Look and feel is more important than anything else.
Quite frankly, the reason I like NovaMind and Darkstorm is that the actors and weapons feel right.
The NovaMind machine gun just feels exactly right, and the look is polished; same with the Darkstorm Shinobi.
I don't really care about power (but not having stuff overpowered is a contribution to the feel) or function as much as I care about an actor that looks and feels right.
The Crobos are another good example of this; the sounds, effects, sprites etc just work.
Quite frankly, no one (I hope) cares if something is a resprited Coalition: as long as it feels like a new actor, and is fun to play with, it'll fly.