^Personally, at least, I felt that the overall mass of most G1 villains were on par with the Toa and such, but most G2 villains are, in my opinion, emaciated and uninspired. Excusable last year, since they were, you know, skeletons, but another year of unarmored villains kind of casts a shadow(heh) on the whole thing. Especially since it could be the 2nd of 3 years of the run. And like I said, they're really uninspired this time around, quite disappointing.
Also, G1 main characters were priced accordingly with each other; canister-canister, titan-titan, canister good guy-titan bad guys. With the exception of 08 Takanuva. G2, though, has the pricing mixed with 15€/$ and 20€/$ Toa fighting primarily 15$/€ villains.