Is the Te Araroa Trail a con?

the best you can do from Wanganui to the tararuas would be farmland and coast in places. as nice as the river is I wouldn't be that interested in doing it all the way to Wanganui, or instead, taken in ruapehu and head east afterwards.

could follow the beach to the Rangitata River then inland from there?

Rangitikei river. you'd have to back track if you did as the river runs north east from the coast...

Are but you could just follow it to Bulls then a 20 or so km road walk to the Manawatu gorge and the Tararuas. Or you could just cross the Rangatiki (out to Bulls as well or a risky swim) and continue down the beach to Foxton and the Manawatu. Of course the beach walk from Whanganui south would be a very uninteresting 4 day slog.

skip the gorge and head to shannon and into the tararuas.

are route through the main ranges of the NI would be a lot better tramp, but withough a lot of upgrading I dont think a lot of TAT users would handle it. the Tararua main range bit will catch a few out, i believe. A lower level east side route would have been better

I think one of the objectives was to get as much variety as they could. It would of been relatively easy just to follow the main range all the way but Im sure after the first 2 weeks hiking the Southern Alps even we would get bored.

defeats the purpose of variety with so much road bashing, farmland and foothill country

dont know that for sure. Theres not many places we could put a 3000km long trail I think the Teararoa guys tried to put to much of everything. Or is it a case that we are looking at it through too narrow a focus? Is it both?

I think it's a case of this being a tramping forum, and people here are often judging the TAT against some very different types of experiences which they already prefer, then declaring that all of the TAT should be like those specific experiences or otherwise it's clearly boring. Ask people who find the TAT, and research it, and still decide to walk it, and appreciate it for what it is, and they usually have great things to say about it, not including that German guy. Otherwise they'd have pulled out long before and not bothered. Not necessarily great things to say for back-country-tramping centric reasons along the entire distance, but they often weren't in it for exactly those experiences either.