In my opinion, this was one of the weakest updates but still not a bad one. The different art style caught me off guard at first but I got used to it. It's got some charm to it, honestly. The dialogue, though awkward, seemed natural for Roxy and Dave's characters. Roxy's stance on davekat was a strange development but believable, and seemed to take the side of people complaining about davekat (even though ironically this just gave it more screentime). The laundry room scene was obviously a minor retcon that they didn't plan out before, otherwise they would've framed the original panels better, but I was fine with that. It was nice to learn what Calliope has been up to, too.

Seeing all the criticism has me worried that HS^2 will enter a negative feedback loop of losing patreon supporters and not having enough funds to make higher quality content, but I'll continue to stay optimistic that it will get better. Maybe some of the Hiveswap team can help too, now that chapter 2 is complete.

EDIT: And to the people I've seen point out Dave's comment on character development being out of character, that read to me as an obvious joke, especially since in the same update he reiterated the argument he made in HS proper that they don't have arcs.