I have to say that I really like SH5! It is, for me at least, much better than SH4 "out of the box" (excluding the DRM of course!). It's interesting that some of the missing features are actually present:
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=164798
The game does need some serious patching and I suspect that, as with so many games these days, it was not finished in time for release so they simply cut features which weren't working properly or poorly implemented. I'm not condoning this, I would much rather they delayed the release or spent more time honing the SH4/SH3 interfaces rather than adding the iffy RPG/Morale features.