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The question of what difference tense and POV make to the aesthetics, for want of a better word, of reading is an interesting one. I think one of the mistakes that we often make is that, if there isn't a character doing the narration then we think there isn't a narrator. A well known narratologist, Mieke Bal, argues that any story whatever has a narrator. Even a simple story such as, "John put his jacket on", has a narrator - the consciousness that is relating the event of John putting his jacket on in this case. But the narrator is not identical with the author: the narrator might say, "John put his unfashionable jacket on" - in which case the narrator is making a judgment about the jacket and it is possible that that judgment is not the same as my judgment. In other words, if I write "John put his unfashionable jacket on", it doesn't follow that I, the author, have this, or any, opinion, about the jacket, but it does follow that the narrator has such an opinion.
One way of thinking about it that I find useful is that, regardless of whether the narrator is part of the action or is omniscient, an author needs to give attention to the way the "character" of the narrator is developed. How does the narrator narrate, what kind of language do they use, do they narrate in long sentences with a lot of digressions or do they narrate in short sentences, is the narrator male or female - and how does that impact on the way they narrate, how old is the narrator, how reliable and impartial is the narrator, what are they not narrating but leaving out. All of these, and many other things, are decisions that an author has to make - just as they have to make them about any of the characters.
Sorry, this is a bit of a long-winded reply and I'm not sure it directly addresses your question, but I do think the narrator is probably the most important character in a story, and often the least thought about.
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