I have played more of a campaign as Satsuma and feel I can give a proper impression now.

The map is larger and it seems to take ages to move anything anywhere. I think this is meant to be alleviated by railways but if I'm right railways are part of the telegraph chain, which there are none of on Kyushu so being Satsuma kind of sucks. The map itself is really nice with routes between provinces and a different art style making it feel really fresh. I intend to play a clan closer to Hokkaido next campaign to let me play up there. I also like that the value of koku has decreased. At the moment economy is tough but I think its because I don't yet understand what to build. Also monitoring your provinces modernization and happiness can be really tough.

I actually like the increased casualty rates of land battles, makes it feel quite accurate. I too wish the American adviser would shut up. It kind of breaks my immersion unless there happens to be an American foreign veteran in my army. And yes the soldiers should return to Japanese, the only excuse I can take on this issue is that CA couldn't afford Japanese voice actors.

Naval battles are interesting. I like the actual look of the boats. The battles seem very low casualty. I hardly ever seem to lose cannons or crew, however ships still seem to waver quick enough and I've seen a few ships explode/sink. The monotony of cannons is a bit boring but I think mostly due to the fact that I have only had low tech sea battles so far. Torpedo boats should spice things up, and ramming is really fun. Played a multiplayer battle which finished with a game of chicken between our two command boats. I wanted to see what would happen if two boats rammed each others front, but he started veering to the side so we broadsided each other and then I rammed the back of his ship, causing the back half to sink. Basically what I'm trying to say is sea battle can seem boring, but can sometimes be really tense and also cinematic.