Reviewing for the "Chicago Tribune", Greg Kot hailed "The ArchAndroid" as "an audacious, sometimes bewildering statement", and AllMusic critic Andy Kellman called it "an extravagant 70-minute album involving more imagination, conceptual detail, and stylistic turnabouts than most gatefold prog rock epics". "The Guardian"s Michael Cragg found the "sheer musical scope" of the album "spellbinding", while Barry Walters of "Spin" noted German Expressionism and Afrofuturism as conceptual elements on an album wherein Monáe ventures "so far away from soul that she's come back around to it". Jon Pareles from "The New York Times" remarked that "Monáe gets away with most of her metamorphoses, and the sheer ambition is exhilarating even when she stretches too far". Matthew Cole from "Slant Magazine" described it as "an elaborately performed and consummately freaky cyberpunk epic ... so stylistically leftfield in terms of its sound". "The A.V. Club"s Genevieve Koski wrote that "Monáe’s inexhaustible swagger and singular style sell both the high-concept theatrics and the schizophrenic sonics". "Pitchfork"s Matthew Perpetua called the album "about as bold as mainstream music gets, marrying the world-building possibilities of the concept album to the big tent genre-mutating pop of Michael Jackson and Prince in their prime". Perpetua elaborated on Monáe's incorporation of science-fiction and Afrofuturist concepts and the album's "basic appeal", stating: