I've reallyonly seen Borneo all the way through, then reasonably sized chunks of Marquesas, HVV and One World. One World was the first season I ever tried to watch live and I watched enough to know I didn't like it.

The others I enjoyed though! Marquesas might be a bit weaker but the parts I saw (in the middle) were interesting and enjoyable.

I'm trying to decide the next season I want to try watching. I'm more or less spoiled on boot order and probably the twists of each season, but not really how it all fell together.

Borneo that low is criminal

I dunno, I didn't watch any episode of survivor at all until after HVV had already aired, watched a few episodes of HVV and enjoyed it, but Borneo I enjoyed enough to watch from start to finish. I liked the editting of it a lot more. It was uglier and most people were not master strategists but watching them try to figure things out was exciting. It felt like the edittors didn't know what to really do with the show yet, so they ended up creating this very uniquely strange narrative.

I tend to like the stories and characters more than the actual strategy when it comes to watching, though, and I'm a sucker for the look of old 90s/early 2000s shows, so that might explain why I enjoyed it so much.

Yeah I don't really think you HAVE to like it just because its the first or a classic. I just personally enjoyed it a lot. I can understand why uglier set, slower plot, lesser strategy would be boring for some people though.

I will admit the survival focus in the first half had a tendency to get a little sidetracky, but I think the balance was pretty spot on post-merge.