Game is much more difficult, and I don't know why. The previous rendition at least allowed someone to get to Endless, and that's where the true difficulty should begin.
Also, some changes to items are weird in design choice. Take, Cleansing Flame, it used to just remove enemy thorns and recovery; but now it removes all status effects on the enemy, including the debuffs you put on them. With one item, you turn off your own poison, slow, weakness, etc... on the enemies. Why would you change this item this way? Like, I understand some balance changes that allowed players to abuse like the Hercule Pavise. But I don't understand what the purpose is to have an item that removes your own applied debuffs to the enemies. It is a relic, so you have to beat a boss for it. There is still an RNG to maybe get it. It wasn't such a crucial item that it was required on all builds. And that's just one of the instant new gripes I have with the new version besides difficulty.
They definitely increased enemy health and damage early on. Enemies can do 20+ damage per turn on Floor 2 now.
It's not that I mind the increased difficulty, but now it just makes it much clearer when there are balance issues with RNG. If you don't get really good items early, your run will be over faster. There needs to be some design decisions made to better improve the quality of early game runs.