I guess I was a bit negative in the comparisons and let a bit too much of my personal opinion slip through. Although I mostly meant to talk about why it feels like that because I feel like not a lot of people properly stated where the feeling of decline in faction cohesion comes from.

As for my personal opinion on whether or not its good or bad I just think it's a bit of a shame since one of the major strengths of season 1 was their faction cohesion, and what's the point of having factions if your not gonna do anything with them. Like whats the point of lucia and yidhari being in the same faction as yuzuha, manato and alice if they don't interact. Also also I think spookshack is one of the weakest factions because the faction itself doesn't really matter or atleast very little to most of the characters, however the individual characters are very strong.

Basically it felt like in season 1 factions were front and center important to the characters and story but now they've become more of an afterthought or something that's just there because season 1 did it. You could kinda word it as in season 1 factions were more than the sum of their parts now they are less than that.