dorne was lame
but hardhome was awesome (and it happens offscreen in the books without jon snow. so the show deserves major credit for that)
the battle of the bastards was awesome
the burning of the sept was awesome
the field of fire was awesome
the long night and mad queen daenerys were awesome
so i loved it all =))
That's the thing, in the early seasons they didn't have the budget to do the huge battle scenes (remember that bit where Tyrion was about to lead the hill tribes into the Battle of the Green Fork, but they did a scene where he accidentally gets KOd and wakes up after the battle is over? GRRM later revealed that they shot that scene as they didn't have the budget to film a battle). The early seasons were the best though, when D&D had GRRM on board and were working with the brilliant source material.
In later seasons, the spectacular battles were awesome to watch, but the writing started to suffer too. The Dorne plot was like watching some cheesy 80s TV show, in fact I remember the Sand Snakes being referred to as "Fox Force Five" lol.
Which season was it where Littlefinger began to teleport around the country like he had a Tardis in order to advance the plot points as D&D wanted?
The Field of Fire had incredible visuals, but also had nonsense like a one-man handle-cranked ballista that could be reloaded in ten seconds and acted like an anti aircraft missile. The end of that episode saw Bronn tackle Jamie Lannister off his horse and into the river, fading to black as a fully armoured Jamie sank deeper and deeper, then the next one started with Bronn pulling him out of the water coughing and spluttering about two miles downstream, because plot armour.
The expedition north of the wall to get the wight was just laughable.
Tl;dr - the visual effects and huge battle sequences were increasingly used as a way to cover up just how bad the writing had become, and combined with the "let's just get this over with" attitude displayed towards the end left a bitter taste in the mouth for the majority of fans.
