Yes watching through TNG I know I benefited a fair bit because I'm sure I saw the remastered series since apparently the original Season One Crystalline Entity didn't look that good at all.
The Lore episode was probably my favorite episode of Season One of TNG (not that it's saying much) but that was wholly due to Lore doing Lore stuff, the Crystalline Entity was yes... just another monster of the week.
But when it suddenly returned like in Season Four or whatever, I slowly found it more interesting to the point I actually regretted the fact we had encountered it in Season One, because the fact Lore could communicate with it so readily was just so disappointing and clashed with what was going on here in trying to interact with it.
But yeah, remastered though it might have been, the Crystalline Entity looked pretty nice onscreen, even now (
according to Memory Alpha it was remastered in 2012 for the home media release) and yeah, it was a good episode. Not only the shift in my own opinion of how to view the Crystalline Entity and how I went from agreeing it should die to... not wanting that outcome but a lot of character development as well and other moral quandries with a Star Trek context.
But yes, the Crystalline Entity could've been even so much more.
As a kid, from the random TNG episodes I had seen... obviously Armus made an impression on me... but as I grew up it I did see it as how most adults did, just a very powerful and petty, petulant ooze. And of course... the Borg... who were awesome before steadily becoming less so. Now I'm kinda bummed I never saw the Crystalline Entity when I was a wee lass... or don't remember it. Would've been interested thinking of how I would've thought of it then and now... especially if I only saw its second appearance.