Playing as a dwarf is weird. Took me a bit to get used to the fact that the third person camera is way above him. It's funny though, several times now I've had enemy cavalry run by and try to hit me but barely miss since I'm so short. The warg riders are low enough to whack me every time, but the Rhun guys seem to miss a lot. Jumping in the air and whacking Rhun cavalry off their horses is hilarious and epic though. My first fight with Rhun guys I had a big two handed stick and I leaped into the air and knocked 5 of them off their horses with the club. Wound up buying my first bow selling after the prisoners to Dale.
My party of dwarves is hopelessly slow on the map though. Everything outruns me. I have 5 pathfinding and moving through the forest was giving me a speed of 2.2.
Dwarves seem to be horrifically slow in the forest but do pretty good for unmounted on the open plains.
My "complaint" is that I'd forgotten how freakin' HARD it is to get started in TLD. The old version at least had the exploit where you could get the "Hunt Goblins" quest for that neutral bandit king guy, and then as long as you hadn't fully completed it, you could turn it in over and over and over to rack up some gold, so you could score some decent gear to get you started.
Poor Khorin Steeltooth has been playing postman all the way to Rivendell and back, has killed at least two dozen orcs from Mt. Gundabad, and commands a hearty little squad of dwarves. And he's still basically wearing a t-shirt and using a cracked mining pick as a weapon, because I can't afford anything better.
Troops seem to upgrade crazy fast, even without Training skill, which causes me to be unable to afford them. It'd be nice if the game gave you some resource points for turning them back over to the cities, so that you could earn money by training up low-level troops. Also not crazy about most starting characters starting off with spears and other polearms. Probably the most useless of melee weapons until you're mounted, and you can't afford a mount for quite a while.
There's also the problem that orcs (not uruks) are pretty short too, so it's easy to miss them unless you actively aim low. Took some getting used to. I'm hoping they still have cave trolls in the game. Although the models for the .808 were butt-ugly, they could wreak some havoc unless you had a good lance and a strong charger--in which case you could impale them with a couched lance and take 'em out in one or two hits.
Overall though, I'm pretty pleased with the result. Looking forward to seeing what legendary items each faction eventually has to offer.