Flamed tops or not is of personal taste and in the overal picture does not matter.
It adds nothing to the quality, playability, overal fit and finish, .....
On the other hand those prices of 299 to 399 are more telling than anything else.
At those price these are not basics anymore and there getting to the midrange prices of non big brand guitars.
So unless these are pretty much flawless out of the box these are overpriced bling.
I have a revelation and a vintage(brand) that are in those price ranges, and they where almost flawless out of the box.
Both needed a minimal fret job, out of the box the frets where 95% level.
The remaining 5% did nothing to the playability.
Contrasting to that was the disastrous fret job on my FLT90, given is was a B stock.
But with a fret job like this it was a deco.
And yes i could have returned it, but it should have been sold as B stock in the first place.
After al the work i did to it, it now plays wonderfully.
Luckily i can do this my self because otherwise this kind of job would cost €150-200, and brings it the midrange price range!!
Quality control and equal finish is whats gone make this work.
All this hyping is useless if they can't do beter than of last.