The campaign is a little cutscene-heavy and a little short, but the story isn't much worse than HW2's, maybe a little better imo.
Mechanically though, it's (probably) better than the remasters. Directional damage is still there, homing projectiles are gone, fighters dynamically form squads instead of staying in a big blob or fixed-width squads in 2. I read some of those reviews at most of them don't appear to have played more than the first 2 missions? Like, there was one lore error in one line of dialogue and people lost their goddamn minds.
I think it was really just a victim of 1) Embracer's implosion meaning it had to launch now or not at all and 2) people's expectations being all the way up at 11 since the last game was so long ago. Really, a little bit of story DLC to flesh out the main campaign and there would be no problems.