finally I collected the info from the tutorials, which is a bit time consuming (I spent a few weeks with it around May-June), but now I could do it within a day.

my laptop is new but not a high end one, 3DGS also similarly slow with pssm shadows beside optimized models. but this pssm is using 6 stages with improved smoothing settings, and I used 1366x768 resolution, so it could be faster.

yes, the characters are not optimized at all, got from Medieval Total War 2, using own bone animations from separate files (it is also possible to use the default skeleton using built in animations). and what is the most time consuming, in every frame I call a pathfinder for each character - one is the leader dealing full path, the others only keepeing their position relatively to it. the physX collisions also eats up FPS, because no collision avoidance integrated into Esenthel - and propably will never be done. so this part is only good for a quick testing.

trees are having LOD - it is easy to make LOD models in its model editor, or externally created LOD models can be used.

player and AI character coding is simple, it has a ready character class developed for MMORPG, with PhysX and Navmesh pathfinding, which can be extended - this is what I did, overrided skeleton and animation due to created mesh, added some new group properties for keeping the formation, and extended the update loop (creation and update is nearly similar to Unity awake and update system).

one minor thing which is not too handy, if runtime created objects are used, they should have own rendering and shadow calls in render update loop - yes there is a separate draw/render loop to draw the world, the gui, and created models.

the engine is free with full features, ony when you sell something you have to buy one license per product. android support is available only after having a licence.