And here's Japanese opinion on Heisei shows
http://ukiyaseed.weebly.com/ukiyase...rank-their-favorite-heisei-kamen-rider-series A bit surprising in places.
As for me, I always was a Phase 1 guy. It really appealed to me when I started watching this franchise (which was during Kiva), and while I'm way more critical towards many of series from that time right now, I will still take most of them over the bulk of Phase 2.
It took me a while to warm up to W, Fourze and Wizard (and frankly only W is what I call a 100% solid series during Phase 2 first half), and I still can't get over how disappointingly dull and boring OOO and Drive were. Gaim is good, but it kinda shoots itself in the foot during second half. Ex-Aid and Build are the ones that both in their own way came closest to being perfect Kamen Rider series for me, but still suffered from big issues which I just can not overlook. I just think Phase 2 in general suffers from being too same-y and gimmicky. Almost every series has to be a light-hearted wacky comedy, full of painfully unfunny jokes and tension breakers. I don't hate Den-O itself (making a full-on comedic series at the time was a welcome change), but I abosolutely hate what it did to the franchise. If not for Gaim, I think we still would be doing "Den-O + W" formula yearly.
I don't know, I just feel like Phase 1 was more experimental in what it could accomplish with the franchise. There are still no shows quite like Kuuga or Agito, Ryuki was a far cry from either of them, and 555 in turn was equally different from Ryuki. Even less inspired series like Kiva still had things that set them apart from other ones. Kabuto is the only Phase 1 series I could think of that didn't really tried to do... well, anything substantial.
Phase 2 in comparison feels limited and "controlled" by Toei's desperate desire to turn this franchise into "cool comedy anime". Fourze, Drive and first arc of Ex-Aid are probably the ones that showcase how bad it looks the most.
We had a connected universe with the Phase 2 Riders, much like the MCU
We didn't though. Shirakura himself said that all these crossover moves are non-canon and only TV matters (of course, Drive's Taisen is actually in-canon with TV Series, making both it and Kamen Rider 4 (including Takumi's death) canon, but he clearly doesn't care about insignificant things like these).
And even if they were canon, I'd disagree about them being a good thing. I did a rewatch of all Heisei movies last year and it's clear how little effort went into making these crossovers. One movie Kamen Riders and Super Sentai teams exist in the same universe, next they are from different ones. The whole point of any canon is consistency. Taisens are just Toei's excuse to throw everything at the wall in hope that at least something sticks. So we get hot garbage like GP3 Taisen, which tried to replace V3 with Gary Stue as "the real Kamen Rider Sango" down to the scenes where he effortlessly beats up V3 and Riderman, because isn't he the coolest and strongest Kamen Rider ever? Yeah, no. Screw this ****.
It all started with Decade and coutntinued throughout the entire Phase 2. Crossovers only started to get good during Ghost/Ex-Aid (and they still had at least one big stinker each), because at that point Toei producers must have caught on that no one cares about endless new cool OP characters and pointless Rider Wars. All people want from these dumb crossovers are cool character interactions and Riders doing **** together. So we got a few decent team-ups (with Heisei Final probably being the best one so far). Unfortunely then Zi-O happened and It feels like we back in early Taisen days again. And since none of these Taisens are canon now, what's the bloody point?