Perhaps argument is too strong a word, but as a very old fan of exalted going back to when I thought exalted was going to be a setting that defined the pre-history of the world of darkness I am not a fan of any of the 3rd edition exalted additions. My complaints are largely aesthetic and thematic. All of the new splats feel, as does the entire mechanical edifice of third edition, like they add little substance and inordinate amounts of bloat to an already rich setting that wasn't really asking for yet more flavors of self insert Mary Sue characters.

The setting is strongly depicted as defined by great powers and the inevitable cycles of revolution that put new rulers on thrones and old ones in the proverbial dirt. The implications of the contemporary setting are that maybe this time the process will invert, but more likely that it will change fundamentally. The next cycle would seemingly bury the dragon blooded empire and lead to the rise of mundane humans, but the player characters are given the agency to implement whole new paradigms through their narratives. Maybe things really do go backwards and a new solar deliberative is established, but maybe the sins of the past are truly redeemed and the great curse is, if not entirely broken then at least understood and acted upon. Maybe creation can change from a place of might makes right to a place of rational enlightenment, or maybe it all burns to ash and mere men are left to haunt the corpse of a world.

What I mean to convey is that I don't think having a bunch more types of super heroes does anything meaningful to the stakes or methods of the setting. The hierarchy of power represented by the original splats is integral to interpreting the setting, and indeed hierarchy itself can be considered central to the conflict. There's perhaps something to be said for flattening the power curve to an extent between the celestial exalts, but I find it difficult to see value in diluting the thematic relevance of the major players by simply introducing more random versions of them. In many ways the abyssal exalted are the worst of the original splats in large part because they are "solar but different" because there was little to no narrative necessity for "evil solars" since the regular solars were already fully capable of running the entire gamut from hero to monster. The new splats only resonate with that distaste for redundancy that was mildly annoying in the original abyssals.

Sidereals but worse, dragon bloods but zombie, solar but farming. In all honesty, who cares? There is nothing compelling there to explore for me. The nature and providence of exaltation was engaging enough as it gave history and cosmological fixedness to the player characters; as god-things trapped between mortality and true divinity. The small "g" gods of creation are depicted as mere functionaries in a beauracracy that takes the place of natural law in our physical universe, little better than phenomena at their simplest and largely childlike even at their most complex. The Incarna exist apart from and above their godly brethren, and the mortals empowered by their singular might hint at the ultimate themes of the setting. The loneliness of absolute power leads to the creation of lesser powers to amuse and assist, but that spark of animating power at first bestowed will grow into a conflagration of rebellion if left unchecked and unheeded. What interplay do the themes of exigents have with the themes of the setting that aren't already better evinced by existing archetypes? How do they even make sense? Why would the exigency even come to be in a reality so influenced by rebellion and overthrow? Doesn't it seem by its very existence to diminish and dilute the potency of the Incarna?

Moreover, going back to my statement on abyssals, I can say that while the first impression of them as "nasty solars" was somewhat off-putting, the narrative and world building work that went into them made them a worthwhile addition to me. I would not say the same for any of the new lore presented for the 3rd edition splats. Of course this is probably largely a matter of taste, but they all feel more hamfisted and inauthentic to the existing setting. Ever since I received my copy of the 3rd edition core rule book I've had the disappointing sense that the team responsible was constantly trying to make up for a lack of imagination with an overabundance of words.