These devs have been aggressively ignoring gameplay issues the game has had for ages, focusing on this stupid court thing that adds little to the gameplay because of other issues. I'm not sure I have any confidence in this one compared to their spin-off game.
You still can't do lewd stuff in an adult game because of 'consent'. These are literally slaves and prisoners and you can't so much as remove their top unless they permit it. I'm sorry what?
Then there's the invaders. They don't show up often enough, and it ends up creating a hilarious level gap between them and your own units because you don't get any chance to level up early game. Set traps? Can't do anything interesting with your dungeon layout because opening rooms has an incremental cost, way beyond your ability to pay.
There still isn't a list of known alchemy formulas once you brew something, forcing you to write it down in notepad in a 2025 game.
You just kind of...sit there waiting for the market to refresh, hoping something interesting will show up and it never does.
So let me preface what I'm about to say by stating that I've only played 2 versions of this game. The previous version, 18, and this one 19. With that out the way...
I pretty much agree with everything you said. Like now that it finally has a male playable character, that actually has masculine animations, I really want to support this game. But there are some seriously bad design choices keeping me from doing so. Mainly, possibly even exclusively, as you've pointed out, what the fuck is up with this "consent" shit?
Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for consent, absolutely in real life, but even in games. Buuuut, lore/plot matters. You are in a dungeon, your dungeon. You rule everything in it. Life and death are decided by your whim. The occupants are, at worst, slaves, at best, servants. Ain't no free will bitch. This my house. "I" can execute you on command for whatever, whenever. "I" run this shit. So how can someone who "worships" you tell you "no" when you proposition them? Worse yet, immediately after declining you, they'll say some shit like "I miss when we used to do lewd things". Bitch what? I just... You just... Executed. Worse still, in 18 you could just spam ask them until they eventually consented. Now, you can't do that. If you ask someone the same question twice, their relationship will drop AND the answer doesn't change. Again, this is my mf dungeon. Ain't no "no" (clearly there is). I'm currently playing as an ancient keeper and the only reason my maid is still alive is because she had an amazing roll with awesome traits that I'm trying to breed. But the bitch won't put out and I'm trying to understand if my definition of "worship" in this context is the same as the developers. Because I ain't seeing it. That said, you can do whatever to actual prisoners. Which is hilarious because you could be banging away at a prisoner in front of one of your occupants that "worships" you, they'll comment about how they miss/want to do lewd things, you then proposition them and they STILL say no

.
As far as the raids go, just build an altar and tempt invaders. This way you get to pick and you can choose level appropriate enemies to combat. Making money also isn't difficult, but there's a caveat to that I'll go over in a second. As for alchemy, there actually is a place for recipes in the dungeon codex, you just have to look for it. Only thing is, recipes tend to change so if you knew one before it might not be the same now. But a list of recipes is there in game.
Back to the money though. I like to play these games a certain way, I build buildings on nodes that are beneficial. So a farm on a fertile node, research on inspiring nodes, etc. I also always start building my dungeons the same way, and I always build my starting mines first, well after setting up the palace room (I have a straight line of 5 or so trap rooms leading to the palace room then I branch out, this way you can't really get robbed of anything and invaders come straight to you). This leads to a lot of saving and reloading because I'm not building the mine unless it's on a mineral rich node. Since the altar can already remove/add random traits, why not give it the ability to add traits by choice for varied gem prices? Maybe make it so that you unlock rooms by completing certain challenges, or just have them all available at the jump. I don't really care, but give people the ability to build dungeons the way they want. I want to be able to make my dungeon layout whatever I want, not, let me build "x" here because it benefits, or doesn't, this building. I want to choose the layout, not leave it to chance. I get it not being an initial choice, but since the altar already exists and more or less has this functionality already... But this is more of a personal pet peeve. The consent thing is really what gets me. I hope my comments don't come off as me hating on or disliking the game, I actually like it a lot, those couple of things just frustrate me.
On a side note, I do appreciate the equipment change. Much easier to manage what npcs are wearing now. I haven't played enough to test out the camera changes/additions yet. They're probably nice tho. I also appreciate the added animations. Too bad I only get to see them with prisoners since my worshippers always turn me down.
Edit: Since I've seen people posting about it, I haven't had any FPS problems and am getting 60 no problem. Using a RTX 2080, not crap but not great either.