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I feel exactly like you, and I'm glad I'm not alone.

For some reason though we're the exception here. Most people seem to have enjoyed ME2 more than ME1 because nobody seems to care about having an actual coherent storyline as opposed to a bunch of one-off missions, fancy graphics and a character with a recognizable face from TV.

[eropple]

Personally speaking, I preferred ME2 greatly because it was a modern game in the good senses of the word: competent mechanics, enjoyable combat, and a good-enough story that was presented well enough as to be able to effectively stir emotional reactions that I appreciated. ME3 continued this trend--its general rep as "ME2 but more and better" is a compliment to ME2, which I feel like is a game that could have come out today and nobody would have felt it was out of place. In terms of mechanics and structure, it was ahead of its time, and it's still very fun for me to play today.

On the other hand, the original Mass Effect is unplayable to me; that the narrative is a little (not a lot, IMO, despite retroactive claims to the contrary) tighter gets lost when the game is too frustrating to play, with unsatisfying core gameplay when you get out of menu hell to even play it. I liked many of the ideas in it--the Mako was a great idea with a ton of potential--but execution, and arguably the technology stack they used, was severely lacking. As such, ME1 is a product of that weird transitional era in games where few people seemed to really have a handle on what they were doing--a game like the original Half-Life has aged better than the ME1, and it came out many years before.

Now, isn't it funny that that bears no resemblance to hurf blurf fancy graphics recognizable face hurf blurf? But that's a real nice cross you've nailed yourself to, don't let me stop you from indulging in your self-righteous enlightenment.