilogy structure and design more than the worldbuilding (in part because worldbuilding is easy to find, but good series are hard). I find that good story structure is indicative of good writing more than a good character dynamic, but that's because I've seen far too many movies or shows with an interesting premise fall apart for lack of planning after winging it. Good character writing can exist regardless, but good narrative design will elevate. (I will stand by that Mordin's Tuchanka arc was one of the best moments of the series, as it was simultaneously against part of his theme in ME2 but also a natural progression of his obvious guilt, and a natural integration into how to recruit allies into the war.)
I also agree that ME2 could have absolutely evaded the pitfalls ME1 set up for lack of planning. I personally view them as one and the same and that the onus is on ME1 to write for the sake of the sequel if it was designed as a trilogy to start, but the nature of that is that nothing required tethering the sequels to a trilogy character arc. Rather, a personal favorite proposal I once read was one that every ME game in the trilogy have a separate focus character: Commander Shepard in ME1 as the 'public face' of Humanity for what it does as a galactic hero, but then PC!Jacob Taylor could have been the ME2 player character for a 'what Humanity is in the dark' thematic contrast, while not!Vega in ME3 could have been the Rising War Hero for the Reaper War. Each player character an independent character with reflections observing differences rather than 'hey, remember me Shepard?!' cameos, and in each game the previous player character is their own character characterized by the key decisions of the previous game.
I don't disagree with your criticisms of Andromeda on a lore-technical level, but I just smile and wave vaguely to the deliberately campiness of what was, at heart, a sort of first contact story. When comedy is a deliberate goal, I can overlook a lot of functional-efficiency things, and I suppose I just accept that as part of the buy-in.
(If I wanted to pick at realism, the role of Spectre as a shooting-game protagonist also doesn't make sense as presented in the trilogy. Council Space doesn't need it when legal violence is so readily available, and non-Council space doesn't respect it. Spectre status Soldiers wouldn't be useful in a setting where legally-sanctioned blackops are everywhere and legal violence is so common- the real benefitors of Spectre status would be a Volus tax-accountant who can use the status to cut through bureaucratic red tape to unroot financial crimes threatening the galactic economy, and using that Spectre status to keep a band of mercenaries as his muscle.)
(Give me biotic god pencile pusher, doom of tax evaders and counterfeit e-zero smugglers!)
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