Finally, I was waiting for you to Review Alabasta!

This is for me the arc that One Piece stopped being good and started going into the "great" category. (Yeah, I'm not as critical as you.) The themes this arc plays are so good and despite all the weak parts, the story still holds pretty well.

the location of a Nuclear Bomb (They don't call it that, but that's what it is) is absurd.

By the way, Crocodile's plan is not to find a bomb. It's to find a much stronger weapon that we were not shown in the story so far, but is capable of wiping whole islands from the map. I didn't understand it on my first watch too, but this weapon will be mentioned again in the series.

Though, I agree with you that Crocodile could have done this in less than a week. One Piece villains love to overcomplicate things.* Some of the latter villains are better though.

the clashing of Crocodile and Luffy's ideals is so well done and compelling.

Actually, that's one of the best things in One Piece, all the major villains have some contrast with Luffy that makes their fight enjoyable even for people who don't like watching fights.

Crocodile character becomes more interesting the deeper you dive into his character, the only reason he lost against Luffy is because he had breakdown. Luffy reminds him too much of his failures.

Noticed that he became less creative with his sand powers in the second half of the fight?