I understand the Concord criticism. People are generally upset that their Chess pieces look lame...whatever.
I don't understand why Astro Bot not only gets a pass for being derivative and unambitious, but people will actually it creative, inspired, and it's devs are allegedly passionate.
That makes no sense. If one is derivative then the other is too.
Except... it isn't.
Your analysis falls at the first hurdle.
Whether or not it's MAXIMALLY creative is a different question from whether it's anything like as remotely generic as Concord, which it fucking incredibly obviously is NOT.