No power legato on the kick drums. How disappointing!
More seriously, having listened to walkthrough 2 now, I thought the woodwinds have a few useful articulations, the flute/picc shorts and overblown are excellent, but mostly they seem oddities, especially the ones that mix winds and brass ("edgy and quirky" indeed). (I'm going to keep my ears peeled for some of these stranger combinations to see if they start making regular appearances in film, television, and game scores.) Aside: "Wagner Tube" sounds like a water park ride. Really not hearing anything in the brass that I find compelling. Nothing bad, just seems pretty redundant with things I already have. Why they didn't do something with muted brass sections is beyond me.
I mostly like the women's choir, though it has moments where individual voices pop out. It works in the walkthrough, but might get tiresome if the same sample keeps getting hit and that one voice just refuses to blend every time. The men are good soft, but as they pass to the mf samples the voices become uneven, especially as they climb in register. The power legato for the voices, especially the men, sounds especially odd to me, beyond the issue of the voices not blending, to the legato samples not fitting well with the sustains—or something. Maybe it's just me. Perhaps it will be fine in context where you have the orchestra to distract and cover and more reverb on the sample. On the other hand, I adore the shouts, which brings the Arks one step closer to the complete Carmina Burana sound—that rather than Huppertz's score to Metropolis has always seemed to me to be the actual musical inspiration for the Arks. (The elements of the Arks that extend beyond the Carmina sound world—aside from the rock band of Ark 1 and some of the percussion—belong mostly to the post-Wagnerian world of Austrian/German music between 1900 and 1930 that inspired both Huppertz and Orff.)
I also rewatched the first walkthrough. I disliked the power legato multi—not surprising since I disliked the power legato pretty much every time I heard it whatever the instrument—but the staccatissimo multi sounded great. The ricochet multi just sounds weird, though I generally liked the articulation in the individual instruments. The strings sound very good indeed, albeit they seem to be limited. (I'll be interested to hear the reports on this when folks get their hands on it.)
Overall impressions: The strings are the strongest element of this library. That's a good addition because strings have imho been the weakest element in the other Arks. Except for the choir, the high volume fff stuff is best and would add an edgy sound that most of my existing libraries don't really have. The choir shouts, especially the men, are great. And most of the combinations just seem peculiar rather than offering an interesting new timbre (like the combinations in libraries BHCT or the Symphobia series).
I'll be most interested in seeing what people make of it once it's released. At this point I don't think I'll be buying it unless I hear things from those who do that convinces me that this will add enough value to what I have.