I pretty much agree with you on every point, except that I sometimes end my reviews with a goofy little pun, too such as,

Indeed, if there is still any greatness to be found in the Alex Kidd series, it will take something far more miraculous than Miracle World to enlighten me.

But it's not groundbreaking and it would've taken a lot more than this little Bobcat to make a Jaguar roar. (Bubsy 3)

Another good point you brought up...

Also, the game does have palette swaps. Right away I thought of the little imp/ogre things that appear in several different levels, and are either red, blue, or gray, and you can see several examples of palette swaps in FO's Sprite Gallery. Not enough that I would criticize the game for it, but it's definitely not something you'd want to mention as a positive aspect of the graphics.
That's a mistake that's very easy to make in reviewing games, and I know I've done it, too. It's the fallicy that the absense of something negative automatically warrants a positive. There are plenty of games that have no or infrequent palette swaps, but that doesn't necessarily mean they have great graphics. By this logic, a game that uses the same enemies in every level, so long as it doesn't change any of their colors, would be graphically superior.

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