I'm rather baffled by how they dropped the ball so hard on this.

It seems almost obvious that the Variant was made to have high replay value, by how the bosses can change(ability wise n such), along with how Namamo's choice grants more chests. Yet, there's not any rewards that are super rare enough, nor are there glam rewards which warrant you want to return, after 'One and Done' 12 routes.

The vendor clearly has several rows of different item sections, so it would also seem they at some point were thinking of adding more rewarding items, or even weapon glams but decided not to. Especially by the extreme lack of rewards from Criterion and its savage mode, is just utterly baffling. They either clearly made a last minute call to remove stuff, or they have become so tone-deaf they actually thought the rewards that were there was plenty to last 2 months.

I really thought, since they made it into 3 different difficulties, there would be special zone gear added for it too.

The Variant bosses are fun enough to give people a slight enough variety, if there were any form of farming incentives to it, along with Nanamo's choice, yet there's none.

Don't know about others but I always thought this would need to be their answer to exploration content in scope, and that this would last far longer than Island Sanctuary in replay value, yet I enjoyed 2 weeks of Island Sanctuary, maybe even a little more. Yet I was pretty much all done, after 2 evenings in this. And had no reason to do Criterion/Savage, since it had no rewards that would have enticed me to even try it.

I could easily have seen myself enjoyed it far far longer, if it had (zone)progression gear or weapon glams, or super special rare glams inside.

While speaking of glams, the noir set is really meh. Truly, what were they thinking...