I find the opposite a lot of the time. When critics review a remake or port, they often focus on comparing it to an earlier version rather than reviewing the game. They often don’t even say what the game’s about. I find those reviews worthless.

Not sure about inherently lacking, but it's probably best if you can properly compare a remake to the original game as well as provide information about how well it stands on its own today. There's probably length considerations for reviews, but if you manage to fit both perspectives in a review, it should provide valuable information to everyone. Win-win but potentially hard to pull off?

Well, I did that for The Last of Us Part I, which I think went alright.  Can't say whether I put too much or too little emphasis on the 'remake-ster' qualities, but it didn't feel too stressful to juggle both.

While I was initially tempted to put more nuance in the polls, a definitive yea/nay vote felt right for these circumstances.  I emphasized that higher threshold of "inherently lacking" to see how resolute the community is about remake/remaster reviews from OG non-finishers.