Firstly, it sounds much better the second time round. That's lovely, except I don't want to have to waste 20+ hours to play it through badly so I can have the 'full experience' the second time. I can play a different RPG like Morrowind for the 40 hours, have one play through, and get the full experience right from the off.
Second, I wouldn't say it was a sequel as such. If they'd said "Hey, this is like KOTOR with some small improvements and a new universe." then I'd be cool with that (even if it wasn't as good). However, they promised too much and missed the mark, even on the most basic of things. The brand new shooting system is wonderful...but the basic design is appallingly bad. The universe is wonderfully detailed, but after promising full freedom and a huge explorable area, it's actually sorely lacking in anything to match up to those promises.
With STALKER, which promised the same thing, it eventually fell away over the years and things were stripped away. But we all knew about this, so our expectations were (or at least, should have been, if you had any sense) lower when it was released. And realistically, it was pretty close to what we were promised within the close time leading up to its release.
Mass Effect just missed it completely. Total freedom? Huge explorable universe? Where, exactly, are these things? They were promised right up until release day, but they're not there, unless the devs' definitions of these things are entirely different to mine.
