I have mixed feelings regarding his "skits" Given that he really wanted to do Demo Reels, I kinda understand why he went this direction, but on the other hand, they suck so much and can ruin otherwise good reviews. The old style might have been simple, but it was a simple that worked and he seems much better at making one-off comments and minor skits like the "signs door" one, but the high budget story line skits just fall flat and makes me want to skip to the review.
It doesn't help that they add virtually nothing to the actual review, which given the fact fact that most of his audience subscribed to him for his informed criticism delivered in an amusing way, not his sketch comedy, is a problem. It's telling when his editorials, short reviews, disneycember, i.e. the things devoid of skits are more often than not the things people praise as his best work.
Given fact that he constantly defends the skits by strawmanning the complaints against them and ignoring why people actually don't like them, there also seems to be a disconnect between him and his fans. What he wants to produce and what the fans want to see seem to be two different things.
It seems to me that he simply just wants to do Demo Reel and desperately wants it to work, given that he originally quit NC to do DR only to come back once that failed, and essentially merged the two to try and salvage some of DR. However, it seems to be that a lot of his fans just want him to stick with what works and stop deviating into paths that are clearly not working.
For me personally, I still watch his editorials and short stuff, but hesitate to watch the main Nostalgia Critics anymore, especially since the one with the strawfan skit (forget which one that was though) The fact that he responded to legit criticism in such an immature way really puts a bad taste in my mouth personally. Again, I can understand why a creator might want to follow their passion project and change things up, but you got to know when something's not working and not respond to its failure as if it were the fans fault.
/rant end.