Yeah, besides the story being unfinished and not that many unique recruitable characters yet, I think Conquest is shaping up to be a big improvement over the original by the time it's at a similar level of completion.
Some of the classes are a little redundant right now (some seem to just give the same few social skills and no unique function, like maids kept the mansion clean in previous game) but for the most part I like having a ton of options for character building.
I do wish the monster slave merchant didn't (usually) sell such crap-tier recruits, but I have a feeling you're probably mostly meant to randomly get them as dungeon rewards in this game. So if you do buy one, it's as a long term investment where you really, really want that character and are going to upgrade them yourself.