What a disappointment!
What happened here? Was it covid? The new director? (iirc they changed this time?)

There are still glimpses of the old series - some character moments for both the main trio and the supporting cast. The goons and side characters are unusually well developed, which is what this show does. But they still mostly get killed off. :/
The two biggest problems for me are the story and the visuals.
This series of Candle in the Tomb usually has a pretty tight, well thought out structure. This time it felt like things just sort of happened, never really explained or returned to, plotlines just dropped. This is more like every other tomb robber show, ngl I was thinking a lot of the various daomu series - their stories are equally badly told.
What was the deal with the wolves? I think they were there just so the Tibetan dude's arc could be wrapped up, but it all just fizzled out. Where did the giant monitor lizards come from? We never learn.
For the first time in this series I was seriously disappointed with the visuals - not only does the CGI look abysmal and is all over the place, the creative and tight cinematography is GONE. The Wrath of Time season starts with an awesome dynamic shot, or remember that crazy brawl in Lost Caverns, with the camera flying around and looping up and down?
We get none of this.
The colours are bland and dark, everything looks fake and boring. The Yunnan adventure gave us glorious monsters in rubber suits, here we just get ugly and badly animated CG animals.
And the actors...they don't seem to wanna be there. Did they get covid? Are they just tired of the show? Pan Yueming looks bloated and tired, like he'd break a hip if he tried to do any action.
And they don't (do any fancy stuff), the action's just confused and badly edited.
I'm honestly kind of dreading the next season, if it's more of this or worse.