It feels shallower in a lot of ways, and I don't just mean lacking events. Pretty much every character feels exactly the same, with the only real differences being "are you a monogamous faith or not" (in which case you will have fewer wives/consorts) and are you tribal or not (with an edge case for folks who are feudal but unreformed, who get the best of both worlds).
You know how it was a complaint in CK2 that all the non-Norse pagans felt the same (especially pre-Holy Fury)? Now everyone gets that experience. Part of it is the difference between DLCs focused on flavor in various religions, but part of it is that the religion mechanic essentially pigeonholes all religions into the same system. For all their very real problems, decadence or the caste system made playing as a Muslim or as a Hindu involve different mechanics from each other, or from a Christian or a pagan. In CK3, you don't really have any of those specific mechanics; everyone plays more or less the same, with maybe a few quirks like "executions give piety instead of costing it." Because every religion is essentially a box of checkmarks (how incestuous can you get, how many folks can you marry, etc.), it's actually harder to make them feel unique, despite the much more elaborate religion system. It also doesn't help that they got rid of the "send/request missionary" feature from CK2, so there is now no peaceful way to spread your religion (which means 867 Scandinavia will remain Asatru for all time unless it is physically conquered, sending raiders out until 1453), but that's a broader issue of the game being surprisingly lacking in ways to interact with other characters besides sex or violence.
I'm not a fan of the map or map-mode decisions at all. The decision to make baronies be on the map seems like it should be a plus, but what it really means is that it can be hard to tell where the county boundaries are (and this matters, especially with the new attrition system) and where you still need to siege to occupy a county. And the lack of certain map-modes is frankly baffling. Don't get me started about the message or notification systems, or the general tendency of the UI to get in its own way.
While I appreciate the intent behind the new Men-at-arms system, and like parts of it, the way in which it renders vassals essentially meaningless is a significant problem. In CK2, outside of retinues, you army was a giant mix of whatever your vassals had available; that made them potentially useful and valuable (especially given that their contribution depended partially on opinion, so an unpopular ruler risked losing most of his military strength). On the other hand, vassal contributions are now tiny (even at high tax/obligation levels) and are strictly levies (which scale poorly once you get any level of size). This means that as long as your vassals aren't actively revolting, you mostly don't care about them, which is surprising given that the design of CK was intended to focus more on characters.
The whole feudal vs. tribal balance is completely out of whack (even before the new DLC there was essentially no reason to ever embrace a reformed religion), but that's a separate issue, and gets to bigger issues with the Norse, in particular, essentially getting everything handed to them for free without any of the drawbacks that CK2 used to try and balance that.
Now, I've focused on the bad so far, so I should probably spend some time on the good. I like the decision to move to a few, more important traits instead of the CK2 system where you stacked all the good traits even as you played a bloodthirsty conqueror. Traits actually matter now beyond a few minor stat boosts, and that's a good thing. The CK2 tactics system was an unholy mess, and I am glad that that is gone, even if I have some quibbles with the side-effects of the new Men-at-Arms/levy system. Also, I may be in the minority, but I've actually grown to like the 3D portraits.
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