Personally, I believe that Hero Factory 2010 captured a lot of what made both late BIONICLE and early Hero Factory kind of bad. The quality of the pieces themselves still suffered from that weird molding issue from 2008, which made them stiff, disjointed and prone to breaking. Furthermore, the main good guy sets (the Heroes) were incredibly difficult to pose. Stormer, Stringer, and Bulk suffered from the bizarre choice to integrate their weapons directly into their arms, and the dual-wielding Heroes (Furno [sort of], Breez, and Surge) suffered from their arms being too long and it almost feeling like their hands were their elbows, with their weapons being their lower arms, if that makes sense.

Imo, the villains for that year fared much better. They were more experimental and interesting to look at, though they still had pretty heavy problems. The only one I actually own is Corroder, and he's impossible to pose. Those Avtoran limbs stuck in an eternal 90-degree angle are forgivable when used in Avtoran-sized sets, but attached to both a bulky torso and bulky handpieces, they just make him feel cluttered. In the TV show, he's seen jumping around like an agile, quick-moving villain, and his aesthetic (in still images) looks quick, but to hold in your hand, he's just as difficult to maneuver as Corroder or Krekka.

I personally feel like the Makuta Mistika suffered from a subtle rationing away of parts. One cannot help but notice that Krika has a canister-sized body but Avtoran-sized limbs, while Bitil has normal limbs but a tiny body. (Gorast, at least, has six Avtoran-sized limbs, evening her out somewhat.) The Makuta Mistika are beautiful to look at, especially compared to the overly industrial-looking Toa Mistika, but it was a harbinger of things to come that LEGO seemed to think we would not notice. Like Corroder, Krika uses 90-degree Avtoran joints, but Krika's lithe body and long, thin weapons makes it work. Krika's in-hand physicality is close enough to a child's imagination to imagine Krika stalking the Swamp of Secrets. The only play scenario I can see a kid playing out with Corroder is "Hero Factory vs. Arthritis."

I have never held Rotor, the Drop Ship, the Furno Bike or Von Nebula, but they at least looked like a step in the right direction. Reusing the maskpiece of Hydraxon (a fairly obscure 2007 set) for the year's Big Bad was an interesting choice, especially as, in silver, it looks somewhat neutral (as a jailer's mask should), but it suffices in black as the mask of evil incarnate. HF 2010 offers many such glorious BIONICLE recolors, from Meltdown's yellow Kalmah tentacle to XPlode's recolored Krika blades and Von Nebula's black-and-blue Tridax pod (I am surprised no one ever attempted to integrate into a Vamprah revamp. Re-Vamprah, haha.)

Rotor and Von Nebula (aside from VN's weird tiny arms, which the box artist didn't even try to hide) fit right in among the great titans of BIONICLE 2005 and 2006. The Drop Ship, while commendable, looks overengineered, suffering from much the same flaw as the Darth Vader constraction figure: too many tiny pieces going to recreate a basic and uninteresting shape, creating extra work for the builder without a feeling of vindication as more intricate models (like the Ussanui, the Jetrax T6, or the Malevolence) would offer. The HF vehicles (which never returned, apparently turning no particular profit) feel like serious step downs from BIONICLE.

2011, at least, allowed Hero Factory to develop its own identity. Whether it is better or worse than BIONICLE is for you to decide, but at least I can say with confidence that it was no longer simply a worse version of BIONICLE.