Well I mean, even that feels lacking. Once you get the stuff sorted out on the citadel, and talk to everyone there, you've got...planet roving. And that's VERY barebones. Find a mineral, play a mini game. Now find an "anomaly" (it's a probe, I promise), play the same minigame. Lastly, if you're lucky, find a human science lab / research center / etc. They take one of three room designs, rearrange the set pieces inside (maybe) and place either a shit ton of husks, a shit ton of rocket turrets, or some humanoids in there. On the other side, you get a loot container. It feels very...filler. Story missions are neat, but there aren't many of em. Much of Mass Effect the First feels like completionism for the sake of completionism. I went out of my way to find as many extra things to do as I could, and it really didn't feel like much.
And I mean that. Mass Effect 1 felt weird to me in a lot of ways, and when I started I said to myself "Let's do this *once*."
Now that I've completed it, I almost wanna say I liked the combat more than I like it in 2 in some ways. It got a LOT more vertical in one. And a lot more physical. You don't get charged by Geth Juggernauts anymore in two. There are no enemy units jumping around like springloaded fuck-you missiles. Having to deal with things on all three axes made things very interesting in the first game. Vertical combat consists of...well, stairs, from game 2 onward. That and I feel like ME1 had a better answer to combat than "chest high walls". I didn't just tap space behind a barrier when I needed to heal. I FLED and got onto the other side of an airlock, for the few seconds of relief that gave me from a Prime. Moments like that were admittedly rare, and didn't make the first game a superb experience on the whole, but they were definitely memorable. I can't think of any "wow" moments from ME2's combat.
Also, ME2's minigame saturation is a LOT more noticeable on the third playthrough, JFC.