Wow anticlimactic after last week's chapter.
Apparently it was too much to ask for a good Lucy fight and show her growth as a main character. Natsu can do ANYTHING, but Lucy can't control 3 out of the 12 keys at the same time. Wouldn't be that much of a stretch if she was able to do that after 385 chapters and power ups.
Hiro gave her the easy way out of breaking a key, which feels kind of a cheap way to summon the strongest spirit there is. I liked the ideas of being able to summon all 12 at the same time more before you are able to summon him, as was discussed in last week's thread.
Spirit king is cool and them feels were so sad, but it felt so unnecessary. He blew one of his friends up and the other walked away. It was a simple 1 vs 1 and Lucy didn't get her time to shine.
What probably irks me the most is how this will be handled in the future, because there is no way that 1 of the 12 keys will be broken forever, it will probably be restored by 'the bond between human and spirit' or some crap.
Virgo and Loki got 1 hit KO'ed this chapter by some henchmen of the big bad. How will they stand up against enemies in the future if they can't even do a single thing with 2 strong spirits and the strongest gate of the Lion ?
Lucy should've pulled this off with 3 gates, if three spirits in a unison raid would be able to summon the spirit king to take their place I would be more understanding than what happened now. This is a cop out.