I also gave it a try.
They managed to make the battles in a Total War game uninteresting. They are a clickfest, and the lightning speed with which the morale of unit breaks makes playing larger battles a chore.
On a plus side, the hero units don't seem overpowered and can be forced to retreat even when fighting against a single strong unit. In field battles AI is not that bad, and the speed of combat actually helps it, but it derps during sieges, as usual.
One would think, that with the emphasis on quick action and constant stimulus of the player's brain with things to click on, the action itself would be good at least. But sadly, that's not the case. Since they can't fix their problems with unit collision and decided (in Rome 2 I believe) to decouple fighters, so they are not locked in 1 to 1 combat, the fighting now looks like some mocaped stuntmen swinging not to fast all around them using hollywood idea of fighting. So there is a lot of kicking the air, elbowing the air, doing 360 no-scope with spears (thrusting the air), et caetera.
It's so bad you can only laugh about it.
The map itself looks nice, settlements are single resource focused, so it's pretty easy to manage.
But the strategic layer of gameplay itself is the usual Total War fare with wars being declared without logic and reason. And I believe the conflict Troy vs Achaia is scripted to happen anyway regardless of what you do. But when it happens, you still won't be able to secure a peace with that single enemy settlement of your culture that declared war on you, because devs decided countries should do that, or the player might be bored.
There are also usual agent shenanigans, which are a mixed bag.
I was hoping that smaller scope might result in a more enjoyable game.
But yeah - banalshitboring, unistall.exe.