I gotta say, I really like what they did with the style this time around, making it so that the unnecessary tiles fade out. The water? Yeah, I could go either way on that, honestly. And it sucks that there's no setting to change the graphics this time around. But overall I'd say this is a positive.
I'm very on the fence with these graphics; on one hand they look really good and as they said definitely modernize the look, but personally on the other hand it feels off, I'm not sure what it is about it, could just be the fade effect but I like when a bunch of tiles fill the screen.