From an aesthetic point of view, the original trilogy is unmatched (almost unmatched: the sixth installment missed a great opportunity), it's stunning and superb, but extremely lacking in functionality. That's the problem.

Well, you just threw a strange stone at Hota. I'm afraid that "baratorch" was even putting it mildly. I would say that in terms of aesthetics and coherence, Hota surpasses not only all existing gameplay mods, but also (oh, the horror) the original itself. For example, you can look at the list of original flaws that have already been fixed and will be fixed in Hota. See in some example how meticulously every little thing is checked so as not to deviate from the overall atmosphere. I would say that the quality control at the Hota team is noticeably higher than that of the original developers. One of the reasons is likely the commercial basis of the original. In the current version of Hota, of course, there are still some flaws (for example, the Grail at the Docks, which noticeably spoils the appearance of the city when it is fully built), but with each subsequent version, there will be fewer and fewer of them. Unlike the original.

P.S. sorry for the off-topic, I couldn't resist
P.P.S. this opinion existed even before I joined the team. After seeing the inner workings, it only intensified