See, I disagreed when you said that RQ would be a heartbreaker if it were published today, but now I think you were right after all.* What is going on here is a divergence of scope and interest, based on the author's biases. To be fair, they're legitimate biases in themselves; it's just that one has a strong impression that everyone is expected to share them--and certainly that has been the case in innumerable Internet discussions with RE's fans and friends.
It's like with wargames--to a fan of the genre, the difference between an Avalon Hill classic (Tactics II, say) and, oh, The Russian Campaign is like night and day. To a fan of Euro games, they're both just hex & chit, IGU-UGO variations on a theme. If you've played one, you've played them all.
*I seem to recall that Mike Mearls said, about the release of MRQ, that Mongoose was foolishly competing with D&D on its own terrain or something like that--in other words, it was a "heartbreaker", though he didn't use the term. I can't find the quote, though, so I may be misremembering.