To me it basically feels the same as 26. All the "they're fixing Liquid Glass guys" hype turned out to be over a slider to control the transparency of the glass, when you could already set it to opaque (tinted) in 26. I guess it's an improvement for however many people were dying to have specifically 70% opaque Liquid Glass. If anything Golden Gate looks a little worse than Tahoe. They added a faux-3D effect to the Liquid Glass, which clashes with the flat design used on whatever part of the UI isn't Liquid Glass. It's as if you were using Windows 10, then got halfway through installing a Windows 7 theme before cancelling it, so random stuff is Aero vs. flat.

The biggest problem introduced in Tahoe was the massive padding areas around everything, which remain unchanged in Golden Gate. I've seen rumors that Apple is planning on a touchscreen Macbook, so maybe the padding is to make it so people will be able to use their fingers more easily. I guess they've decided to repeat the mistake Microsoft has made in Windows 8 and newer, where they destroy the UI for everyone in order to cater to whatever percentage of users prefer 2-in-1 convertible laptops.