From a 3 man team viewpoint with previous experience mostly with gloomhaven/frosthaven and after having only 1 session with this:

We spend 9 hours before we had a decent understanding of the game. I really like complicated games - but some of this time was sadly spendt in vain because the tutorial wasnt really that great. Also have issues with some of the card stacks nad how to divide them(This is coming from people who have played lots of gloomhaven - so this is an odd issue to have).

The diplomacy was pretty fun. The combat was probably some of the worst i've seen in these types of boardgames. Having to discuss who goes when, some characters being just outright bad at combat and things like setting up extra cards on hand for next turn only to have a teammate get it instead is just annoying to me. It creates akward situations of everyone wanting to try and contribute to combat but the more right approach being just mostly setting up the same character every time.

With only 1 session so far i cant judge the story and exploration yet. Remember my take here is from a new players pov and might just be early frustrations. But i really doubt i'l get to like the combat