>more character development ...where? where in the first three years of Bionicle did any of the Toa get more character development than one-dimensional personality traits? even in the books released in 2003, you could usually boil the Toa down to one or two key traits each, with little nuance or complexity to them. >more characters ...so? the mark of a good story isn't how many characters it can shove down your throat, it's how it uses them. 2001: A Space Odyssey has fewer named characters than Foodfight! yet I have never seen people hold up the latter as superior based on character count. >better sets this is subjective, and in some ways I do prefer the original Mata aesthetically (mostly for their iconic, basic masks, as contrasted by the overwrought messes we got in later years), but honestly, I loved last year's sets, and all of the ways I've been let down by this year's sets were ways in which they stepped back to the sins of G1's designs. >really felt like a bionicle world you know why it did? because it was what set the standards for what a bionicle world would feel like. of course G1 would feel like a bionicle world. The first Ace Attorney game feels like an Ace Attorney game. A New Hope feels like a Star Wars movie. there's no standards they have to reach to do that; they get it automatically by coming first. meanwhile, something new, it really has to fight fan nostalgia to prove itself worthy to exist in the same franchise. but you know what? the original bionicle cycled through so many different tones and aesthetics, i've found, looking back, that i can't pin down what makes a bionicle world. taken as a whole, the world of bionicle g1 is a lot of things. it's mysterious islands, it's metropolises, it's gangsters, it's crime syndicates, it's just all kinds of things mishmashed together as time went on. so when asking "does bionicle g2 feel like a bionicle world?" i go back to the basics. i go back to what defined the bionicle world for me: 2001, the origins of the bionicle world. Robotic people and creatures on a mysterious island landscape, hunting for masks of power, ancient artifacts that will augment their strength, fighting against the evil force of darkness, Makuta. If you ask me, this feels more like a Bionicle world than Voya Nui did.