Andromeda has been really divisive. It does get better, in my opinion, but not by a huge amount. If you really don't like it so far, then I'm not sure you'll like it much better later. While I personally enjoyed it, it certainly seems to be divisive. And for good reasons.
A few more specific things:
This is definitely a soft reboot and your comparison to The Force Awakens is apt. After the crazy storm that surrounded ME3's ending, I can understand why they would want to cut ties from that entirely and never talk about it again as much as possible. To make one ending canon, they would have to do so. I mean, the devs literally got death threats over it. Personally, that would kill any desire I had to touch the milky way galaxy ever again. Plus, it would require coming up with a threat that was comparable to the Reapers. The only way I could see doing it would be to make a smaller scale story taking place in the Mass Effect universe, with greater personal stakes, but lesser stakes for the galaxy.
There aren't hundreds of thousands of people. There are 100k total between the Nexus and the arcs. That's few enough that I could see them being entirely composed of people who, for various reasons, are after a new start. There are literally billions of people of each race in the milky way. 25k of each council race is such a tiny percentage of those that they could be viewed as the outliers.
Ryder is definitely unprepared and awkward and barely more than a teenager at the beginning. There is some character progression from that later in the main quest (although it's hamstrung to some extent by the open world nature of the game). Personally, I liked that she starts out totally unprepared, but I can also understand why people wouldn't. It's very different from Shepard. Personally I wasn't a fan of how Shepard remained largely static as a character (aside from being slightly more tormented by the end of ME3). But that's entirely my own opinion.
The first contact scene with the Angara is a hugely wasted opportunity, in my opinion, and remains one of my least favorite things about this game. They are already aware of the milky way races, due to the exiles (hence why they aren't surprised that Ryder and gang are from another galaxy). But that choice to make it not first contact is bizarre in my opinion. Why even go to a new galaxy if you're not going to include a first contact scenario? As for their design, I guess I don't have an opinion about that aside from liking the male model a lot more than the female one. Also, Jaal is actually a pretty good character, despite my mixed feelings about his species.
The squad members in the original trilogy pretty much just invite themselves as well. There is some pretense to them in ME2 with the Illusive Man wanting them on the team, but some are just bizarre to recruit (recruiting Samara while working for a terrorist organization just seems nonsensical to me, no matter how powerful she may be). And to this day, I don't understand why Wrex is even allowed to come along after dealing with Fist and rescuing Tali. He's a mercenary working for a criminal kingpin. But that he's invited along after that just goes without saying. Even Garrus is just some hothead cop originally, who Shepard lets in because he really, really wants to come along. The point is, while I agree that Drack and Peebee just saying 'btw, I'm coming too cuz I wanna' is a little weird, it's nothing new for the series.
That SAM could interact with remnant tech was just really lucky. People seem incompetent on the Nexus because without the ability to interact with the remnant, they can't colonize planets. And Tann actually is just incompetent. Particularly early on, SAM is very much a crutch for Ryder to lean on to make herself seem more capable than she actually is. This changes somewhat later on (but again, is partially hamstrung by the open world).
In conclusion, I wouldn't force myself to play it, hoping that it will get better. It does, but not my so much that if you hate it now, you'll love it later.