I'd very much like to see the bad critics you saw in 1985-86 about Oriental adventures. The three magazines that I had were speaking so highly of this book that this was what prompted me to buy it. They were: "Traveler, White Dwarf and (of course) Dragon (but I'll conceed that this one was not really unbiased". In Montreal the book sold so well that there was a shortage because not enough books were ordered. I remember a friend going to Ottawa then Toronto go get his hands on one copy. If the book was problematic, it was not so in our gaming community.
In fact, the bad critics I saw/read about the book got out around the end of the 2nd edition in a magazine (I don't remember the name) that was not even remotely related to RPG but had "experts" ranting about the OA and a few other RPG books.
I wonder if you might still have the issues that are saying that the book was bad and that are dated from that era. I don't have the magazines anymore but my memories of the ones that I read were unanimously praising OA. Your claim is a total surprise for me. Unless the critics were not part of the RPG community?