I've been excited for this for years. Trio of Towns has been my favorite entry and I've looked forward to something similar to that in terms of gameplay, content, NPC interaction. So it recently came out in Japan and I planned on keeping an eye on the subreddit for importer and Japanese player thoughts. This morning...yikes. So:
No portraits. Which I initially thought wasn't a problem--I loved Animal Parade. But with this game and the camera angles, you mostly see the top of their heads. I've seen a few comments now of how you're basically talking to Ralph's hat most of the time
A lot of transition screens that all come with long loading times. And lag. Lag everywhere
Dialogue is a huge step down, though this one could be fixed if XSEED throws in a lot of spice for the English localization
You faint before you're event out of hearts/stamina
Tools are clunky to use
Makers only make things one at a time
Same for cooking, and cooking also takes 30 minutes
If you pet your animals, you automatically shave them. Which I guess is fine, because...
There are no animal festivals. Or harvest festivals. Or cooking festivals. Other festivals, like the egg hunting one, are just short cutscenes instead of gameplay
Grass needs water to grow ~_~
Among other smaller things like inventory size and tree/rock spawn rate, etc. etc. And in general I'm really doubtful of the overall content, since someone got a guide for it and it's half of what the guide for Trio of Towns is. I'll still keep an eye on things to see how it develops, but damn if my heart doesn't feel low right now.