I was glad to see a series take place after Nemesis myself (in story timeline, the last time Star Trek takes place, of course ignoring Discovery--which is so far in the future that there's probably little risk of contradictions in story).
I'm a continuity junkie, I'll admit, and I like consistency in set design. It's a lot easier to explain changes by putting shows further in the future. I liked Discovery from a story perspective, but it never 'felt' like 10 years pre-TOS--it frankly felt more advanced than TNG-DS9-Voyager.
I liked most of the characters in Picard, except for Jurati.
The biggest disappointment, though, is how the Romulan Supernova is just all but forgotten after the first couple of episodes. Far from being a refugee species, they seem to continue to be a significant force in the quadrant. How does an empire that lost it's homeworld, and apparently many other worlds in its Empire must a 200+ force of advanced ships on par with Starfleet? That threw me for a loop. And nobody, except for a single planet we saw when Picard picks up El Nor, does any Romulans seem particularly less off now than they were before. Hell, they even captured and were rebuilding a Borg cube. It doesn't make a lot of sense.
Yeah but we don't know really know the state of the Romulans in Picard. We know they can assemble a force of 200 ships but that's not a large number by fleet standards. It could have been their entire fleet (by contrast Starfleet likely has tens of thousands of ships) meaning they may not be a significant threat.