As I've said, we don't know the full capabilities of the Unicorn era MSes yet to make a decision. They could easily be more powerful than late UC, or the other way round.

Late UC mechas are horrendously overpowered when compared to their small size. The VSBRs of F91 cuts through almost everything, while V2 has beam wings which disable units which flies through the Minovsky particle field. Not forgetting that such a small unit like V2 can generate enough output to levitate the mecha as well as power the Assault-Buster pack + beam shields + VSBR (unused in anime though). And if that's not crazy enough, the Zanneck's particle cannon scorches Earth like the Ion Cannon from C&C.

0083... well apart from the Dendrobium/Nuel Ziel which is a one-man-army, the only indication that the mecha surpasses early Zeta units is their spec sheet. In fact, the MKII and Hyaku Shiki are underpowered machines considering the fact that EF had so much technology on their side in 0083. GP01 is just a normal Gundam with higher output, in fact the Alex should be a better machine as it has slightly higher acceleration and maneuverability. GP02... it's pretty useless without the nuke despite the amazing generator output.

The point is, we can only speculate about Unicorn era suits.
My speculation is that they will be (and should) slightly more powerful than CCA units yet not quite devastating as late UC suits.
Grunts aside, the Kshatriya is pretty much a Queen Mantha + Quebeley hybrid so it should be a formidable foe, Unicorn's basic mode is quite mediocre and its Destroy mode's capabilities are still less well known. Sinanju? We have no idea about its potential... It could pretty much be like the Sazabi, i.e. commander suit with nothing much to show off except higher output thrusters and weapons.

I won't be surprised if the Sinanju opens up the armour and bling-blings its psychoframe. After all it is one of the prototype suits which preceded the Unicorn.

One thing worth mentioning is that the tech advancement from the very beginning i.e. 0079 onwards is absolutely fast. The old suits like RX78 and even Zakus only have 1/2 or even 1/4 outputs of the later suits of Z, ZZ and CCA while the weight of the mechas are not that much different.

The storyline is still stagnant. What was the initial aim of the CB? Stop all wars with gundam intervention. 25 episodes is reaching its end and there's still no indication that their plan is working. Yes, the 3 factions might have attempted to unite themselves to fight CB, but at the end of the day they are still fighting , i.e. having war. This means that the CB's aim is nowhere near accomplished. Well there are still another 25 episodes to go in season 2 so they have plenty of time to rectify it, yet at the way things are developing, their mission seems lightyears away.

If anything, the 3 factions were evenly strong before this and hence balance each other. There was relatively "peace" amidst the power struggles. CB is supposed to "unite" the 3 factions by forcing them to work together, but at the moment all they did was to create never-ending wars. The appearance of the trinity trio was dumbfounding, are they on Setsuna and co's side? Or are they an enemy? And now two of them are dead which means they'll be pretty much useless (like Heine).

Again, some might not like the comparison of 00 to previous Gundam series be it AU or UC, but I have to use GW as a comparison here since their concepts are pretty similar. By episode 22 of GW we already know a lot about OZ's and Romfeller's political stand as well as the Colonies status amongst the entire chaos. We also saw how the entire world situation changes as OZ went up to space and gained the upper hand by turning the colonies against the gundams. Classic move, Lady Une.

I'll leave UC out of this just in case anyone shouts UC-fanboyism without even thinking.

Like what redeye said, there are a lot of redundancy in the plot and can be left behind. Most importantly, the concept is not well utilised

I won't say too much about character development here since it's not exactly the selling point of 00... I'll compromise for that. The truth is, almost everybody apart from Setsuna has near-zero background info and they are quite one-dimensional. And despite having a prominent background Setsuna's development has been relatively static.
"blindly involved in action" = OMFG EXIA PWNS !!! EXIA IS TEH WIN!!

"Criticising to no end" however is a harsh term. If something deserves criticism, there's absolutely every reason to do so. If you think I'm one who criticises 00 blindly then you are wrong. I love to review gundam series, and if you have followed the old threads you would have seen my reviews for the ones I've watched - Zeta movies, 0080, 0083, 08th MST, CCA, GW, GX, and even the novels. I criticise parts which I think it could be improved on, as well as hail the areas that are well developed. What's wrong with that?

OK, fair enough, there is a storyline but as mentioned above it's not well elaborated. We still don't know the REAL motive of CB (which I don't think it's as simple as stopping wars), and most importantly what's the role of the Trinity dudes (except selling models)?

00 could use more character development like the way you put it, and I would also like to know more about Graham and Patrick. At the moment they are merely soldiers who are obsessed with beating gundams... again, one dimensional, not unlike Jerid.

As for GS, the whole concept of Naturals vs Coordinators is interesting... If you can look away from the blatant similarities to 0079 in the early 1/3 of GS, it's actually quite well done. It only spiralled downhill when Kira became god after obtaining Freedom; and started to think that he is God and capable of stopping all wars without killing.

Again, I must reiterate (so that fanboys doesn't swamp me with replies) I'm not b*tching 00 for the sake of b*tching, I'm merely pointing out areas that fall short of expectations and should be addressed in season 2. Most importantly this serves as a reminder that our beloved gundam animes can easily turn from potential greatness into utter crap like how GSD did. We wouldn't want that to happen to 00, would we?