ASIs are all +2/+1 or three +1s and (kind of but not really) tied to backgrounds. This is...okay. Personally I'd prefer that at least some ASIs were racial, but WotC was always going to change to this. Having them (kind of) tied to backgrounds at least makes them more thematic than just "take a +2/+1, whatever man."
Different Races have different lifespans; nice! It's not all "typically live as long as humans."
Humans, Ardlings, and Tieflings are the only races that can choose to be either Medium or Small, which is nice I suppose but kind of odd. Assuming that this is meant for dwarfism...do elves/dwarves/orcs not have dwarfism??
Dwarves have a specific use for stonecunning, rather than the more vague "History checks related to stone." One the one hand, great! On the other hand, tremorsense doesn't help with finding secret [stone] doors which is kind of sad.
Elves have a reasonable and interesting description that explains the various subraces. Lore is good.
Humans...I'm not sure. Inspiration and Skillful are meh, and you can only choose from a much-restricted set of level 1 feats. 2 weak feats where all other classes get 1 seems much worse than 1 free feat where other classes get zero. But on the other hand, you get that extra +1 ASI that Variant Humans don't get.
Feats and Mechanics
PREREQUISITES FOR FEATS HELL YEAH!!! Correspondingly, feats are gated by character level!!! This will be good for balance and improve feelings of character progression. No more getting GWM and/or Sentinel at level 1 for So Much Power.
1st level feats babyyyy!!!! Maybe One D&D will untie feats from ASIs...please...
Monsters can't make critical hits, and only "attack rolls with a Weapon or an Unarmed Strike" can crit. Suck it casters.
Grappling
Being grappled now imposes disadvantage on attack rolls against anyone other than the grappler. This is great! The only effect of grapple in 5e being speed=0 was lame and underwhelming.
You can make a grapple attempt as an Opportunity Attack, at least I think??? Tanking will now be an actual thing! Martial characters can prevent enemies from just running past them to the squishies.
The fact that Grapple is an attack roll instead of an Athletics check AND that enemies can't use an action to escape, but get a free ST to escape at the end of their turns is...interesting. It'll be much harder to maintain a grapple, and likely harder to succeed in the first place.
Wording
It seems like WotC is placing a larger emphasis on Keywords instead of using plain language! "D20 Test", "Slowed [Condition]", the 3 spell lists.
...I connect this with BG3 by the fact that they are both based on D&D.
