I got the new one last weekend.
Before I go into 'Pointing out issues mode', the good things!
1) Everything looks a LOT better
2) Difficulty still seems way up there, although it feels somewhat easier than before I think.
3) Training system seems a lot better now. I remember going through training missions the first time and still not having a clue.
4) Waah voices!
BUT... I also noted some issues that bug me... I'll start with what bugs me the most...
1) Fighter AI! Aargh! Why is it that half the other fighters, when trying to land on the carrier, they crash into it? Now that is a really nasty one imho. It detracts very much from any kind of immersion... I can see how making an AI is not a simple thing. But the AI pilots being unable to just land their craft is BAD.
2) Sometimes the game generates me missions where just flying through the Nav Points on auto-pilot results in Bingo Fuel before I'm back at the carrier. Nvm if you fight in between. It's rare, but it happens and it quite bugs me.
Those are the two most annoying (because there's no workaround)...
3) The game has problems with my dual-core CPU. Not that it's the only game that does this (MTG Online and Neverwinter Nights have the same problem). Setting the affinity of the process to one core solves it though.
4) On one escort mission, I didn't get any Nav Points. I set them myself, and my wingman flew off far into space... ALT-F and radio command to form up had no effect. He did come back when I told him to escort the freighter though.
5) The cutscenes in the briefings/news are cool, but interrupting one of them and starting a next mission whilst the voice-over for the cutscene was still going on, resulted in a situation where I could fly, but most keyboard commands didn't work (shift-N, backspace and alt-f worked, that's about it). The mouse pointer was gone too... Only restarting the game got it back to normal.
Hmm back to combat tonight
Let's see how many more fighters I lose... :p