Well, Ghost picks up a bit when it starts giving more attention to Alain. I personally liked it, but as it was my first Heisei Rider series, I didn't have a lot to compare it to.

So I have a question now. Why does everybody get upset when the final form of a Rider is over-used?

Personally, it's because it's like when it shows up, all other forms become insignificant and useless. Even though the other forms are just as capable of doing the job, they completely forget about them in lieu of the Final Forms.

Because
1. Like stated above, it mitigates the importance of the other forms
2. The show is marketed with the Base Form as the trademark.....It'd be nice to be reminded of that now & then
3. There are times when the heroes will spam the Final Forms in situations where it's REALLY unnecessary, such as using it to take out low-class grunts that they already were capable of defeating in lower level forms. Kiva is one of the worst offenders of this for example. This can lead to confusion in portrayal of powerscaling.

P.S. Just throwing this out there, seeing the recent Kamen Rider Ghost OSTs being posted....MY BOI SPECTER WITH THE BEST MUSIC ON THE TRACK!!!

Yeah, this can get pretty egregious.

I am always reminded of this one part in Ghost that I still haven't gotten over even after all this time. I think it was episode 26, Alain in Grimm Damashii and Takeru in Toucon Houdini Damashii were fighting the plane Ganma. But then, for the finisher, instead of staying in the forms they already were in (Necrom in one of its upgraded forms and Ghost in an extra upgraded upgrade form) Takeru has to pull out Grateful because...Grateful. So basically, Necrom is downgraded while Takeru goes from overpowered to comically overpowered, just to take out the exact type of mooks he'd been taking care of in his base Damashii since the start of the show. It's nuts. It's overkill, and it's dumb.

I mean...Grateful's not the final form, mind you, but it's just this type of situation. It can be dumb.

It becomes really strange in a show marketing a gimmick for said gimmick to become worthless since only one special trinket is used anymore.

It's not really a problem I have, just something worth noting.

My key problem is that power scaling thing.

I think it's a not so great season, but if you enjoyed the first 20 episodes you might as well continue and see if you like what they do with the rest too. If you had no fun with the first 20 episodes though you can drop the show without remorse.

Probably because it cuts screentime of other suits. That's about it.

With Kiva, Emperor was the only suit that wasn't too heavy for the suit actor, so letting Kiva only use Emperor is somewhat justified there

It really does just come down to thinking the main form should be the main form. I actually stopped having a problem with the way Ghost did it after Mugen because there's a solid internal logic to it now. I remember after he got Boost he just sort of randomly picked that or Ore with little rhyme or reason.

I also think it makes for more interesting writing if you give other forms some kind of inherent limitations. Like just in Drive, for example, it makes logical sense for Shinnosuke to stick to Type Speed because Wild and Technic are more specialized, and Dead Heat and Formula have similar problems with prolonged use. That's pretty solid right there, but then Type Tridoron shows up and he just starts going directly to that because why wouldn't he? From that point on it always felt pretty token to me whenever Type Speed showed up, so honestly I'm sort of glad Ghost doesn't beat around the bush with its final form.

It is fucking terrible. At this point I honestly think it's even worse than Kiva.

What is this, I don't even.

A lot of my problems with it are already covered, but I also feel that a good final form is one that comes with some kind of inherent downside. There should be some kind of cost to using its power so that it doesn't get overused. That part of why I think King Form Blade is probably the best final form ever: it's incredibly powerful, but every time he uses it, Kenzaki runs the risk of being fully absorbing all of the Undead he's channeling. Giving the final form such a big drawback not only helps sell how powerful it is, but it also creates more drama and tension when the Rider is forced to use it.