I made it 12 episodes in & I'm throwing it in the bushes.
The MC Towa is
annoying AF and never improved & the villains are so damn weak. I don't know what they were building towards with Riku and the Tree of Ages but none of the dynamics work the way they should.
Inuyasha was never great but it was good. This one doesn't even approach that.
I think I made it 8 myself. Watched when it started, dropped, came back after a year, dropped again. I don't think Rumiko was involved with the planning of this show at all, only the character design work, and it shows with how different it is from the main series.
As much as I disliked the plot armor of Naraku, he was a strong villain who was responsible for so much fukkery in the show. Very easy to hate, and through that hate you root for the characters wronged by his actions to find and defeat him. So there was never a point I felt lost on what the objective was and I grew to sympathize with their journey all thorough.
With Yashahime I felt that none of the fights carried weight, and I just couldn't invest into the characters journey's b/c as you allude to there was no convincing villain for them to work towards or go up against. It needed a Naraku and I don't care to keep watching to see if someone like that turned up. did like Moroha's spunk a lot. She has the attitude of Inuyasha, kindness of Kagome. But she wasn't the center of enough of the episodes I watched.
I also disliked how this sequel makes the original ending less meaningful. Can't even look back on it with the same joy anymore, pretty lame.