I'll start from the best strengths, ending with the worst weaknesses. There are some spoilers but nothing main-plot relevant. For TL;DR, just read the starred (*) paragraphs. They will likely determine whether you will want to buy this game.

(*) The gunplay and gameplay mechanics are sublime. You can now craft guns with augmentations to make them enjoyable in various ways - laser beams, grenade launches, ballistic arc bullets and so on. The hitbox of the enemies are very accurate and that made my sniping experience very clean. However the enemies movement is very awkward, sometimes they just go from stationary to suddenly rushing to another cover with a speed that does not look natural at all.

The other good thing is the number of easter eggs regarding the OG trilogy into this game. If you have played the original trilogy, you definitely won't be upset with the number of subtle references they put in relation to the characters you encountered in the trilogy, even though the game is set in an entirely different galaxy.

The nomad (aka new mako) controls is good. There are a lot of ways to upgrade the nomad to give it a nice driving experience. (I know it's not fair to compare but I really hated the mako experience in ME1.)

Now some not so good points. They took away a lot of the races in the trilogy. OK I understand hanar, elcor, batarians are not here, but come on, not the quarians? At the beginning they just said their ark encountered some problems but come on, quarians are the techy people. They literally lived on a spaceship

The shaping and molding of the various characters you met in this game is rather shallow. There are some good ones (like how Peebee is the remtech expert and throughout the game is remnant exploration-centered so Peebee feels more personally relevant), but there are some bad ones (sorry but looking at Vetra and Liam and moreso your twin...).

There are a lot of questions that the game tries to ask and yet left unanswered. Now that we don't know if ME:A will receive a sequel, it will definitely leave some bitter taste in a player's mouth.

(*) There are several bugs that I encountered throughout the game. The worst one was when I was in Eos and I fell under the Kett base but not far down enough to automatically respawn you, so I was softlocked and I had to reload and replay like 20 minutes of the game. The other bad one was also in Eos when I had to supposedly choose where to place a seismic hammer, but I didn't know so I just placed it in where the checkpoint marker says I should, and the quest helper bugged out so hard. There are a lot of other quests where if you don't follow what the devs intend you to do, then the quest helper will bug out and show as if your quest has not been completed.

(*) Now here's the worst thing and likely the dealbreaker for some of the people. The plot is very underwhelming. Now there are a few plot twists that I didn't see coming and I actually enjoyed it, and that said I also completed all the side quests (except some of the "additional tasks" that don't affect the main plot like scanning some devices), but in hindsight, the main plot is very short and straightforward. I definitely did not feel the seriousness and the weight of the situation like I did with the reapers. The ending fight is also very underwhelming, and imho even worse than the shortened Saren fight in ME1.

All in all, my final verdict is, get it during a sale. Having the trilogy sitting right before it definitely overshadowed this game's potential and left me thinking what ME:A could have been rather than what I have taken away from this game. That said, forgetting the comparison, the game is not a bad one, but rather a mediocre/above average one, with some mass effect core central elements in it but without any embellishments and highlights to make them stand out.

Final score: 6.5/10