Turn on Button to Run and Sideways Hop if you haven't already. You'll thank me for that. Also the charm that you mention is exactly why people dislike it haha.

I put on Button to Run pretty quickly after starting. I'll have to throw on Sideways Hop too. Not sure what that is but I'll take your word on it being essential.

So far, I just made my way through the first Rupture Farms area (with one restart because I missed too many hidden Mudokens for my taste) and am now in the Stockyard.

Nothing about the new charm seems bad to me. A lot of the childish and forced 'humor' in Munch's Oddysee annoyed me to no end (I very much hate that game and hope they one day remake it into whatever it was meant to be at first) but I don't see any of that being transferred into this game. At least yet.

Anyone who's chosen New 'n' Tasty likes the Oddworld series for *entirely* different reasons than me

... Could you elaborate?

Button to run: Abe will walk unless you hold the run button. This tends to be what players used to Oddysee would go for as it's closer to the 1997 controls.

Sideways hop: Abe will hop forwards when you press jump, rather than directly up. Some people prefer this for gaps, mines etc.

The whole eerie atmosphere, gritty art direction and perfect balance of a dark overworld mixed with very, very subtle humour here and there is what made Oddworld my favourite game of all time.

I just feel like New 'n' Tasty near enough abandoned most of that.

It's been posted to death in this forum I'm sure, but this video sums up all my issues with New 'n' Tasty - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkhDrngAQZ0

Haven beaten New N Tasty officially now, I can properly vote for the original.

Not that New N Tasty is bad by any means. It was more than worth the five bucks I spent on it, and I am happy to financially support OWI in their continued efforts to keep this franchise going. Was it a tad too silly overall? Sure, there were a few parts where the humor was forced into a scene or two. But at least they're listening to that feedback and going in a darker direction with Soulstorm, so I can't really complain about that. There's countless gaming companies that would ignore such comments and only care about the bottom-line.

More than anything it just made me want to play the original again, and I can't tell if that's a good or a bad thing, but that's ultimately what it accomplished.

The best thing about New n Tasty was the inclusion of the "All O' ya command originally from AE.A command I missed while replaying AO.

The remake feels like a love letter to the original, all the characters (all of them) are either more colourful, cute etc.

It lost the serious and dark nature of the original and that's what stood out the most for me.

I actually fully expected to be the only vote for NnT by the time SoulStorm came out.

That's hard to choose between. I like AO simply because it's well, I don't know how to describe it- creepier? Like, I'm more on edge when I play AO than when I play New n Tasty. I guess it has something to do with those old graphics.

The character models in new n tasty look pretty good.
But other than that, visually, everything looks quite out of place.

Lower the bloom, remove the rainbow of candyland colors and you got oddworld.

Also the reason nnt isn't creepy is because in the original the most prominent sound was the one made by a nearby enemy (slig walking/ snoring, scrabs howling, etc). You knew what will follow amd that was always scary.

In nnt the audio is a mess. Sounds overlap with each other and with the music. There was no need of mudokon chatter. That's just a huge turn-off from the original considering they were shot for saying "hi".

The original Abe's Oddysee. Mainly due to the original looking better visually than its remake. They made it too light and futuristic. The original was more grungy to show the dark side of industry and capitalism. It's mostly gone here with the exception of Mullock still being an evil bastard. While it was cool to have the NPCs actually talk, it was inappropriate from the Muds in RuptureFarms to do so in a facility where they'll get the crap beaten out of them randomly by a Slig brute. They also made the jumps a challenge in New 'n' Tasty since you have to walk before you can jump since they got rid of the buttons that allow you to choose whether to reach up or hop. And they kinda messed up my favorite stage "Stockyard Escape" by giving it incorrect lighting and removing the "dramatic shadows". While it's a good game, it's still not as good as the original.

I agree with most of your other points, but on this one specifically you can get the old jumping style back by enabling the classic controls in the settings. Should have been the default in my opinion, but it’s there.

In Oddworld the thought process always preceded the actual execution. Here is what was good in the puzzles:

-Paying attention to the geometry of terrain and how it helps or limits you;
-Working with different elements on various screens, and figuring out a way to solve it;
-What was very good is having to remember what actors/terrain are on the other screens, and the action/movement order required to solve the task. On some levels, the solution seemed very obscure and elusive, and it engaged your lateral thinking.
-Timing actions in tense situations was crucial plus intuition telling the player what that lever is mostly likely to activate etc.

On top of that, the art design was very well managed, it presented an in-depth, rich experience of an alien world.