After completing some Exile victories my overall verdict is still that the main traces mechanic is pretty shit, but the DLC as a whole is pretty good. Unfortunately, most of the difficulty comes from traces. Without them - and you can neuter them really easily by getting a bit of Obscurity and then holding the Obscurity stack so the enemy can't do anything except try to magnetize them (which they can't pull), get more traces, or call in reinforcements, who also can't hurt you - it's utterly without any kind of challenge. Then again the base game also doesn't have much challenge - but you can still die from Dread/Fascination overaccumulation.
I think Exile victory mainly revolves around doing a fast tour of the map to pick up a few weapons (Biedde's Blade, Imhullune Tectrix, and Ebrehel, the Ragged Sword), or at least Ebrehel and something else while levelling up your Edge lore at shrines and getting a few followers. Then you call up your Foe and try to take him out with Lore + Weapon attacks before he takes you out, after which you can do some more exploration with zero danger. So you kind of want to do an arc from Munich (as you want Jannings for his Heart aspect to run doctor's practice), to Krakow, through Russia and down into the Middle East; ultimately the eastern half of the map is where you get your weapons, the western half is more for making money. By that point you should have everything you need. Followers are generally needed to hold him off; I suspect their ability to survive against him is based on their aspect (so Edge and Forge followers are less likely to die than others) but ultimately you can throw all of them at him, some will just die while buying you time (I lost Vasil immediately against him while Orsolina held him off two or three times unharmed and then I finished him off); I guess you can also uncover Weaknesses but I never bothered with that. May do it next time. There are also other victories like three flavours of Edge ascension or becoming a Name of the Velvet, but I haven't done them yet so I don't know if they're easier or harder.
Overall I like it, the new lore and items are great (especially the way much of it ties into the base game, meeting some of the same characters and such), the travel mechanic is cool, I just wish they'd gone with a different "difficulty" than traces RNG. I think that if you enjoy the base game you'll like Exile. If you didn't like base Cultist Simulator you'll probably not like it. Though your mileage may vary. It's like a sequel more than DLC, for the amount of content.