I haven't seen the Japanese versions of Energon or Armada, so I can't help there. But I did watch all of Galaxy Force and nearly all of Cybertron. Galaxy Force is far better I think. It felt much less slapstick as it didn't just throw in extra cheesy jokes during dead spots of stock animation, and without trying to tie into the other shows it was free to really do its own thing. Plus the whole Starscream arc was really well done, it finally created a nice third faction of sorts.

 

Galaxy Force FTW.

 

Primus! Never saw this much fan hate for Transformers series. A-E-C had some bad eps, but there were good times too. I like RID better by far, but I still have good memories of AEC. Relax and just take each series for what it is. None of them were trying to win an award, sooo. . .

 

Only ever watched a couple of episodes of Armada and Energon, and can't say I was at all impressed with either.

I made more of an effort to try and watch Cybertron, but once I'd got to the never-ending round of races on whatever planet that was, I just thought "Sod this".

Never thought that much of RiD either.

I had much more fun watching the Japanese G1 series, and of course, Animated was brilliant.

I just prefer to pretend that the Unicron trilogy never happened.

 

Galaxy Force & Superlink FTW.

I prefer the Japanese shows far more than the american version, simply down the fact the american dub is beyond awful and takes away from it all.

 

Energon always stood out in my mind for being one of the rare Transformers shows (or shows of any kind, for that matter) to have characters change into LESS interesting versions. (or more accurately, if a character is worth watching, something will happen to him/her/it)

Starscream: Arguably the most interesting & conflicted character of Armada turned into a boring loyal minion out of the gate.
Demolishor: Shaping up to be next Armada Starscream - dies and is resurrected as gorilla-thug.
Inferno: Goes from boring to getting his own spotlight, comes back as Grapple, and back to boring.
Shockblast: Somewhere between scheming and insane - a pretty neat character. Better kill him off and replace him with his brother Sixshot, AKA "Diet Shockblast".

 

Really you're not missing much by skipping A/E/C. The Unicron Battles arc of Armada was ok but definitly not as good as some of its fans make it out to be. Energon is just terrible, animation, dubbing, characters. Energon even managed to ruin some of the interesting things from Armada like (SPOILER) Starscream's death. I didn't care for Cybertron at all, TERRIBLE pacing I think they spend like 13 whole episodes on the goddamn Speed planet. I also didn't like most of the designs (except for Soundwave's) though the animation was much better than Energon's, oh and the goddamn accents all the characters had were SO annoying. Overall the Unicron Trilogy is just a franchise that obviously was more about selling toys than telling good fiction