The closing stages were exciting, there can be no doubting that. And the run-in is much more attractive than the old one, actually using the best scenery of Donostia as well.
It's just that it's really made a mess of what the race was. They may as well give up on Jaizkibel entirely and put all the final set of climbs in that area to the West of Donostia to try and chain a few together and not make it a single climb race. The change is more or less exactly as per Lombardia and has had a similar effect on the racing, only at least this time it wasn't all over with a single attack on the climb. It was a race all about the last 10km and no more.