Interesting: Metacritic: 82 currently, Steam has dropped from 82% positive reviews on release day, down to 62%!
Ouch.
Remakes of games are tough though, because on one hand you have a group of players who want JUST a modernizing of their perfect game. Others want the same underlying game, but with new maps, maybe better (potentially) ways of doing things from the OG, etc. Never going to please both groups.
I personally would love just a modernization (basically a facelift wrt graphics and UI refresh), but maybe also some new maps. That would be the ideal "remake" for me, but everyone of course has different views on how things should be remade.
Sounds like these guys chose the worst of both world though, in changing some things that people loved or liked (music, some UI things, miltiary system and several other things I can't recall), but added absolutely no new content. Weird.
Note again that I will absolutely be buying this, it's just that I will probably now wait for a sale since I see the initial feedback from fans of the original (like me).
From the most helpful voted review on Steam FWIW - I think they make some interesting points, but note also that he said he LIKES the music, whereas I saw many other reviewers wonder what the hell was going on with the music they chose, OG music better, etc. My biggest concern might be "UI is difficult to navigate - a lot clunkier than the original" which just...boggles the mind considering when the original was made. Those early Impressions games had notoriously (by today's standards) janky/finicky/unintuitive interfaces. According to this guy, they made it...worse?!? Yowch (if true). It was the primary reason I would be interested in a remake. The graphics are actually not horrible after all these years (even for Caesar III), and there are mods for widescreen as well. But the UI is what made me stop playing these in more recent years...just couldn't handle it when I have been spoiled by 15 (?) years of UI development and best practices, etc. If it's true that they made it worse, that's a pretty big knock against the remake ("you had ONE job!" and all that...).