Characters are not the same as in the books anymore

I kinda disagree. A lot of people have said this, but I think what we're missing out is just the Chibi/Tolkien coloring of characters early on. If we readers saw any of these actors/characters dropped into another fantasy setting, our knee-jerk would be "wait, why the hell did they steal Mat from Wheel of Time for this show?"

Some of the growth curves were smoothed. They opened us with dark Mat, and they used the actor change to expedite us through that phase into the "Dovie'andi se tovya sagain" Mat we get for 5-6 books or so.

Heck, even Lan. I'd say he has a similar number of lines per scene as in the book. We just don't get nonstop internal monologue from characters saying "he's stony-faced and he never talks".

I’ve only finished EP3. I thought forsaken were pretty scary in the book too with supernatural abilities?

Why does everyone who criticizes the show "being different from the books" end up having a weak grasp of the books? Yes, the Forsaken are terrifying. They don't really have "supernatural abilities" beyond the One Power. They have a smattering of Talents (Semhirage is a scary-good healer, but we never really see her heal anyone... Lanfear and Moghedian are next-level Dreamwalkers, and Ishy has reasonable talent in that field, Rahvin and Graendal have Talent-level skill in Compulsion), but not much of anything else. They have access to the True Power, which has similarities with the One Power after a fashion, but can do some things the One Power cannot at a massive price.