I think for a lot of console players it was their introduction to that style of game with all the branching conversations and your-choices-have-consequences stuff and that's what made it stick out. If you were primarily a PC gamer at the time I can't imagine being too impressed.
I played a bit of 1 and 2 and the combat was total ass so I lost interest pretty fast.
combat wasn't the primary draw, it was the characters and romances. lots of people came for the "lol you can bang weird aliens wtf" but many people took to liara, tali and/or garrus and the development between each game, the events of 2's prologue (dying and coming back and party reacting) and 3's climax (critically wounded party members/lover being forced to watch you go/most likely really die) making for especially juicy drama and "d'aww" moments. garrus in particular was a very good job at making a character straight males could like as a bro and watching your back, and also being a nerdy action hero people fell for, so he developed a large fanbase. waifus and waifu wars created more, and then the other members also usually have their moments throughout the games, such as mordin and his struggles with the decay and death he gave the krogan. nobody says "bro you remember how great the movement and gunplay 1 was in mass effect 1?" but they do consistently talk about garrus liara and tali. the friendship and love in the party and their reactions to outside stimuli is enough, bioware romance in general was like the western world's entry to dating sims, and for many lonely people or people just interested in sappy romance it's always enough regardless of how dogshit the combat may or may not be.
gameplay wise 1-3 were varying levels of a kind of shittier gears of war but with special abilities and interesting guns. 1 was very bullet spongey unless you followed specific soldier builds for bullet damage, and 2 and 3 were more streamlined action slop slightly better shitty gears games. sadly, andromeda actually was incredibly good in comparison gameplay wise, the ai and more fluid everything was much more entertaining, the krogan party member in particular was so cool/fun and useful it made me always want to mimic his class, and if you get interested from that, going back to 1-3 is turbo dog shit besides characters and story. much more slow, much more jank, and ai is placeholder/call of duty "why is he not friggin shooting i'm playing a damn support class" tier. of course the issue is all the glitches and issues andromeda had and that none of the characters took, and 4 on the horizon is coming out in current day so who knows what sort of trans or gay or race shit they'll jam in or if they just pull a veilguard, so most likely a potential nu mass effect trilogy with more free, fun gameplay and characters isn't an option.
thread tax mercante is filthy and a twitter bpd freak so i wouldn't want her to be in my life or vicinity much less have sexual interest, and none of her input is readable without nails on a mental chalkboard. i would feel very nervous just expecting her to work as a door greeter.