This is not even a close comparison.
It's not an issue of whether you like the personalities of specific characters or not. The problem is what was done with Lamaty'i narratively in displacing the player character out of a second-person perspective interactive story. What Lamaty'i is replacing is not Emet, or Lyse, but the player character entirely.
That might be a writing direction change that you are happy with personally, but I'm not at all surprised why the critical reception was what it was.