Ok well um
Hero Factory tried to have actual characters but they ended up being cookie cutter dough. There's the veteran, the rookie, the guy with the Jewish accent, lady, musical dude, Hulk, and young idiot. The villians were worse, with no discernable backstory other than "they do bad things."
That is to say BIONICLE didn't do similarly also, with Tahu being hot tempered, Kopaka being cold, and Onua being down to Earth. But it was on a more tolerable level where the relationships and conversations with the characters were good enough so I don't take a sledgehammer to the face.
The sets for Hero factory were bad. I never liked them.
1.0- Everyone is stiff as rocks. Anything else that didn't look like it was from BIONICLE was Ben 10 creature stuff that was a big no.
2.0- CCBS, it was a good system. Too bad everyone with a shield had this one ugly arm, everyone had no back armor, and pretty much everyone suffered from the most stupidest asymmetry ever.
3.0- Actually moderately good. The back armor wasn't fixed, and I still had some problems but it wasn't too bad.
4.0- First wave was ok to good, the second wave was not really good. I hated stormer XL, Nex, and XT4.
5.0- nononononnonononono. Still no back armor, literally no gimmicks other than spinny things or flick fire missiles, bad set design choices, and overall it was no.
6.0- definite no. the sets were at the very best okish.
BIONICLE has some moderately good sets, too, but they usually were infested with dumb greebles that made them look like robots that make servo noises.
In the end, BIONICLE wins.