Be consistent with Paragon and Renegade in the first game, you will miss out on Speech checks if you jump between both too often.
I think ME2 and ME3 weren't as bad with that.
I agree somewhat. I still enjoyed 2 and 3 though. If they remade the first game, they could've added stuff to establish the collectors earlier in the story.. They just feel kind of random in 2. And they could flesh Cerberus. Shepard working with them in 2 makes zero sense if you do the side missions in ME1. In the first game, they experiment on and kill Earth military (if I'm remembering correctly).
Gameplay and your team, yea I still enjoyed them. The characters are very well written and the gameplay gets better in each game.
But yea, the story just doesn't go very well like you said if you did all the side missions. Admiral Kohaku warns you about Cerberus, they lured alliance marines to a distress beacon and got them killed by a Thresher Maw.
And yes, they were trying to make super soldiers using Alliance marines too.
Shepard would fukk someone up for that, Paragon or Renegade. It was just a way to force you to start with a mostly new crew.