Last week's preview gave me false hope.
Thoughts:
Reaction shots and face shots galore. The sad thing is I know this is going to happen a lot this war.
First half covered the rest of 552. The anime is making me hate Buggy more and more. Stupid stalling. And Impel Down proved that Buggy shenanigans is used a lot among the writers to stall too.
Second half was a lot better, but even that wasn't great.
Squad's intro was pretty bad. Didn't like how his tongue was out the entire talking scene.
I wasn't that bothered with the Mihawk stuff until Vista came out of nowhere and started making comments about him. Sure Vista could make those comments but it's weird that he's supposedly thinking about him while in the middle of fighting mooks.
On a positive note, the second half from Aokiji stopping freezing the water to the intro of the Vice Admirals was handled well.
I liked how the Commanders and the Vice Admirals were introduced and the action scenes were pretty nice despite being nothing special.
And I really liked how once the battle started the background regardless of BGM or conversations had noise of cannons firing and swords clashing. The background noise of the war going on was a nice touch.