Not really in my opinion, but I only played it about an hour.
Same: front end, map movement and party AI, town interaction(speak to elder etc), character interaction (choose what to say to static cam on chars face), char animation (yes in combat),
New: Can move around with your ship and have naval battles. If you get close to enemy ship in battle you can hold F to board, this starts a standard battle with 2 ships next to eachother. Nothing special.
Plus other stuff, will do a 'lets play vid' some time.