If you "abused" the item creation then yes it was. If you didnt , they were about even. Although GOTO's place with only two characters (took a wrong turn) and neither of them having destroy droid was quite a challenge.
Purely random loot yes. A game does need to provide a minimal set of "tools" for you to accomplish your task. However a good mix of random loot can also make replaying more interesting as you cant simply predict what will drop at any time.
Random loot does tend to annoy people who always want to have the best stuff though.