My first impression after ~1-2h.
good:
- stress, dread, control. no idea if its properly implement for the long run, but I like the idea behind these mechanics.
- clean up of the UI
- council jobs seem slightly better designed and proper progress bars help to avoid frustration
- the new perk trees for your character. Some of the stuff existed already indirectly , but now its much more accessible and they expanded it.
- dynasty progress
- plotting + hooks/favors are slightly improved.
- having to make choices for buildings
- prestige / piety spending
- there are many (minor) changes that are hard to judge, but seem to make mostly sense. E.g. court/guests, inheritance, tech/culture, slight changes to casus belli
- I don't share the criticism of
@Vooon about text/pop up sizes. The seem fine to me. The mouse-over delay time can also be customized.
negatives:
- some of the map modes, that i liked are missing. No idea why they cut them.
- the map for wars is really bad. Am I missing something or are the fighting countries just not properly highlighted. Its even worse for wars, where you are not involved. Same goes for armies.
- I appreciate the attempt to add a proper filter for character search, but why not go all the way and allow you to exactly customize searches. I am not sure if its a deliberate choice, because exact searches would be too powerful or just clumsy programming. regardless, a bit shitty.
- combat system: It needed a major overhaul, because the details were to arcane and most of it was hard to influence. I don't know how the new system works exactly, but they missed to trick to add depth to it. The AI also seems to be really really bad. Overall my impression is, that the whole game is rather easy and but I might have been just lucky.
- Cutting content: I understand that there was flavor/extra content that would need a re-work before re-introducing it to CK3. Stuff like merch republics/nomadic governments, silk road/sahara trade route or China interactions. Still, some of the cutting seems a bit strange to say the least. Iqta + imperial governments were totally fine. Same with societies, which were one of the better and more fleshed out extra mechanics. epidemics/diseases, great works, character builder. Some of these are going to come back with little changes as DLCs and thats just scummy.
- autopause/notifications: while the menu to customize autopause + pop-ups was terrible in CK2, it still allowed me to fine tune these settings to my liking. Either I am too dumb to find it or its just cut. I missed some events (e.g. call to arms) when a lot of other stuff was already happening. Its also annoying in war, where the game just continues after battles.
I think the devs got a lot of things right, because some of the newly introduced/changed mechanics could be interesting and seem sensible. They also cut out a lot of things that were at times frustrating, like the RNG during sieges, plots or the creation of claims. I like the new interface. I am surprised about some of the UI/option/map/filter short-comings, but they could get fixed fairly easily. They missed a major chance to be much more ambitious when it combat system. Despite a lot of complaints, I am positively surprised. CK3 is certainly in a pretty solid state for a paradox game.
I always thought that CK2 late-game was boring and I usually ended my campaigns once I blobbed to a certain size. Hopefully they made it a bit more interesting or at least harder to get there.