From my experience, the game has the same animations. I believe a developer claimed that they had to convert all assets (meaning hairs and animations I suppose), but somehow they look identical. Not a problem as most look great, but pretty absurd as they missed out on the opportunity to improve them. Even the outright moronic hairs have been "converted" so nobody can keep using them (I don't have the data obviously but come on...
).
There seems to be not a single new animation that isn't tied to the new submission system. If you count everything added in those positions, those are indeed about 10 new things. On the contrary, the gate positions have all been removed, so there's a loss there. A vast number of submissions also have been deleted along with their animations.
If you read the recent patch notes, they adjusted the combo takedowns, so that has been adjusted a bit.
I wouldn't go so far as to call all games carbon copies when it comes to grappling. They made huge strides from 2 to 3 (the end product then). It just looks that way given the steps back recently.
I get that you get the "itch" to play, but it's not worth it unless you really like the new submission system (like I do). Career mode is exactly the same. The roster at launch was exactly the same. The striking game feels exactly the same to me too. Normally it should be on sale very soon and at half price: why not? It's not strictly better than 4 due to the removal of content (a constant for EA games), but it did improve a little.