Ideas and suggestions.

The point isn't about comparing it to the second game or comparing it to earlier versions of itself.
It's about the fact that the original graphics of the third game are a masterpiece. And compared to that, both Highland and Wasteland look underwhelming. The task itself is very complex, and perhaps in the current situation, the only way to solve it is to take a deep breath, turn a blind eye to some things, and do the best you can.
To fully solve this problem, extreme honesty and extraordinary effort are needed.
The chances of honesty are still somewhat realistic, but extraordinary effort is only possible if you get very lucky and find someone who sees how it should be done and can do it. The chances of that are very slim – it requires incredible luck for all of us.
As for the three pictures, the progress is obvious. They clearly tried, made it better, and succeeded in making it better than it was.

It's quite amusing to read comments like these from users :) The HotA team consists of just as professional artists as the New World Computing team. This isn't an amateur project; it's a hobby project from developers with extensive experience in this field. And statements like "the original is a masterpiece, anything new doesn't measure up" are nothing more than a perceptual error, the power of habit. A habit developed over twenty years. That's a huge amount of time, and it's not surprising that some players find it difficult to accept something new. And, of course, you have to consider that not every user has a good artistic sense. It's noteworthy that the former members of NWC themselves believe that the new content in HotA fits in perfectly.

Everyone was waiting for a rebalance of skills and magic, water tiles, and other things, but they got some new landscape.

Don't confuse "everyone" with a specific group of the audience. There were anecdotal comments somewhere that improvements in the map editor are not needed at all. That is, people are seriously unaware that there are tens of thousands of users for whom these changes were the most anticipated. HotA is not a mod for an online game; HotA is the development and improvement of Heroes III in all existing directions.
For some reason, it's especially common on HW to find players who are convinced that their world is Heroes. Well, okay, it's all the more pleasant to meet exceptions.

As for the balance changes, they are introduced only when, after discussions and repeated testing, we have enough confidence in them. In 1.6.0, we chose the changes that were finally approved by the team and that could be implemented without delaying the release. This is just one of many blocks of rebalancing.