You summed up my feelings as well.
There's a character named Onslaught, but, I know there is no chance we'll see the Combaticons let alone Bruticus.
The one character that actually did seem true to his namesake is the character that didn't make it out of the 1st movie alive: Jazz.
Bumblebee is sorta like the usual evolution of Bumblebee, but without the ability to talk he loses some of his personality and ability to carry any scenes since you can't do much in the way of seriousness with stitched together audio files.
otherwise, the Decepticons are mostly blank slates or generic eeeeevil. Starscream barely got to be his traitorous, backstabbing, Starscreamy best. And the autobots get sorta jokey non-personalities or are made of cardboard. Except for bloodthirsty Optimus, which is so, so, sooooo very wrong that it's almost insulting.
I guess Cullen doesn't care since it's getting him
paid, but after hearing interviews where he talks about going to cons and having stories from fans who talk about what Optimus meant to them as kids or helped them get through tough times or figure out their lives or be a sort of surrogate parental figure or whatever, and now he voices a version that's defining moments after the 1st movie are shouting "give me your face" as he kills a con in the 2nd movie, and who goes on a near murderous rampage in the 4th, shouting "I'll kill them, I'll kill all of them!" about humans because of Ratchet's death (yes, spoilers, I know. I don't care. if I save you from seeing Age of Extinction because of this, I'm happy). It's just so contrary to the spirit of the character in basically every other continuity in TF history.
In the other thread I've seen people defend the movies by saying that complainers are just rabit G1 fanboys who want the Bayformers to be just like G1. But that's not the case. I love G1, the Marvel comics, Beast Wars, Prime, the IDW comics, and all the different continuities (except some of the screwier Japanese ones that are, like, extra Japanese). There are threads between them in terms of how the characters act that usually hold true. Except in the movies which disregard them as they see fit.