Yeah fair enough. That sort of thing is definitely subjective and it would be impossible for anyone to say you’re wrong.
Personally, I find the new QOL features impossible to live without now. Shift-queueing absolutely any task, being able to queue multiple techs or techs and units, villagers keeping one resource until they actually start gathering—rather than losing all the gold they’re carrying just because you accidentally clicked a tree—farm autoreseeding. To me, none of these really change the fundamental way the game feels, they just make it feel like a smoother, more polished version of the original game.
Huh, that’s very interesting. I’m genuinely curious to know what it was that you didn’t like about it.
Because the truth is that you’re seemingly in the extreme minority. While 2013’s HD edition seemed to split the community and received a bit of a mixed reaction, since 2019’s DE has been an unmitigated success in terms of both finances for the devs, and in terms of unifying and growing the size of the community.