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It's probably important to note that this season should be considered as a reboot of sorts (~5 years since the 2nd season aired), and therefore probably was meant to cater more to an audience new to the series rather than to please any one who had watched the previous seasons.

The series so far has been just the right blend of police action and character development through its colourful cast, main and support alike.
With this final season, the series apparently attempts to focus more on action while character development takes an unusual backseat, I'd go as far as to say that it remains at a standstill ... for the entire duration of the season, as in, none of the characters go through any change from the start to the finish.
Most of the support cast which was introduced as early as season 1 was heavily cut down, cutting down by the same token their driving force in character development for the main cast and close support cast, as it used to be heavily reliant on them.

(spoilers incoming)

What is more of a shame is how they were cast aside.
Saori Saga (the highschooler looking up to Natsumi and Miyuki in S1, then joining the Bokuto precinct with everyone in S2) gets transferred elsewhere between S2 and S3 without much of an explanation, only to briefly come back for the token cliché filler beach episode.
Sena and Daimaru (Ken's parents) only briefly show up as a plot device to solve the case in the penultimate episode, with no thought spared for them otherwise, despite being the main driving force in the evolution of the relationship between Miyuki and Ken in previous seasons (same goes for Honda the former WRC mechanic from season 2 and his young daughter Megumi, they completely disappeared).
Shoji Tokairin from the mountain rescue police who becomes Natsumi's boyfriend in S2 completely vanished as if he never existed in the first place, Natsumi seemingly retroactively going back to her earlier less mature self from before meeting him and resuming her antics with the Chief and embracing her life being single.
Inspector Kinoshita, who helped Natsumi grow as a policewoman along the previous seasons no longer seems to exist.

Also the main Miyuki+Ken subplot that played a big part previously is barely touched upon as there's little to no further romantic checkpoints happening between them, the two barely interact for the duration of the season only for the subplot to be suddenly and anticlimactically concluded by the end of the penultimate episode. This particular subplot being the major thing that kept the series going also means the series is pretty much over (not to mention that I'm writing this a decade and a half after this last season aired!).

Another disappointing part is how Noriko and Aoi are permanently relegated to being comic relief and joke characters incompetent at their job, despite a couple of episodes trying to convince you otherwise, only to backtrack about it in the final episode which is very much unfit to even deserve to be a season-closing episode, it really should have been a special or an OVA instead.

(end of spoilers)

Essentially, besides action, there's less of everything and less substance, in order to make it as friendly to watch by a new audience as possible, parting with a big side of the soul of the series in the process. It's more focused on solving cases on an episodic basis than to further the relationships between characters. There still are cute moments, but I found myself cringing more than usual when faced with so many rocks left unturned.

In conclusion, I would say that it's probably completely fine to watch this season as your first Taiho Shichauzo experience as a gateway to then discover how good and soulful the previous seasons were.
However if you've been watching or marathoning the series from the very beginning, this last season will very likely leave a quite sour taste in your mouth considering the amount of amputations it went through. I wouldn't say that it ruins the series, but if you ever were planning to watch it, I think I'd advice not to watch anything past season 2. Or if you're hell-bent to watch season 3 after season 2, you probably should wait for the series to be no longer fresh in your mind so that the contrast with the last season doesn't hit you too hard and doesn't tank your enjoyment of it too much.