I have been running and playing Werewolf the Apocalypse since 1995. It is my favorite RPG.

I was very excited when Renegade Games obtained the license and started publishing WtA. I have been running a 5e (Werewolf's 5th edition, nothing to do with D&D 5e) for around 10 4+ hour sessions. And the game is just bad.

Firstly Renegade addressed some of the problematic content that existed in an edgy book published in the early 90s. This I have no issue with and in fact that was why I chose to run 5e over 2nd. It advances the story into 2023 and beyond. Werewolves are no longer fighting the coming Apocalypse, they are fully within it. Some of the tribes have changed, some are silently absent. As is the 3rd breed form, which was named after a First Nations tribe, they did not like the use of their name in this fashion, so I am okay with the form changing names, but they removed it entirely. With the removal of the "mule" breed the Garou language was removed, werewolf society was removed, and you have to be killing to remain in Crinos, or the war form.

Anyone familiar with Werewolf (or White Wolf's other titles), knows it is White Wolf's combat rpg, White Wolf even released a combat guide. So to see Renegade say that all combat should be concluded in no more than 3 turns should have been the biggest red flag, but I pressed on with the game.

Character creation was changed some too, you still assign dots as you wish, but the method to do so was tweaked, and in my opinion, made more confusing.

Freebie points, which were used to round out a character are gone, merits and flaws were made confusing to buy and use.

I spent more time trying to figure out how to run the game than I did running the game. And yes I know I can alleviate dice rolls by role playing, but somethings being left up to chance adds to the roleplay. I have never enjoyed a fully diceless game system, or rather a system that uses no rng or chance mechanic.

During this week's session I was trying to figure out how to use one of the player's background abilities and the group said can we play 2nd edition instead?

So next session everyone is going to remake their character in 2nd.

Tl;dr Werewolf 5e is a game that feels like it was made by someone who overheard someone explaining Werewolf the Apocalypse.