izigame.me

Huge improvement over its predecessor in many regards; visuals, gameplay mechanics, factions, UI. Haven't encountered any crashes or bugs.
______________
My biggest point of criticism would be the battle mechanics forcing players to prioritize capture points - it always ends up with you on the defensive, stationing your troops around your own capture points, waiting for the enemy to attack. I'd understand capture points and battle momentum in siege battles but for normal open battles, it's boring and restrictive. Idk if it was like that in the first one because I've never played battles in the first koH.
That said, the AI is actually decent. It understands to defend their flanks with spearmen (to prevent your cavalry attacking), when they should flank, when to arrange defensive pacts and when to war, it will not sit idly by as you pick off their neighbors either, though it will sometimes war you against hopeless odds and does for some reason prioritize pillaging and looting over conquest.
Diplomacy is engaging enough to the point its not annoying, especially with the need to renew pacts after the death of a sovereign on either side. I haven't experienced betrayals but I have seen relations swing from max positive to max negative and vice versa after appeasing/provoking them, so keeping an eye on relations would be important especially if you like starting out as an insignificant state early-game, surrounded by megalodons (which is what I do).
At first, the new construction mechanics for provinces was a huge turn off for me, limiting you with the number of sites and types of buildings you can build (4 free zones to build, 4 unlockable zones). And if you wanted to build a specific building without improvements, you can't. So long you had the improvement in city A, you'll have to build it on city B, rendering it more costly and making your early-game investments all the more crucial to plan out. Also walls, moats, projectile defenses, all those have been removed entirely which is kinda weird. So if you wanna build a strategic bastion now, all you gotta build is a castle, barracks and armory which all carry defensive stats with them and you're done. So why these radical changes in building? Probably to make the building menu, cleaner, easier to understand and more balanced for the smaller factions. Yes it's pricey, but now even tiny factions with fewer than 5 provinces might have that one province that will hold out and defend valiantly against your hordes, delaying you and perhaps even defeating your first horde of invaders. In others words, the cleaner and much fewer building slots is supposed to look clean and nice, easy to understand, and curb the player's rapid exponential growth if invading like its mongolian christmas.
The time-limited opportunities your other knights get (clerics, diplomats, spies, merchants), are also nice additions to the game that make the world seem somewhat more alive and your knights more relevant. Merchants have been nerfed af. Their trade potential is now determined based on your nation's trade potential rather than kingdom ranking.
Kingdom ranking can no longer net you insane sums of money, instead solely contributes to your nation's stability. Having to appease your nobles, peasants, merchants, troops and clerics is also a new and a welcome mechanic imo. No longer is your gold income (for example), determined by one simple slider (which used to be kingdom level in KoH1) but the buildings you have in governed provinces, the approval of your nation's merchants, the size of your trade agreements, the skills of your merchants and the adopted traditions of your faction (new mechanic).
I think the map is also somewhat larger if I'm not mistaken = more nations :)
But we can no longer camp our armies to look cool and intimidating near our neighbors :(
Crusading mechanics are weird. So you don't control the army, but its huge and if you contributed in its formation, you get a portion of the pie assuming they've conquered and boy, they'll conquer more often than not. Jihading mechanics is more of a morale buff solely without a fancy large self-autonomous army - it'll also provide the caliphate with muslim relation buffs and christian debuffs.
____________
TLDR: If you liked KoH1, you'll like KoH2. If you have an itch for a medieval-themed strategy game, you'll like KoH2. If you want CK2 or Stellaris levels of complexity then look elsewhere. If you want an easy-going strategy game cuz you're sick of playing tw titles and civ6 on repeat, you'll like KoH2.