The sets were great! I wish I would've bought more of them (Considering I only bought Surge 1.0, Queen Beast, and Crystal Beast) as I thought some of the designs worked well. However, The story was bland and lackluster. It was the same 9 characters used (albeit is was in different combinations) facing up against crap villains with no particular motives other than "rawr I'm evil" Sure, there were some unique villains, like Core Hunter or Rotor for instance, but most of them were... ordinary, for lack of a better term. Same goes for the heroes. And, my for last point, I present some dialogue from the Ordeal Of Fire special:
Fire Lord: You still don't recognize me... Do you, Preston?
Stormer: Afraid not. You say you're from Talos V, the mining planet?
Fire Lord: One and the same.
Stormer: Stop speaking in riddles, villain.
Fire Lord: We were all simple mining and construction bots. Then, so we wouldn't have to go back to base and recharge, we were given outlets, directly in our fingers, that can tap into fuel cells anywhere. Problem is, there are no safe cards. The more power we siphon, the stronger we get. Our bodies weren't built for all this power. We overheat, curcuits are fused, corrupted. WE are corrupted.
The villains know they are evil. They are aware that they're villains. They are all severely stereotyped, it ridiculous. The villains seemingly don't have a point of view. They don't see themselves as the good guys. The worst part of it? Lego made it this way for the kids. In a paraphrased version of what the Youtuber TheMysteriousMrEnter said, "Kids are easier to entertain than adults, but in no ways are stupid" People can guess who the villain is in a certain scenario, like in Star Wars Ep. 4, when Darth Vader first appears, we know he's a villain. But he never directly states it. This is what separates any well-written character from a stereotypical one or a Mary-Sue. The see themselves as the hero of their story, not what their creator intends them to be. Every character is bland, with nothing necessarily unique other than what they look like, and can easily be set into tropes.
Rocka+Furno= Up-And-Coming Rookie
Stormer= Serious Leader
Breez= "The Chick"
Surge= Quick-speaking jokester
Bulk= Dull-witted tank
Evo= Doesn't fit into any because of his MPD.
Nex= Techhead
Stringer= Level-headed dude
All of these, except for maybe Stringer, were all apparent in the specials, and I commend my boy Farshtey for making it not seem that way in the books. But would children rather read or watch TV? The specials were the main way of communicating the story to people. And they sucked. The only thing HF has going for it is the sets, and don't get me wrong, they're cool (sans Fire Lord) but overall seems just like a generic toy line. Bionicle wasn't generic. It was unique. HF... not so much. Many of the concepts were good, but the execution failed horribly. It was wasted potential.
That said, my favorite wave was 3.0 
woaj, many long
