I saw Casino Royal and I thought it was fine, but not really something I was terribly interested in, so I didn’t watch the others. And it looks like that’s still most people’s favorite, over Skyfall. I would never argue that it was immeasurably better than Die Another Day, and it’s better than a bunch of the old ones as well.
I always jump in and talk about the series when it comes up here because I was a big fan when I was younger so most of those movies are burned into my brain and it’s easy for me to join in the conversation, but I really haven’t revisited them in a long time. It’s hard to be excited about something like Casino Royal just because it’s a Bond movie when 1) I’m not continuing to go back and rewatch even may favorites from the old series anymore and 2) regardless of the quality, it didn’t feel like a Bond movie to me, it just felt like branding. I know that people call the Craig movies “James Borne,” and I had the same reaction to the first Borne Identity movie. It hadn’t spawned a beloved series that other people continue to mention then I would barely remember ever having seen it.