The brightness / constrast issues seem to be only plaguing the intro level, it looks fine after that for me. But yeah my first reaction was also to look for the option to adjust brightness in game, only to not find it.
Otherwise I'm enjoying it. I already put 6.5 hours in it on launch day. It undeniably mimics Mass Effect, but that's OK, I don't want originality for the sake of it. The on ground part has a ting of Cyberpunk feel to it, but the missions and level design seems to be entirely inspired by OG Mass Effect.
The space combat follows the X-Wing / Tie Fighter recipe, adjust power distribution between weapons engines and other systems. But there is also a stealth aspect to it. If you power down everything except for engines you become harder to detect and can sneak around enemies to reach objectives without alerting them.
The first person shooter part is very similar to Fallout 4, but slightly worse. I found it almost impossible to properly hit enemies from a distance. When shooting from the hip the spread is too much to do anything but waste ammo. But if you aim down the sights, then the weapon occupies 3/4 of the screen and you can't even see where you are shooting at. It's really difficult to hit enemies when you can't see them from your own gun.
If you can land headshots enemies seem to die from 3-4 hits, which is already a bit bullet spongy to me, one headshot should be an instakill. But if you don't hit them in the head, then they truly become bullet sponges, especially the ones with regenerative shields. If you can't finish them off instantly before they regen it almost feels like you have to start from zero again. And this is exacerbated by the fact that reloading is painfully slow in the game. It takes like 10 seconds with most weapons.
Another thing I'm not a fan of is if you put a skill point into a certain ability you have to complete a challenge before you get the benefits of it. For example if you put a point into guns you have to kill 20 enemies with guns to actually gain that skill, or even allow you to put more points into guns. This is really bad design, because it forces you to kill all enemies with guns even ones that are much easier defeated with different weapons. Not to mention that if you have a companion then their kills don't count, so it almost becomes a fight against them, to not allow them to snatch kills from you.
The inventory and menu system seemed very weird at first, but it actually works well. After I got used to it I started liking the simplicity of it.
However the single biggest negative of the game is the useless map, it doesn't show anything just vague icons for generic areas not even specific locations. It is total garbage and can't be used for anything. You have to find your own way, which helps immersion as instead of just running past scenery, you actually need to learn the layout of the settlements and where is what in relation to each other, because the map won't help at all. It actually does more to confuse you than to offer anything of value. IDK how did they think this was OK? We might as well not have a local map.
