The new story chapter was pretty good, hands down the best First Soldier one so far! (Although to be fair, the bar was fairly low...)
I wonder why there's no Criterion dungeon this time, though. According to the discord datamine channel there were some references to a dungeon mission related to avoiding certain enemy encounters, perhaps they were trying to do something new but they couldn't get it to work in time?
I hope it's something like that, and not a sign of things to come for future chapters too. I totally get that Criterion dungeons are probably a one and done thing for most people and perhaps the time spent in adding them could be better spent elsewhere; but between that, the recent reruns and not getting free event costumes any more I'm just not seeing where is that manpower being reallocated just yet, which is even more surprising considering that their NieR game is shutting down... Hopefully there'll be a blowout once Rebirth releases :)