Production-wise, I thought Bakuen was a fine anime on its own. The animation felt limited in places but the art style and character drawings were very nice, I would say that in this aspect, Bakuen was superior to the original. Also, the OP and ED don’t get enough love - bringing back Machico to do the OP was a great callback.

However, it’s a strange entry in the Konosuba franchise as a whole, because Bakuen is a much different type of show.

I think a lot of anime-only fans, myself included, probably expected a straight comedy, but Bakuen was instead a very laid back slice of life. The change of tempo between the laugh-a-minute comedy of original Konosuba versus the slower Bakuen probably caused a bit of expectation shock for a lot of watchers.

I found myself not liking Megumin’s characterization very much in this series. She has always had that sort of playful mean streak that is generally associated with chuuni characters (peep my pfp) but I thought that the writing leaned too hard on that aspect of her personality and didn’t provide enough other opportunities for the viewer to grow more attached to her. Additionally, I have mentioned this before on other forums and started to see some other people recognize this fact as well: one of the key appeals of Konosuba is the dynamic between Kazuma and Aqua; in Bakuen, we have Megumin and Yunyun and their interactions are cute, but they are not nearly as interesting or comical as those of the former duo. As awesome as Megumin is, I do think that this show exposed her too much. To use a sports analogy, it was like putting your second string player in the starting lineup.

edit: at least on desktop, kbin squishes that gif into an ugly mess, but the full resolution is there if you click on it