I can absolutely say that the original craftworld eldar aesthetic is extremely solid and I'm glad they kept it. What else would there be to say about it? I can't compare it to an old version and say one is better than the other because they kept the same aesthetic and just improved the execution. I hope they do more of that. Iconic designs shouldn't be left to rot so that they can come up with bigger and wackier hats that half the playerbase thinks is awful.
"Which pretty much brings us back to AOS, where designers are choosing to not take a chance and just give us underwhelming foot heroes since Kruleboyz and the dragons have released."
Having a glut of underwhelming foot heroes has nothing to do with sticking to existing aesthetics and everything to do with gw not doing anything more exciting than a token foot hero. There are dozens of existing model designs which would be extremely exciting to see an update for, and no new aesthetic shifts are required to do so either.