I'm going to need better shots and live footage to fully come to a conclusion, but I'm not walking away with a good first impression here. Without the fruit motif, it looks very nice, and very fitting for the period it lifts the motif from. With the fruit, the chest looks conspicuously incongruent from everything else, and it lacks the sort of elegant cohesion that Kachidoki had.
I think there certainly is merit to the notion that mid-season forms have been more aesthetically pleasing than final forms lately (bar Fourze; I struggle to tell which looks worse, whether Magnet or Cosmic). I'll see if in the show Kiwami can have the opposite effect on me than what happened with Infinity. I fell in love with the elegant Infinity design at first glance in toy scans, only to notice what is supposed to pass as "diamonds" looking only like the cheapest of plastic things, which hampered the overall look of the suit on screen.
No Sigurd or Duke in the movie suggests they might have kicked the bucket by then. I am aware it is AU, before this bit of my post is quoted. I'm just wondering whether the timing of the film coincides with Ryoma and Sid already being dead in the series. But then again, Sid being part of the football game implies that Sigurd will probably just get Kaixa'd onscreen. Minato being part of what is presumably the hero lineup is intriguing, as do the earlier summaries of her "helping" Kouta? Is this the moment when she decides to drop the whole "Professor Ryoma" fangirl thing and finally moves forward with her own long-term agenda?
Gold apple rider looks alright. I kind of imagined some kind of unbranded Kamen Rider knockoff made in China at first for some reason, but it looks okay. It does a much better job of being a knight than Baron and Duke, albeit a much more fantasised roleplaying kind of knight. The Mars/Malus name thing sounds like a great choice. The latter to signify his being bad, and the former to aptly denote him as the God of War. I don't know what I'm seeing with the silver one. Looks more aqua than silver, and that weird crown thing looks stupidly bizarre.
EDIT: I would have loved to see both Zangetsus in that lineup, with Micchy keeping Shin. =/