Having had so many arrangers for about 30 years, always top models of various brands, I must say that it has been a real joy to benefit of the huge progress of their technology.
That kind of "mechanical" feeling for the loop repeating, I believe is gone from many years.
The problem IMHO is that we tend to expect the manufacturer made an arranger that will be READY (out of the box) to fulfil our expectations: perfect styles for the songs we like to play.
Not possible, or quite seldom.
The beauty of a modern arranger, is that it provides:
-excellent styles for almost any music we want to play;
-MANY features that allow the player to process a style to get it to fit exactly or almost exactly what we are looking for.
So, when I get a new arranger, I devote about one year (or more) to make it fit my taste and will. It's a long work, but is pleasant and very satisfactory.
Like someone mentioned, the styles are basically very rich. What I do, style by style, I try to "lower" this richness; significantly on variations 1 are 2, but also a little on var. 3 and 4. In the real songs we listen to, the accompaniment grows. And loudness and complexity should be reserved (again and always IMHO) to the pick of a song. And then, go back to Var.1 or 2, more quiet, this way boosting the contrast between different moments of a song.
One can achieve that just selecting at the right moment the different variations.
But you can get much intensive results by
adjusting a style individually for each song you want to play. For that purpose, I save the songs not in a Registration, but in a style. So I have folder, called "Songs", where I save style with its name AFTER the name of the song ("Just the way you are - 16 Beat ballad 4"). Genos will automatically list in alphabetical order, which makes very easy to find them.
Why so, and not by registrations?. Because I like that that same style (that I may use for more songs) will play different for each individual song, with modifications that one can get trough Style Creator (editing the Drum parts for specific variations, changing volume, voices, effects of individual parts per each variation. The basic features I miss in Genos for this work are the chance to edit on board the accompaniment parts, and the octave change for individual parts of the style. But is not so dramatic...
To make a long story short, I consider the style provided by Yamaha as a "menu" of chance that one can customize very intensively, with unexpected results.
Many years ago I was lucky to may take a part to a 3 days intensive course held by Korg, at their factory in Italy, for programming styles. One think they emphasized many times (with examples) was that an accompaniment basically is made by drum and bass. All the rest is additional...... But with that "all the rest" they recommended to be careful, as simple does not mean pour or bad. In this respect Genos accompaniment are so rich, that is quite easy to simplify; and the accompaniment still sounds nice (sometimes better).
I know peoples who "play" with Midi Songs, and I respect them, as anybody enjoys as he wants or can. But the miracle of an arranger, IMHO, is the possibility of tailoring what he offers you, perfectly at you taste.
A big "Ciao" from Roma