[CommieBobDole]

I wouldn't personally go that far; having recently replayed all three back-to-back, I'd say that they're just very different types of games.

ME1 is a an excellent story-driven action RPG with clunky combat and issues with environment size/complexity due to technological limitations of the platform it was built for.

ME2 is a very good story-driven third-person shooter with excellent combat and a thin veneer of RPG elements that has overcome a lot of the technical issues with ME1 despite the same platform/engine.

ME1 by far has the better story and I enjoyed it more than ME2 on my first playthrough years ago, but now, already knowing the story, ME2 was more fun to play this time. It's a shame they couldn't have improved on everything good about the first one instead of turning it into a shooter.

Personally, I'd love to see the whole trilogy reimagined and remade as a single giant open-world action RPG, but that's probably never happening.