Bare in mind that these exact same MIDI notes can be fed into better sounding instruments (such as lush pads, sharp lead synths, acoustic guitars, etc...), thus improving the overall end product.
Yeah. I think a lot of people are ignoring that the output target, MIDI, is pretty limited. A skilled producer could pretty easily take these exact notes and make a track that sounds great. Sound design makes a huge difference.
And the constant velocity doesn’t help either. Almost any MIDI score could be made sounding twice as good with a little variation in velocity and slight timing errors. Speaking of which, some friends who had a video production company were picking an audio track from a commercial DVD package and there were song choice in around few dozen different styles to pick from: country, progressive rock, etc. At some point I realized that the same score that was played within different style and textures and different cadence made it sound like different songs altogehter.