If you liked the original game, then you will probably will be buying this. But would I recommend this game to a newcomer? Absolutely not. And here are the reasons why:

The good:
* Original campaign in its full glory is still good and unique, every mission feels different and the new textures made it even better.
* Auto market got added to the game, which is massive QOL improvement.
* Troops can now be trained more than one at a time with ctrl and shift clicks, which is really good.
* They added additional animated character for DLC campaigns.

The bad:
* DLC campaigns are done very poorly, the story does not progress in logical order. One of the first missions in rat campaign gives you all of the units you want and then you start going backwards from there. And it surprisingly felt that way for all of the 4 dlc jewel campaigns. They did not listen to their playerbase feedback about it.
* DLC campaigns lack cinematics of your opponents, the enemy troops just keep coming without any taunts like in original campaign, missed opportunity.
* The scripts in DLC campaigns are bad, because there is none...
* DLC campaigns did not take into account replayability. The maps are small and your castle can't be placed in different locations, which makes the games play exactly the same all the time.
* Lots of the maps in DLC campaigns were actually running from point A to point B, it was overused and miserable experience. Putting hundreds of wols on the map while they are bugged and your troops wont even attack them is not considered fun.
* New maps felt unbalanced and untested, mostly dull and boring, that you don't even want to play again through again.
* New economic missions are actually really heavily combat oriented. They did exactly the opposite of what they were supposed to do.
* Bugs from original game are still not fixed and quality of life improvements from crusader are not brought over. For example, you still can't click on items on your stockpile to easily open market.
* No skirmish mode. They told from the beginning, that they would not make one for this game, but they should have, even if it took longer and would have made the game higher in price.
* Multiplayer is literal 1/10 experience, don't even think about buying this game to play with friends.
* No new additional items added to the game, everything is exactly the same from gameplay wise. They could have added some new items only for DLC and kept the original campaign as is for the sake of keeping the gameplay exactly the same for it.
* Second castle trail maps were done in a way that you actually can't go through the walls at some locations, which is clearly because of laziness. Instead of making some weak points harder to attack, they simply played with terrain so that you can destory the wall, but can't go in from that location. It was used in multiple castle trail maps.
* The newly added animated character always had the same animation, made it dull. And he was used mostly in the begging of the mission at the same time when you are told "Place your granary", which overlapped and felt like another untested product of laziness.
* Still no hiscores in the list of missions, so you have no idea how well you did in them. Doesn't tempt you to replay and do better than last time, another missed opportunity.

Summary:
The graphics changes and some quality of life improvements they did were good, but the new jewel, economic and castle trails maps were quite poorly done. I have seen a lot more meaningful community made maps. It feels like every new map was done in a rush and they felt boring and dull.

The original strategy is great. However the newly developed campaign is extremely poor. Numerous bugs bereave you from any joy from the gaming process. For example, the mission "Eagle nest" is literally impossible to pass in the very hard mode

More wood needed m’lord