My main criticisms of season 2 were that Yuxiu and Ling'er don't do much and all the fighting is by random side characters we don't care about. Well, these episodes really do put the spotlight on Yuxiu and Ling'er, and also explain a lot of the behind the scenes stuff that occurred before in season 2 which involves Ling'er. And also, on second watch I do find myself caring more about these side characters once the complicated interactions are explained a bit better.
Another criticism was that that the power creep brought everyone to grandmaster level and you don't have that hand to hand combat or hand to weapon combat you had before. Well that part is still kind of true, but we do get to see some large diversity in skill levels in these episodes which makes things a bit more refreshing.
The action goes hard, and the story all comes together.
