Exactly as I feared, leaving the magic school would signal the stagnation of this season. What started out as a series with a unique concept has turned into pretty standard Precure affair. With the return to the real world and complete lack of emphasis on the girls learning magic.
Instead it's focused more on yet another baby-mascot raising thing, and worse is that said mascot has already been revealed to become the third Cure. I would have preferred they stick to two Cures or have the third be someone other than the fairy baby that the girls had been raising since episode 4. It just seems wrong to me.
There were three potential candidates who were all much more interesting characters back when the magic school was around. Instead they went with the character whose only purpose is to act cute and dish out power-ups, something we've already experienced from Doki.
I've also grown really tired of the fights in this season, particularly the villains. They haven't even done anything noteworthy except two of them getting defeated (most likely temporarily) and one stealing one of the plot coupons.
I'm about sixteen episodes in so far and we don't even have a fourth general, and the girls haven't lost a fight.
I think the part that disappoints me most about this season is that it had the potential to be so interesting and different, but chose to bring them back to the standard real world setting, have them go to ordinary real world school and just go back to putting the least amount of effort in.
Long story short, what started out as a unique and refreshing take on the Precure formula, quickly turned into yet another dime-a-dozen Precure season, and I'm tired of it.