I can't compare the changes with the new version vs the old, because I was trying hard to hold out on playing until the game was done... I failed. I am weak, and gave in to Alpha temptation.
I've been playing CRPGs for years, and one of the best things about DoS is the ability to do whatever you want and still progress, up to and including killing everyone. That said, I'm still a carebear at heart and most of my runs are are lawful good... though if the Red Prince had not been a companion, I would have let Sebille rip him a new one.
From that perspective, I think that the balance of the game needs work. I'm a veteran gamer, so I chose Classic mode. I expected that I'll need to play carefully, but that intimate knowledge of game mechanics and fore-knowledge of fights, builds, and loot would not be a requirement to progress... I was wrong. I don't think that 'Classic' difficulty accurately reflects the text description of its intended audience.
I played Baldur's Gate, Planescape: Torment, and similar when they were first released, and I was never killed by the first enemy I encountered. The encounters at the start of the game, when someone playing in single player would not be expected to have any companions, are punishingly difficult. I had to kite a zombie I dug up for about 15 turns before I was able to bring him down (I am playing Sebille as a rogue since it fit her character description). And that was the second time, because the first time I just went toe-to-toe and straight out died in two rounds.
There is no in-game explanation of how armor and status effects interact, nor do the initial combat encounters appear to be designed in a way that they highlight important mechanics like status effects.
I think these two issues (combat difficulty between spawn and Fort Joy, and tutorials) could both be handled together, by having the various enemies start at a tactical disadvantage from pre-existing statuses or terrain. This would simultaneously make the encounters easier as well as offering a visual aid for one of the things that best sets DoS apart from other games in the same genre, it's deep support for elemental effects and terrain.
In addition it would allow for an easy (and plausible) way to scale the game for the number of players in the encounter... a 4 player coop? Make your own damn terrain. Solo player with no party members? Oh look, it's raining out and pools have formed under the no-magical-armor bugs.
The balance evens out a bit once you gather a party, but money seems punishingly tight. I completed a notable chunk of the Fort (pre-escape) and only gathered enough mony for a single skillbook. My characters were level 2, and I had cleared all the content I could find before the various fort fights including the fire bugs, releasing the soul of the undead statue (and taking his spear), going back to kill the turtles, etc.
I can see no way that a player who is not stealing left and right can approach the keep fights (the boat, houndsman, and flenser to be precise) and expect to succeed on their first try in Classic difficulty. You have no more than ~10 physical or magical armor, which means all these NPCs can CC you either instantly or after a single attack. You are often outnumbered, and the enemy does more damage than you every single turn. With the new AI (I can't compare since it's the only AI I know) they do a very effective job of debuffing and CCing your party, barring some weirdness with using buffs and debuffs at weird times (including healing party members).
This is Act I. This is where you introduce players to the game, get them comfortable with mechanics, and build the world. The difficulty I am encountering is what I would expect from Tactical mode.
I was able to get past all the fights mentioned above, but it took sometimes over an hour of retries. I learned that wasting my time putting oil everywhere before a fight was an effective, but extremely boring and tedious mechanic so I only did it once. After I killed the two guards protecting the boat I got a shield, and that allowed me to put my fighter in front and actually get off a couple abilities before he could be CCd, which let me approach the other fights without cheesing... but still tons of reloading. This is not what I would call any kind of 'normal' difficulty.
Now, after I hit level three during the keep fights, the amount of money I started finding skyrocketed, and I also got a lot of good gear upgrades. I'm level four now, and the fights in the swamp so far have been enjoyable. I feel like I have enough armor and skills to approach the fights, and none have taken more than two tries (though I did not yet retry the skeleton archer fight yet, I moved on). I enjoyed the tactics employed by the bug swarm.
On a related note, permanent surfaces encourages cheese, I don't think I'm a fan. If the game is balanced around surfaces sticking out of combat it makes the optimal strategy to cover the terrain with oil, blood, or water prior to combat. That can take a long time, ruins the fight balance, and seems like a not-fun way to play... but Tactical difficulty would have to be balanced around assuming everyone would do that, and be impossibly hard for those who don't. Please make surfaces have a timer outside of combat.
Classic does not feel like a difficulty that can be approached in an enjoyable way on your first play through. Maybe it's easier if you steal. Maybe it's easier if you know which skill you should have chosen in character generation, or that one skill you should buy before going to the keep. Maybe it's easier if you know how to complete every side quest and get every hidden piece of loot. But none of these are things that should be expected of a first-time player on their first run, and even 'Classic' RPGs did not require meta gaming in this way to succeed in Act I.
I think a key point of differentiation is that most old-school RPGs had random encounters. Sleep in the forest, get attacked by wolves; wander the alleys, get attacked by thieves. These random encounters allow the player to retreat from punishing plot encounters, bulk up, then try again when they have more levels and equipment. Since DoS has no random encounters you can't fall back on the 'classic' trope of grinding up for the boss fight. And that's OK... but I don't think the game is balanced properly for that mindset yet.
