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Prologue: The Fall of Renais
Blah blah a bunch of bullshit about Grado and Renais.
So here we go, actual gameplay. The prologue isn't very exciting, but we'll be seeing some of the changes in action already. This is hard mode if you're curious, but hard mode really doesn't do much for FE8.
First things first, let's meet our units.
Eirika is our first lord, and of the two she's still the inferior one. You can see one very minor change in that vulneraries are now 5 uses (up from 3). Also, whoever recolored her sprite gave her one brown eye and what appears to be one black eye. Great job guys.
Sweet Jesus, Seth. Seth is one of the Oifays that is so good, you could seriously argue that he's one of (maybe even the) best units in the entire game. And that was before they...rather considerably boosted his stats.
O'Neill has seen comparable boosts and...Hey, waaaaiiit a minute. I see what's going here. I mentioned that one of the big issues with the hack was number inflation, and this is a perfect demonstration of that. With the exception of HP/Luck, Seth and O'Neill have received a +4 bonus across the board, and Eirika has seen similar, if slightly smaller boosts. This means that all things considered, despite everyone having bigger numbers, we're in the exact same place we would be in vanilla FE8, just with less room to grow.
On to the chapter itself, the safest thing to do is simply sit tight and let the enemy come to us. The RNG and I have a very on-and-off relationship, and I'd rather not have to restart on the fucking prologue.
Note that in addition to not changing a word of the script, the author did not recolor Eirika's battle sprite to match her wonderful new portrait. While I applaud the number of gameplay changes that were made, pretty much everything else will be falling squarely on the 
side of things.
Anyway, we vanquish the first fighter on our turn, and the second comes to play in the enemy phase.
Eirika, you are using a rapier. It is a stabbing weapon. Yes, you could kill someone by slashing them with it, but you're not going to rack up an impressive body count by smacking their side.
After killing his two flunkies, O'Neill decides to handle things personally. I wanted to try and sneak into the forest, but was too far back. No worries, he's not much of a threat even without the terrain advantage.
Yeah, yeah, I hear you. Get over here, chump.
Aaaand we crit him on the very first hit. Nice knowing you pal.
Eirika gets her first level for putting down O'Neill. It's not bad, but I'd really like to see her pick up some defense. She's going to ram that speed cap a lot sooner than I'd like, and avoid doesn't get you nearly as far when the enemy is getting +4 bonuses across the board.
Next time: We get into this whole "FE7 Crossover" business.
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Level 1 Lord
Swords - E, Affinity - Light
Equipment - Rapier, Vulnerary
HP: 16 (+4)* (70%)
Strength: 4 (+4) (40%)
Skill: 8 (+3) (60%)
Speed: 9 (+4) (60%)
Luck: 5 (60%)
Defense: 3 (+4) (30%)
Resistance: 1 (+3) (30%)
Con: 5
*The number to the left is the unit's base stat in FE8 proper. The bolded number is the bonus they've received in the hack.
Eirika is your standard myrmidon with a little bump in growths by virtue of being a lord, so there's not a whole lot to differentiate her from Lyn. In fact, she has nigh-identical bases and growths. The biggest difference between them is that the Mani Katti was an amazing piece of equipment that remained useful even in mid- and early late-game, whereas Eirika gets stuck with a Rapier. And guess who we're stuck with for the vast majority of the game? 
Level 1 Paladin
Swords - A, Lances - A, Affinity - Anima
Equipment - Steel Sword, Silver Lance, Vulnerary
HP: 30 (+4) (90%)
Strength: 14 (+4) (50%)
Skill: 13 (+4) (45%)
Speed: 12 (+4) (45%)
Luck: 13 (25%)
Defense: 11 (+4) (40%)
Resistance: 8 (+4) (30%)
Con: 11 (+4)
Jesus Christ Seth. As I was saying earlier, Seth is often considered one of the best units in FE8, even with his vanilla stats. He has perfect availability, good bases, and his growth rates put cavaliers from FE6 and FE7 to shame when he's a prepromote. With his boosted stats on top of that, there's basically no reason to not use him, because even a completely average Seth will cap strength and speed, be within a point of capping skill, and two or three points off his defense cap. The only negative thing I can really say about him is the arbitrary increase in Con. This does somewhat hurt his ability to rescue your guys if needed, and all it does it let him use any lance without an AS penalty. At best he needed 12 or 13 Con (14 if you really want the Brave Lance), but that's hardly a huge mark against him.