i didn't mind it! i thought the mystery was well set up and who the killer was had some great payoff, and it wasn't mercilessly crushing decent potential underfoot since it wasn't expected to fill in a highly anticipated gap, but just like. not faceplant, and it achieved that.
i also watched it as it was coming out, meaning there was about a week between episodes, and i absolutely fell for aoi's fakeout death like so many others of us did, like if you look up one certain week of dr fanart it's all grieving fans thinking aoi legitimately died. (though once they went 'SIKE gozu was the real death' and also did a dream death for kyouko kirigiri it did mean a lot of us were like '...yeah they're not going to kill kyouko, they're not killing legacy characters' lmao)