Played some more, almost all of the (short) demo. Combat on low levels seems just bad, no improvement on the original. Healing spells are as crucial as ever in Spiderweb games, if you can keep your whole party alive for a turn, while still getting a non-healing action off, you probably can beat the fight eventually. The problematic thing is that the tougher monsters often can 1-hit kill your party members, leaving you no chance to heal them back to full on your turn. The normal enemies that accompany these tougher monsters, do shit for damage, to the point they are only a threat if accompanied by a tough monster like a Fierce Rat (several weak enemies chip away your hp so slowly it only matters at all if something big took you to near 0 hp), and in those situations you use the daze spell to immobilize them so you only have to deal with the big monster who resists that spell. The biggest question when approaching a new enemy is, can they 1-hit kill my tank, and if not, are they able to hit someone else? If not, you can probably win with enough chipping on their health and healing the done damage.
Also the combat animations take too much time, they're short but you wade through so many trash mobs that it gets annoying, the earlier iterations of the game were faster to play I feel.
And the way attributes work, that each character is pretty much forced to focus on 1 attribute only if they wish to hit enemies (STR for melee, DEX for ranged, INT for spells), plus some endurance to stay alive, is just boring. And doesn't really encourage making anything but 1-dimensional characters, though it's still somewhat possible. Priest as a frontline tank, while taking damage and casting spells, seems really nice for example.
Trying out a new kind of party is also tedious, since you only get a handful of points upon start, compared to how you could have properly fleshed out guys right off the bat in the earlier games. Now you have to play and get several levels until you can properly define a character.
Oh and you can steal stuff in plain sight and be seen, people won't care at all unless you take too many items, before that you can keep your findings :D This I actually enjoyed though, since hey, I got better stuff.
But, looking at the descriptions of the higher level spells and battle disclipines, it'll probably get better (unlike in 1st Avernum trilogy, where combat got worse in high levels to me since it just got too easy). A lot more stuff that relies on positioning, knockbacks, status effects, etc. But first I'd need to get there...
Then count in quest compass, and secret passages are done in a boring way now (pressing hard to notice buttons instead of casting far sight and walking upon walls everywhere), It's not a real improvement over Exile 1 or Avernum 1.
So my verdict is - (re)play a Geneforge game instead