There's quite a bit of hate surrounding KI in general I've found. Considering, I always thought the general consensus was that it was pretty cool/decent, seems since the announcement of the XBone version, I've been reading a lot of PPL dislike the series.
I always liked it myself and I always enjoyed the combo system Rare put in place. I thought it was entertaining, especially as I'd never seen anything like it before that point.
As for Arcade KI? If you liked the SNES version you should really check out the Arcade version. It's amazing. As a person who's never had an interest in personally owning a cabinet, I've always wanted a switchable, dedicated KI/KI2 cab. Alongside a dedicated HOTD1 cab...