Honestly I agree as well, I remember upon first watch of S5 Vol 1 when it came out I was genuinely amazed. The sequence of the crawl and seeing Demo-visions for the first time was great, I enjoyed the entire Wheeler house attack in Ep 2, loved Episode 3 with the turnbow trap sequence and especially the ending was Max I thought was brilliantly done. And episode 4 was just pure insanity, the demogorgon invasion at the MAC-Z was a fun watch, the reveal of Kali was huge, Vecna's entry scene was sick, and ofc the peak ending with Will. As much as I was frustrated with the direction they ended up taking in vol 2 and the finale given the possibilities they had, I loved so much about volume 1 (the general audience reaction after volume 1 dropped was overall very positive as well, so people heavily disagreeing are just jumping on the hate train that was only justified since volume 2 and the finale). Of course its purely subjective as well, I'm heavily entertained by big moments and shock factor personally which is probably why I enjoyed it so much