ISTR magazines slating a lot of AGA titles because they were little more than the OCS/ECS version with a gaudy background. But that's less a criticism of AGA and more about how it was actually used, IMO. There were a lot of amazing AGA titles which really did a great job of highlighting the benefit of AGA.
This.
If you look at Super Stardust AGA and then realise you needed a 100mhz 486 to play it on PC it rams home just what was possible with AGA and effectively 7mhz 020 (no Fast ram = approx 50% LESS CPU processing power). 6 channel sound, 256 colour graphics, 50FPS arcade gameplay. WIN. Ditto for Lotus 2 on Amiga vs Lotus 3 on PC. But most of the time Amiga games were limited because they had to do an ST version first (because Commodore never marketed the A1000 properly and wasted 2 years) while Atari slit their throat in sales to home users with the original ST. Games companies are run on profit not tech specs!
Magazines didn't help though, when people went all out to make a game amazing looking/sounding like Sword of Sodan/Battle Squadron they scored it low but gave embarrassingly rubbish conversions like Chase HQ and original games like Xenon II (which only used 16 colours thanks to the crappy ST version coded in tandem) much higher scores.
And then everyone went nuts over 256 colour crap games on PC like Wing Commander (unplayable and looked shit on anything below a 486) and Heart of China/Rise of the Dragon (less enjoyable than Rocket Ranger/Wings/It came from the Desert etc). And then we had Doom. Doom is the only one worth a damn of the four promoted as 'PC gaming superiority' and thanks to AGA and slow crippled 14mhz 020 in A1200 with no Fast ram we couldn't play it. And because the 4000/030 was such an overpriced piece of shit we never would buy it. So again the problem is NOT just 8 bit planar 256 colour mode BUT Commodore needed an A1400 in 1992 with 28mhz 020, 2mb chip 2mb fast. Job done, perfectly possible to do reasonable Doom games with such a machine even with AGA in 128 colours (who'd notice 128 over 256 colours, Amiga artists were awesome when allowed to do graphics for Amiga FIRST and ST second...I should know I was one that worked on a few games!).
I think my only issue is after the 1985 A1000 chipset Commodore sacked the wrong people at Los Gatos (Hi-Toro/Amiga engineers) and replaced them with their own lame dick designers making the A500 (1987...identical A/V) and A2000 (identical A/V AND CPU type/speed) and NOT marketing the A1000 because the A500 and A2000 were supposed to be finished in months NOT YEARS. In 1992, 7 years later, AGA was the bare minimum given pushing 256 colour screens around is slower than 32 colour screens on Amiga 1000s from 1985. Sound was also a big mistake, 4x 8bit channels = not enough.
Remember A1200 was competing for gamer's money with Nintendo/Sega NOT PCs costing £1000. Compare PCs all you want but £100 Sega and Nintendo 16bit consoles is what embarrassed AGA not £1000 VGA Windows machines. Before 3D cards for PCs it wasn't a problem.
Commodore destroyed themselves, they let Needles and Mical walk (who produced Lynx and 3DO chipsets...both amazing for their time) and refused to ever use Ranger chipset finished by Jay in 1987 before he left. The A1200 was a step in the right direction and all they needed to do was make a 28mhz 020 version of the A1200 motherboard and add just 1mb Fast ram to it and sell it 12-18 months later. We got the CD32 instead and they went bust. They did actually come close to the A1400 (020 28mhz, 4mb RAM, A3000 style case) but CD32 took the last of their money and flopped (not surprising when SNES games looked better and a SNES was 75% cheaper AND made by a well known brand like Nintendo).
Or....AGA was OK and better than nothing as in the A600, but could be better. Report card with a grade 'C+' for Amiga 1200 not 'A+' as was the case of A1000 or 'B' for A500.
A1400 and A1400CD machines based on A1200 motherboard and 28mhz 020 and 4mb total ram (+CD for A1400CD and NO CD32 draining money from ailing finances of Commodore in 1993/4).
A4000/030 in the bin, waste of money even marketing that overpriced crap to gamers (majority of Amiga market share in sales).
