Tbf Russia only aimed at military installations and only escalated towards infrastructure after one year of fighting when Ukraine started doing terror attacks. Liberal media assumes Ukraine would use deep strikes as is western military doctrine - killing as many civilians as possible.
Oh yes, I played a mage in both and the difference was startling. In the first part you have immensly powerful spells, that could also backfire hard because the game had friendly fire. At high levels you could wipe everything on the screen, including your party. In the second, friendly fire was gone so you could blast away and suddenly you spun around like a kung-fu master for some reason.