Yes, but they are wasting money, hence why we are getting 0-2 second battles most of the time.

I'm assuming that they're saving up the CGI budget for later in the season - or for stuff like the fight in this episode. If they keep using minimal effects for most of the series, I expect we may get a finale that's up there in CGI epicness with the Makai Senki battle against Ganon.

Nagasawa Nao told Hikasa P about the filming of episode 10 was done back in April 2012.
The production for this show was done while filming Kouga's last adventure and Jabi + Rekka's spinoff in parallel, mostly because of the actors due to their schedules.
I can imagine the budget and resource for 3 concurrent projects would be pretty tight.

From what I can remember from the first two seasons, unless it's a "big" fight, which happen mostly in the second half, the transformed are mostly real suit walking or blocking attack clunkyly and slowly and then a few second CG slash. Not that different from here, only no clunky or slow real suit action.

Clunky or now, real suits are still superior. Plus, I don't know why, but the CGI stands out more in this series than the first season.

Nice episode. And casting Kurata as the main bad guy was simply awesome. He is one of my fav Jap action actor.