Yeah, it is not that great an adventure, hoped for more. It is plagued by the same problems as other WotC adventures with presenting disjointed pieces with no clear motivation / logical reason for the chars to follow the path the adventure expects / needs them to.
So yes, I agree, mediocre and needs work. Somehow they managed to make LMoP worse with this, not better.
The first comment under the article said “Some changes they’ve made to the original version of Lost Mines of Phandelver are mildly baffling, like replacing the Owlbear in Cragmaw Castle with a Grell without also drawing a connection between this very-out-of-place Grell and the Illithid storyline for both the DM and PCs.
And then there are others, like removing Gundren’s map to the Lost Mine from King Grol’s quarters in Cragmaw Castle, that suggest bewildering levels of incompetence. I can’t think of any good reason to remove all of King Grol’s treasure (where the map was originally found), but especially so given that it included the very thing the PCs are expected to use to get to the mine.”