Happy New Year from me as well! Great post, James! I agree to all points you listed.
I'd like to make some additions:
to 2) Camera:
One gets a bit seasick from the camera tilting (do you say so?) at the level borders. I don't see any use for that since levels are designed to rotate camera 360° to see everything.
By the way: Would it be possible to disable camera-adjustment on the y-axis to experience the game-world in a new (third-person) perspective?
to 3) UI and reaction:
In original version of D:OS it was already possible to switch between characters and issue new commands while another character was executing an action; this should be possible in EE, too. In general, some acceleration of reaction and executing, as James mentioned, would be very good to improve the flow.
An option to disable 'questmarkers' (as already discussed in some threads) would be appreciated by many ('classical' rpg-)players.
I also wonder why some UI-elements have been changed for PC-version. The player-characters, for example, are now represented by huge coulored dots on the maps. It may be necessary for greater distances to the monitor, but under the aspect of rpg-design (even in so called 'modern' times) it doesn't appear to me to be the best solution. It's a little bit to 'fat', 'abstract(ing)' and 'eyecatching'; it reminds of being an functional and somehow 'fancy' UI-Element, I mean: the best UI-Elements are those you see but don't recognize ;-) - Maybe this is a case for an UI-Mod from someone who has the right program to edit and save swf-files (probably most players are fine with the new design). Until then, it's possible to copy the 'minimap'-file from D:OS to the Data - Public - Game - GUI folder of EE (i. e. unpaking Game.pak of D:OS with Norbytes Pak-Extractor, creating the mentioned folder and copying the file into it). It brings the old green and red unpretentious dots back to the minimap.
The same 'problem' is the new marker for where your character walks to. Rotating circles seem to be a console-like thing (for saving there found another rotating circle into EE) which is fine as long as you like it. For me it feels like my eyes fighting against aesthetic windmills over and over again. I loved D:OS for its roleplay-friendly 'silence'. Now there are voices (battle, looting, dialogs, automated dialogs), huge moving dots and rotating circles ALL the time. It's a question of what type of player you are. For me EE got a bit too full of visual und audio-effects, obviously to open for a new audience, partly influencing what was great and irreplaceable in D:OS in a worse way (thinking of some really outstanding and lovely voice actings like cheese vendor, Esmeralda and her legionnaire Septimus, the Bellegarette, the Bard of the Dead King, the Jumping Chest and some more). And these rotating-circles irrationally became an incorporation of this different (maybe 'console'-orientated) spirit for me, even there where changes were just functional changes for technical playability with consoles or necessary for story-improvements. There are some other changes which, rationally, proof this change of spirit or spirit of change (which does not or not under all aspects mean 'worse' or 'better', just different), which leads
to 6) E. g., there are new powerful and effectful skills (which I like) and (what I really don't like) changes to the relations of damage - health - resistances and the possibilities of crowd-control that make the game, as James and many others in several threads stated, way too easy (even) on tactician-mode (to remember: tactician-mode was designed for hard challenges, gently forcing the player to get deep into the game-mechanics and avoid any mistakes). But rebalancing the game is probably another (and the most difficult) issue that should be solved by the modding community (as it already happens) to avoid complaints about changes to the changes of EE and change the game so often that it loses it's identity. It's fine as it is and should not be overhauled too heavily again - but it should be remembered and regarded in the development process of D:OS 2 (what is the case, I'm sure).
to 4) Graphics:
I recognized this shadow-issue, too. But as far as I remember, it has been there even before the patch. It can be easily seen how the shadow quality changes if you zoom in and out. Clouds have this problem as well.
Some additional issues left:
7) Dialog Box:
There is still a problem with scrolling down the dialog options if there are too many to be completely displayed (e. g. Mendius). You have to drag the right arrow down and can't scroll with mouse-wheel; and it always jumps back. I'm not sure, but I've seen some other 'jumps' in the dialog box in some cases.
8) Arrow-/Spell-Targeting:
There are still targeting issues if there is a difference of height between source and target.
9) Sound:
Not a bug, but the sound-effect for dropping, picking up and equipping weapons and armor is a quite bad one. Why has the previous sound been replaced in a recent patch?
10) Animations and effects of actions:
There are still some strange animations during combat; in cases of getting stunned during attack for example (think of the shadow spiders in front of the witch cabin). The effect of the attack is successful regardless of the stunned state applied before attack animation ends.
11) The most important thing:
Still a fantastic rpg!
