I actually hated the Reapers in ME1 more than later. Any villain that comes in saying tired bulltrout like their motivations are beyond you is always lying. It's also just a really old, really dumb trope that's basically never true. Certainly not if you plan on actually explaining their motivations as almost all games do. Just lazy, lazy writing that. They still weren't great in 2 and 3 but at least they didn't try to pretend they were some impossible to understand eldritch horror when we all knew they weren't going to be anyway. And their ultimate motivations weren't even that bad if you ask me. Machines (sorta) who try and preserve the history and legacy of sapient species by preserving them in reaper form. It may be a bit of an old sci-fi trope to have the machines that are given a directive then go about implementing it in the worst way possible, but it's a good one and I didn't mind it here.