Personally, I don't have a problem with the fights this volume. There's been a decent amount and I think several were quite good.

Not quite over-the-top rule of cool where the characters jump and fly around a battle like superheroes, but this more realistic and weighted fighting is just as good. Just different.

I think, it's not that the actual fights we've seen are bad, but the 'tussles' have been.

Let me explain - those brief 5-20 second moments where you THINK the characters are going to have a proper, full-fledged fight, but instead it's a few basic exchanges, e.g. Ruby headbutting Mercury in episode 11 then the fight is practically over...

Those are what I consider tussles.

There are countless tussles throughout the series, including in Volume 1-3.

Sometimes the line between tussle and fight is blurred, other times it's obvious.

Tussles aren't as well choreographed or animated because they don't put as much effort into tussles as they do fights.

That's the problem - CRWBY can do a good fight when they want to/dedicate the necessary time and recourses.

I DO believe there's been quite a few well-animated and choreographed fights this season I've enjoyed - Yang vs. Bandits, Weiss vs. Grimm, the shorts, Albain Brothers vs. Ghira, Sun vs. Ilia, Ilia vs. Blake, Maiden vs. Maiden.

Maybe some of those fights weren't quite like earlier volumes, but they were still good.

The problem is the tussles.

Most of the tussles in the series are mediocre, some were decent like Phyrra vs. CRDN.

Volume 5 has some of the worst tussles in the entire series and there are far too many of them, especially in the last few episodes.

These 'mini-fights' are not supposed to have much effort put into them, but that's okay! I'd rather they focus on making the fights good, and the tussles don't need to be anything more than 'acceptable/passable'.

If there were less tussles and just one or two more actual fights, I'd be more satisfied with how things turned out.

Instead of RWY/JNR/Qrow/Ozpin and Hazel/Merc/Em just spending the last few episodes screwing around doing a bunch of messy tussles, they should have just had one single full-fledged fight. All those little scenes could have taken up the time of a single well-made battle.

Tussles. Tussles everywhere

EDIT:

WOW. This thread blew up while I was gone. I'll try to go through and reply where I can.

Okay guys, I watched Phyrra vs. CRDN again. Yeah it's a proper fight and a great one at that. My bad with that one. ;)