Finally playing ME3 and yeah he does genuinely improve and it is right away noticable. I will say, a lot of men might play male shep their main playthrough because of roleplay and self-insert as well as the wish-fufilment fuck everything that moves fantasy they have, but when people do walkthroughs or upload scenes they like they often pick femshep and I think that is because when you are not self-inserting, she is so much better as a character. You can only get anything out of male shep from the perspective of seeing him as your avatar, but Hale manages to be good enough to give a real performance as a character in and of itself.

I played male shep both of my main playthroughs cause those are my role plays, that's my more or less self-insert shep, but when I play to role-play as a character with a personality not my own, I always go with femshep and I think that's the case for a LOT of people.

Despite not being voice acted this is what I did for both KOTORs and dragon age origins. My way more personally-invested playthroughs are male MCs, but subsequent ones like my current dark side Exile is female