I love filter views, no real complaints there except that other people can’t manage to figure out the difference between filtering the whole sheet and setting up a filter view.

Tables seem kind of pointless but better than a separate database app I guess?

Not sure about “little pills”, do you mean the drop downs? That’s in validation, and it’s a little odd but better both in interface and function than Excel. There’s really only one version and two ways to do it: “data validation” and “insert drop-down” (the latter is just a shortcut to the former, but with relevant options selected). Checkboxes are the same (both live in the insert menu).

I’ve never known the “paste style” menu, I mostly use keyboard shortcuts when pasting. I might be misunderstanding what you’re describing there.