What makes a figure good to me is that it's baseline realistic, neutral in proportion, versatile, extensible, it comes with a good variety of body/facial morphs, and most of all that the head has a large enough poly count to make character sculpting possible without subdivision. It goes without saying that the mesh is symmetrical because too many tools rely on that expectation.

I've put quality time into both PE and LF and each has its strengths and weaknesses. I am of the opinion that PE edges out LF due to having more realistic expressions, better tooth sculpts (LF needs braces), a wider variety of shaping morphs, and an eyeball sculpt/rig you could do anatomical closeups on (the pupil is actual iris geometry, not a black dot on a diffuse map). That being said, LF has a smaller learning curve. takes V4 poses pretty gracefully, is faster to pose being mostly weightmap in rigging, but is more difficult to get unique faces out of without resorting to an external sculpting application (as useful as the morph brush is, it lacks some necessary selection transforms). I'd recommend LF for newer users and PE for advanced developers.