How about a game where when you upgrade your ship, it can fundamentally change the gameplay. That's right, it can change the one thing that makes it a videogame, not just cutscenes and dialogue.
I played it a couple months ago, I get that "a bunch" is a subjective term and after looking at the wiki I admit that I was wrong, there aren't two weapons in the "heavy pistol" class, there's three.
You don't get ammo type equipment, it's a magic power and there's only a couple of them (and only reason to have 1 in your squad ever).
There are a couple casual outfits and a couple armor pieces. They don't mean anything to the gameplay unless +5% health somehow drastically changes your build.
And for weapon "mods", yeah you can research them and looking at the heavy pistols category on the wiki there are 3 for them. Truly an expansive system.
How is pointing out the absurdity of the entire point of the game's plot "straw manning?" The entire game builds up the mystery of what the collectors are doing, they are the primary antagonist and your main goal is to learn what they're doing and stop them. And when you do, it's retarded shit that a 7 year old would come up with? The reason people like that sequence so much is because your squadmates can die, but look at actual CRPGs here. When you've got the whole squad at the climax of the game, it's hard as balls. If you aren't well equipped, your dudes will die in gameplay and you can only save them if you play it smart or were well equipped. In ME2, they die in arbitrary cutscenes from random shit and the only thing that determines this is if you did their loyalty mission. That doesn't make any sense, they should die in gameplay because they run out of health and I can't save them, not because their daddy issues caused them to get hit by a random bullet and instantly die despite the fact that they get hit by random bullets all the time in gameplay with no consequence.
If you don't mean to say that Star Wars has a worse setting then what the fuck do you mean? What is wrong with Star Wars that isn't wrong with ME?
I never said that, that's just the reason that you like the game. You want to be one of those cool nerds that likes nerd things but you don't actually like games, which is why you enjoy a game that has terrible gameplay and most of your time is spent in cutscenes.
Why in the world does the "space" part matter to you? It means nothing for the setting, writing, characters, or the gameplay. The only thing about Mass Effect that is related to sci-fi is the visual design of everything. You don't actually fly a space ship, the properties of outer space don't matter, and you don't explore. There is no difference between Mass Effect and Dragon Age: Origins outside of the combat and art design. They have the same story, the setup for upgrading party members, talking to people, and the way you do quests/missions is all the same. If you swapped the models and some words of everything between these games you could reasonably call DA:O Mass Effect as well as the reverse.
tl;dr you are a casual but you don't want to admit it, I strongly advise that you go talk about casual "games" on a place more friendly to them like reddit