A haphazard assemblage of my D&D likes and dislikes throughout editions.

This is inspired by, if not probably the most direct response to, Catty Big's inquiry regarding a 5th edition review.  It's also heavily rambling, so hold on to your hats.

My tastes in D&D and it's ilk are pretty eclectic.  As with music I rarely like all of one thing, but tend to find certain things I really like in most products.  Below are general impressions of several editions and related products.  Keep in mind these are all subjective feelings and not deep analyses.  Your mileage may vary.

Caveat:  Sometimes I like to build for lots of damage or one thing or another. But usually I'm not too fussy about balance, as long as I feel my character's abilities haves something interesting to contribute both inside and outside of combat.

Swords & Wizardry (0th edition retroclone)

Advantages:  Small and pretty straightforward.  Pared down and easy to tinker with.

Disadvantages:  Some bits still feel a bit cobbled together and arbitrary.  Mechanics not all the most unified, but not the worst in this regard.  Not really geared for "balance" between characters, but arguably the issue of balance doesn't seem a major complaint during play.

AD&D 2ed

Where I got my start.  Always have nostalgia for this.

Advantages: Just love the flavor of the thing, so many neat options and interestingly fleshed out settings.

Disadvantages: Pretty Byzantine as to how stats effect rolls.  Lots of special limitations on classes and races.  Many different types of dice mechanics rolled depending on situation.  Roll high good in some cases, roll low good in others.  Save categories seem random.  Skills tough to master and chance of success abysmal, no unified difficulties, etc.

D&D 3.x

Felt like a breath of fresh air when it first came out.

Advantages: Much more standardized and unified mechanics. Things like multi-classing made sense. More flexible about races, classes, etc.  Saves just intuitively made sense to me.  Customization with Feats was possible.

Disadvantages: Many nit picky feats that don't do much but allow for better feats further along. Nit picky +/- modifiers all over the place for this and that. Exhaustive rules could mean a lot of looking up.  The rate of increase in bonuses per level for various things could make it easy to get left behind in something you didn't max out completely. Linear fighter, quadratic wizard power issues (in my experience both bad for fighters at high levels and bad for wizards at low levels. Also in my experience Sorcerer really rocked more than Wizards if you weren't going to bother cranking out scrolls all the time.). This was also the heyday of build optimization.

D&D 4E

Played for about a year now, and see why some love it, but not really my bag.

Advantages: Possibly the most balanced edition.  Possibly the most mechanically unified edition.  Probably the best edition if you're in to grid-based tactical play.  3E had "incantations" as an add-on, but 4E added non-combat rituals as a definite thing anyone could do.
Reskinning classes, abilities and monsters is trivially easy, as very little flavor is actually tied to the these things. In fact each class strikes me as little more than a vaguely themed collection of mechanics with particular combat focus.

Disadvantages: Not so interesting if you think grid-based tactical play is kind of dull.  Combats can take a long time (hit points are increased from previous editions) unless you're really great at the rules or vastly better than your opponent.  Most combats didn't feel like much of a threat if they were balanced.  It's like they wanted every battle to feel epic, but often every battle seems much like just going through the motions.
It's taken some of us most of a year to really figure out how to optimally use our character abilities tactically.  When I DMed, I felt like I was trying to juggle a new set of vaguely similar, but subtly different monster powers in my head every time I created a new encounter.
Character abilities seem very largely oriented to combat, utility powers exist but often seem irrelevant or more of a hassle to use.
As a personal gripe:  I'd heard that this edition was so balanced that rolling up an ineffective character was nearly impossible.  Then I rolled up an average dwarf fighter and found myself stumbling around widely spread battlefields only occasionally nickling and diming oppnents to little effect while my comrades laid into them with various ranged or heavy damage attacks.  As a fighter was damn hard to get hurt badly, but didn't feel very effective.
The need for increasingly powerful weapons is baked into the system. You're literally supposed to petition the DM for equipment you want the next monster to "drop".
To be vague and unhelpful: Many things about the system (classes, magic items, general mechanics) seemed not very evocative and rather "samey", from my perspective.

D&D 5E

I've played four different characters in this system under DMs with very different styles (one very by-the-book, one very homebrew & random tables).  Both were great, though neither game has gotten above level 6 or so.  Often feels like a lighter, more flexible version of 3rd Ed.

Advantages: Powers and talents feel more unique to me again, less cookie cutter, but not in the haphazard design manner of AD&D and earlier editions.
For the most part Feats feel pretty useful and distinct to me.  This plus backgrounds give some nice ways to customize a character.  Feats include the ability for anyone to pick up rituals or cantrip use.
Classes are reasonably evocative, but also pretty easy to re-skin if you prefer.  I feel like the differences in classes are more than skin deep in several cases.
Combat against superior foes may be difficult and deadly, but at the same time seems more possible due to the shallower power curves. Even without incredible weapons and abilities, you still have a modest chance to at least hit opponents.
Variety of powers made me feel that my characters always had something interesting to contribute both inside and out of combat.
Like the idea of cantrips you can use for free at any time.

Disadvantages: There can be a lot of specific talents to keep track of.
There is somewhat of a shortage of non-magical classes (e.g. I like the Barbarian, but even this class is magical in a sense).
Character creation can feel pretty involved given the number of different choices, though they do try to unload some choices to other low levels so it's not all at first.
The article was right that certain saves won't see a lot of use (but on the other hand for other skill and combat related checks each of the attributes is very useful).
Flavorwise, and this is just me, I sometimes feel like the many direct-damage cantrips you can spam all the time make magic combat for spellcasters kind of vanilla.  Or make it like super-powers.  Which can be fine for some settings, but I kind of like the idea of cost-free powers being a bit more subtle.