I just got this phone, signed into Play and I have to find the apps I had installed on my old phone and manually instal them one by one. even the paid apps. My Droid Turbo did it automatically.
I'm on my third Android phone and a couple different Android tablets. Never have the apps auto reloaded. Nor would I want them to. Long as you use the same Playstore account they can be downloaded again. But I would want to decide for myself.