Damn, Arc... you really threw the entire thing away and started over huh? That's kinda crazy. And guessing the updates aren't being posted here like they used to because you are still pissed at itchio for their bs... man, now I genuinely regret deleting the game to download it fresh because I hadn't actually done everything there was before. Damn.
Now for my thoughts: genuinely impressed with some of the new systems, namely the dialogue things like selecting the orange text and having the info show up at the bottom. The overall scenery of the game definitely looks better but I will say I'm unsure how to feel about the new town as it currently is... Will have to grow on us I guess. Especially the new explore mechanic with snacks. Because MC totally didn't have anything to eat since he left Grandpa's, meanwhile MC just chowing down on snacks while wandering the streets as if that isn't eating >_> like I'm fat irl and I don't even do that xD. Now for the characters... the new looks are honestly neat, pixie having a weird attempt at a skirt isn't my thing, but the rest of her look isn't that bad. Seeing folks complain about how Emma used to look but like... she was intentionally plain. Her being overly colorful off the bat seems weird, but she also seems to have been reworked from the ground up. And while I dig the overall look of most characters, their faces to head size seems... more off than it used to. Like they always had a big head before, but their faces still kinda fit it. And I get that's a koikatsu type limitation because they try for 3D anime style which results in bulbous head sizes. But the way they are now just keeps making me remember Code Lyoko. Where the characters just genuinely had massive heads and small faces that left many inches of extra unused space there. So I think that in particular is what's rubbing older fans the wrong way the most about overall looks. The "end" being basically directly after into initial "intro" was also a weird choice... like... going back to my first statement, you really just threw it all away and started it all over huh? Even though you were almost done with it and were seemingly getting excited to start on the sequel? This genuinely feels like a situation where you should have stuck with the prior and finished it then used this new system for the sequel... it's just so drastically different from what you started with that it's clearly not going well for some fans.
Regardless, I do hope you get back to updating on here, I am genuinely curious to see how your story has changed at this point... because this intro has shown that it is very barely still the same story.