Talk:Haven's Fate/@comment-28171999-20180218120426/@comment-4010415-20180218162018

After Volume 4, everyone was hoping Volume 5 would start actually getting somewhere and the main story would get more significant progression. It started out strong, but then quickly fell into several episodes of nothing but sitting around talking, which made the volume stagnate.

Combine that with the fact that the great Battle of Haven the show was trying to hype (the good guys were acting like it was gonna be this huge thing they needed to prepare for) ended up being all over the place, spread too thin, with most of the fighting happening off-screen, the on-screen fighting being incredibly lame (aside from Raven vs Cinder), and the bad guys letting the good guys stand around to talk to each other mid-battle.

Compare the Battle of Haven to the Battle of Beacon.

The Battle of Beacon had a few really good fights, but those aren't the only reason it was so much better than the Battle of Haven. Even though the Battle of Beacon took place in multiple different locations, the show still paid special attention to each location, letting us really get into the conflicts that various characters were having. They didn't have the majority of events happen off-screen and skip around every few minutes just to give us a tiny update on what's going on elsewhere. They even put together Cinder finding Amber and Adam cutting off Yang's arm in the same scene in a smooth and beautiful way that felt intense (at least, to me on first watch). We really felt like everything going on was serious and important.

Despite everything happening in a single location, the Battle of Haven failed to play out anywhere near as well as the Battle of Beacon, to the point where you can't even compare them, as the Battle of Haven is a mere ant next to it. The constant skipping around to give tiny updates was jarring, and we didn't get to get into any of the conflicts, due to the fact that it was 99% happening off-screen and the fighting consisted of characters just swinging their weapon a couple or so times and then talking or standing around before we jumped to someone else. It was a disjointed chain of events where CRWBY failed to adequately fill in the blanks.

The Battle of Beacon kicked off in episode 9 and went on halfway through episode 12.

The Battle of Haven kicked off in episode 11 and went on through most of episode 14.

They had a similar time frame to get things done smoothly, and the Battle of Haven failed. That failure combined with the fact that it came after several episodes that were almost exclusively talking and barely edging the plot forward is why people don't like Volume 5.