When writing a review article, do I need to compare to or discuss limitations of previous review or primary articles on the topic?
Certainly, a good literature review paper (also frequently referred to as a survey paper) would be an attractive asset in anyone's academic portfolio. However, it is easier said then done. Some people on this site even replied to one of my related questions that such papers is more of a prerogative of senior, very experienced scholars. Perhaps, there is some truth to it; likely, a lot of truth. However, I do think that those opinions should not prevent people from attempting to write a good survey paper (or do anything, for that matter). The reason for that, in my opinion, is twofold:

1) Self-assessment. Some people are better at carrying out specific research, while others are better at synthesizing information, in general, and results of research studies, in particular. We often do not know our strengths (and weaknesses), unless we try both types of research.

2) Self-improvement. In my opinion, it is very important to set the bar high, so that, even if we do not achieve a desired level of success for particular goal today, we will learn much more, thus, increasing our chances for succeeding in that goal and in general tomorrow. Plus, even, if we will not be have our survey papers published in a respectable outlet any time soon (while that IMHO should be one of the goals), we will obtain a much better understanding of the whole field of study (or subject domain) as well as gain an excellent practice in academic writing, which is very valuable on its own ("practice makes perfect").

Now, I will cover briefly some specific aspects that are related to your question. Firstly, we need to understand that there are no ready-to-use, step-by-step recipes for success, in general, and for writing good survey papers, in particular. Sure, there are some guidelines and templates (which are indeed helpful), however, the quality of a survey paper is IMHO dependent on a variety of factors beyond those aids, such as a potential author's knowledge and understanding of a field of study, research stream of subject domain, their abilities for writing clearly and concisely as well as constructing a mental picture of a large body of research and synthesizing from it, often creating rather complex conceptual frameworks. There exist papers that demonstrate how to do that; in particular, for example, for the information systems discipline, see papers by Webster &amp; Watson (2002) as well as by Levy &amp; Ellis (2006). However, again, it is one thing to see how something should be done and another to do that yourself. Another issue that we need to be aware of is that approaches for writing survey papers are quite different across disciplines and/or fields of study.

Secondly, we need to understand that writing a survey paper is not the same as performing a systematic review or a meta-analysis (by the way, they are often confused as similar things, which they are not, despite some overlap). We need to understand that meta-analysis is a statistical toolset, whereas systematic review is a type of study, which might or might not use the former.

Thirdly, depending on the discipline or field of study (as well as on the author and journal/editor), a survey paper might be closer in its form to a narrative review, rather than a systematic one. While systematic reviews are often regarded as more rigorous approach to covering a topic, they are not without their shortcomings. In fact, good narrative reviews might be as valuable, if not more, to science and research community, as their systematic counterparts. See this paper for some details.



References

Levy, Y., &amp; Ellis, T. J. (2006). A systems approach to conduct an effective literature review in support of information systems research. Informing Science, 9, 181-212. Retrieved from http://www.inform.nu/Articles/Vol9/V9p181-212Levy99.pdf

Webster, J., &amp; Watson, R. T. (2002). Analyzing the past to prepare for the future: Writing a literature review. MIS Quarterly, 26(2), 13-23. Retrieved from https://web.njit.edu/~egan/Writing_A_Literature_Review.pdf