Marc Abaddon touched on some of my reservations. My reservations towards the edition run deeper than that, but I'm not really interested in discussing that topic in depth to someone who reacts with such hostility at the slightest whiff of criticism towards their edition of choice.
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There are some things in my experience it does pretty well, some have been mentioned in this thread already. But I can think of an equal or greater amount of areas where other editions surpass it. 5th edition does not really strike me as striving towards anything particularly simulationist compared to other editions if that makes sense. I also perceive a higher level of granularity in areas like character building that I feel give greater control over mechanically expressing the character you want to play to a finer degree in third edition. There's also the matter of the setting material: while probably controversial, I don't think 5e's iteration of the Realms really holds a candle to 2nd's for example.
If I gave the impression of being closed to discussion, I'm sorry for that - not my intention. I'm very much open to these things, and I've changed my position on a number of issues over the years (as anyone genuinely interested in maintaining her position as honest and with as little bias as possible must). 5e is not perfect and it definitely has its flaws and things it struggles with, or things it doesn't handle as well as it could have. I am not a zealot for the edition... I just strongly dislike when people say things about something that aren't true or accurate, as arguments against those things, and I try to be informative where possible.
Enemies are built in the same way as, and use the same rules as, player characters; I wanted to know why you felt they didn't, because if there is something I've overlooked, I'd like to hear about it. I don't view legendary actions and LR as being "monsters having different rules" - those are simply mechanics of the system and traits that some creatures get, and they generally only show up in major encounters as an overarching system for major encounters... I'm not sure if there's ever been an edition of the game where major encounters and boss creatures didn't do things that player characters couldn't, in any game... but was there anything else that I've not thought of?
The discussion between 3.5 and 5e mostly comes down to one of scaffolding versus freedom; 3.5 provides far more wealth of scaffolding to hang things on, and a lot of players find this given granularity appealing. 5e by contrast doesn't say that you can't do all of those things, but it doesn't provide the same degree of scaffolding for them, and instead puts it squarely in the DM's hands, actively encouraging players and dms to reskin and reflavour far more than previous editions. The scaffolding can help you build things, and act as a springboard for creativity to bloom, but it can also hem you in and limit you; this is the difference. Arguably, 5e probably doesn't provide quite *enough* scaffolding, and it could do more... but the amount present in 3.5 far too easily became suffocating and crippling, by contrast.
3.5 suffered from too many rules, and too much nested complexity - it was great for some things, but it created grievous issues in others; skills were too granular for your limited points, nested feat trees were a nightmare, and the capability to create a completely broken, unusable character was incredibly high. 5e is certainly a better all-round system and its longevity and popularity supports his, but it is by no means perfect or without its flaws; where 3.5 had too much complexity and too many rules, to the point of making it unapproachable for new players (a complaint I have indeed heard on more than one occasion), 5e arguably puts too much weight of creativity on the Dm's shoulders, and asks them to adapt the much thinner rule set more flexibly to any situation, without providing quite enough scaffolding to spur the creation of the bizarre and different as easily as it *could*.
