Typing on a phone is hell...
But yeah..
I agree it doesn't feel much different. Its features each coin gives which creates value.
What gen1 clones had is that most didnt rely on other currencies to make more of a gen1clone currency and a unique little wallet. (Maybe im outdated for current times...dont follow many other than NXT, BTC, and a few other '2nd-gens' now

). Along with thing like being able to hard-fork and change its algorithm if I'm not mistaken... Also wish there was the 'staking' feature many of the clones have nowadays.(unless there is and I didn't notice).
I remember all them coins like FlappyCoin, Corgi, COINYE even DOGE when it came out during MEME hell.... I think what attracted many is the need to just set their miners to a coin and start mining away either solo or through a pool without needing to use another currency to do so; or it was in some way 'new' algorithm or new PoS+PoW currency that followed Peercoin. Which is why I feel MS Currencies are like XCP in a way.
I got in late to the game and first coin I mined was Protoshares. Didn't have a BTC to my name but a partial btc after mining a few days. Missed the original NXT investors list...if only I looked on bitcointalk forums rather than protoshares...(at least BCNext was nice enough to send my money back after sending and not reading a post that wasn't in the OP

) but used what I had and bought what i could from the original investors at the time.
With MS Currencies you need some NXT to start minting anything.
Of course I'm probably wrong on many fronts haha. I'm in no way a dev or anything like that...