This is a weird turn for a Buffy storyline to take. The Slayers are under intense fire, so I get that they're retreating. What I don't get is the decision to survive by voluntarily giving up all of their magically enhanced abilities. Yes, this makes them invisible to magical scans, but it leaves them horribly vulnerable, and leads to the Slayers suddenly picking up automatic weapons and laying land mines. It seems like a bad idea from the start, and guess what? It is.There are some really good scenes here. The return of Oz, pretty much everything with Giles and Faith... The two bonus mini-comics are also great: Harmony on Stephen Colbert and Buffy having a hilariously bad dream. The dialogue and characters seem on, too.
The art remains... problematic. It isn't terrible, it just doesn't look like any of the established characters. Oz rarely looks like Seth Green, for example, and I literally didn't know that the girl Xander kissed was Dawn for pages, because she looked nothing like Michelle Trachtenberg. Now, if the art was consistent, I could get used to that. But it very much isn't. On one page, Dawn will look vaguely like Michelle Trachtenberg, on the next she'll look like somebody else, and the next she'll look yet a third brunette. It's especially glaring when you compare the interior art to the covers, where the characters do look exactly like they're supposed to. It can really interfere with the story when you can't tell who the characters are.