Since a lot of old players have been posting about their dissatisfaction with the 1.13 Texture Changes, I thought I could give a new player's perspective on it. Someone with no real nostalgia, but with a sincere appreciation for the game everyone here loves.

I downloaded and modified a resource pack from this subreddit. There were a couple of new textures that were missing, but it was easy to recreate them from the screenshots. I then recreated the screenshots in-game, and I also played a couple of hours of survival with it on the Hermitcraft 5 world seed. Seed: -9095450570362222980

Here are my thoughts:

Logs:

• Birch: There was a Birch forest nearby spawn that I went and looked at first. The difference wasn't huge, but the wood was clearer and the grain that I used to think was annoying was gone.

• Dark Oak, Acacia, Jungle, and Spruce: I encountered all of these at there respective biomes at different times. I thought that the darker woods felt a lot better with the new textures and looked more detailed. Acacia was noticeably better.

• Oak: This new texture did NOT feel right. As soon as I saw it in the world, I was annoyed by it. Contrary to the other Logs, it looks yellower, overly grainy, and noisy. Much worse than the old texture by a mile.

Crafting Table:

I'll be honest. At first, when I instinctively made one and placed it down to make my stone pick, I had completely forgotten that it was different. It took me well over 20 minutes to remember, which imo is a good thing. It looked slightly cleaner without looking too smooth, which I preferred.

Cauldron

The Hermicraft seed has a quad witch hut near spawn, and I saw the new cauldron texture there. I don't use it much, but it looks pretty neat with that new line that wraps around it.

Planks

I only had the new Jungle and Oak planks, and while I didn't pay a lot of attention to it after staring at it for the first minute, the new one looked more shaded, but in a good way. I preferred it over the old texture.

Iron Blocks

Didn't notice much of a difference, so I don't have any preference.

Bricks

I don't really like the old bricks. It is one of the only textures I alter in the texture pack I use regularly. The new ones have a toned down red colour, don't look as monotone, and have better mortar, which is why I liked them a lot more.

Obsidian

I have two sets of 3 words. Looks like Coal. I don't like.

Even toned down as it is, it feels like it was designed to be a rock. Sure it follows the same lines as the old block, but the wildly different shading and the completely toned down purple ruins the whole look. I encountered it while mining, and I also built a few portals with it. Honestly, its the texture I liked the least.

Jungle Door

I rarely ever used the jungle door in my builds, so I don't think I'm a good judge, but the newer door's shading and holes look nicer than old texture, which felt more like a plywood with holes in it.

Diamond Block

I made one diamond block in the 2 and half hours I played in the survival world. I did not miss the old texture, since I always thought the little shadow in the corner made it near-unusable for building. My only thought was that the first retexture looked a lot better. The 2nd one had too much going on. It had edges with gaps in them, which had a rhombus in them, which had another rhombus in it, and the whole side was split into four different sections, all of which had different shades. The busyness of it was off-putting for me.

Emerald Block

After scamming half a village, I made my first block of emerald. The difference between old and new was huge, but compared to the last texture, it felt like an improvement. Instead of looking like slime, it was brighter, which suited the gemstone look. My only issue was that the top side of the texture was so bright it was near-white.

TL;DR – All in all, my impression in-game was kind of positive. The difference isn't as huge as you'd think, and a lot of the textures actually work better when you're not inspecting them and just playing the game. But some of the blocks like Obsidian and Oak logs are really off-putting, and definitely need some changes done to them.