Huh. I can't say I experienced that. Then again, I'm not a veteran of the franchise with a shitload of experience to compare to. I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary in the games I played that struck me as braindead, but I probably was playing halfway braindead myself, so maybe it all evened out.
Steam has 80% positive reviews, and a lot of the people complaining seem to be die-hard fans (one guy has like 200+ hours into THIS game, so god only knows how many into the others). Either way, Paradox is really good about fixing problems in my experience, so I have no doubt they'll put work into fixing what's broken.