The first, I don't know, 6-7 minutes of this album are fucking astonishing. ULB and the intro of FSMH1 are absolutely out of this world and flow together beautifully. Famous and 30 Hours show off Kanye's mastery of the sample flip. I think the melody and sentiment of Waves is as heartwarming and life-affirming as anything he's recorded since Graduation. FML and Real Friends are two of the best songs he's ever recorded, period. NMPILA is lightning in a bottle and we should all be thrilled that such a meeting of the minds even happened. It has one of the best Kanye verses in years. The album as a whole is emotional, funny, unhinged and extremely Kanye.
Fuck yes this is a great album. And I can confirm that the changes are largely positive. Freestyle 4 has gotten even crazier. Some mixing issues have been fixed. Wolves is a completely different song now and I'll leave it up to you to decide if it's been improved because I'm not sure, but I think it's slightly better.
This listen was a very good one. A lot of small changes (and one or two major ones) added up to a holistically stronger experience.