I decided to play some without the patch.
You can tell they tried to improve upon the first game. The initial town has more people walking around and such. And on the road outside, you'll see random groups traveling. The character sprites have a some more detail, as do the NPC portraits.
But man, the game is a hog. I had to crank dosbox up to cycles=30000 to get it not to lag unacceptably in some areas (I think 9000 is the recommended maximum). The walking animation seems to pause on every square, which makes things feel very clunky. And I've found at least one area which, upon entering, I appear to be simply stuck in. It looks like an ordinary (fairly empty) room with a table, but apparently I don't have line of sight or a path to walk anywhere.
Some of the quest design is kind of weird, too. I talked to some halflings, and they expressed interest in some pool of heroes. So I searched some caves, and thought I found it. I ran into a talking snake nearby, and could ask him about the pool... But I could also ask questions regarding people I'd never heard of before.
The game seems like it could have some more interesting combat, though. The first game was, I'd say, very easy once you get the hang of it. I defeated almost everything through straight physical combat, with perhaps a little dominate or hold person thrown in. Only the final battle really warranted a significant use of magic to even things out.
However, searching for the pool, I ran into a group of mind flayers, umber hulks and intellect devourers that forced me to do more than just a straight beatdown. Hopefully the game has more fights in that vein.