Good

I'm liking the art choices though it took some getting use too

I like the popup boxes for help. The game isn't too hard to play compared to others in this genre so I'm kind of glad for the minimal design

Rider's were nerfed and I was glad to see it. There was actually reasons to choose other classes though true strike (from rider) is still the best way to take down the big lieutenants.

Archers were useful for once. This made me happy.

Glad to have less building choices in cities

Bandits around my city felt less powerful. This was good.

Had more fun overall in this version

Less Good

My starting two companions were still one or two shotted and were heard from no more. (still way too weak). I spent a long time with Tandis as my only fighter using fireball to smite things.

Sorcerer King still isn't that aggressive at making my life miserable until too late for him. I spent a long time at 0 threat

XP was severely nerfed or am I crazy? Tandis was probably level 5-7 and I was getting to the point where I had to kill the 200-300 hp armies of the SK. I had maxed out my army slots for the Wizard sovereign. I still was no where near completing Tandis' skill tree. Maybe I shouldn't have been close but XP felt severely changed from previous versions to the point that leveling up was difficult. I was getting only 8 xp on tandis for killing those 200-300 sk doomstacks and getting 2 xp for autoresolving four darklings.

As the Wizard, it was really really really really difficult to properly equip my army with equipment. Maybe that's intentional since I wasn't the tinkerer. Enemies were not dropping equipment like I thought they were supposed to do. If I kill bandits then I should at least get from humanoids leather or chain armor. I really didn't craft anything because I was so low on resources and I didn't even bother going for enchantment because of this. 

Ship summoning and road building should be spells that we start with

Ugly (bugs)

Pretty sure this ought to be a bug. I spent most of the game at 0 threat and then I took one of the sorcerer king's city because I couldn't lay low anymore. In previous games, I would have gotten 2 threat or so. In got 5 threat. Again, this is after taking the first SK city. 

The imperial remanent faction quest flat out didn't show up on the map as an icon

Got a quest where I got a grey box still me I didn't have the average level to do it or something. I didn't write down the text last night but I'd never seen it before.