I'm about 80% of the way through what's available of Fields of Mistria (noting that the full game comes out August 5). Here are my impressions so far as everyone who has played every Harvest Moon/Rune Factory title several times over and Stardew Valley about 10 times (once to 100% completion).
Quality of life features all across the board which, yes, makes it "easier" than Stardew Valley and The Classics, but I've spent enough of my life refilling my watering can and standing outside of a shop until it opens that this felt like a huge breath of fresh air. Among these QoL features: every shop/facility is always open even when unmanned (your character just leaves money on the table), universal inventory where you don't need to be holding a material to craft with it (i.e. crafting tables will pull from all/any of the storage chests you have regardless of their location), animals don't die/run away if you accidentally leave them outside (they just lose friendship), fences don't decay and need to be repaired, you don't lose money/items if you pass out in the overworld, the map tells you where the other characters are if you're looking for somebody, there's a Z-axis so you can jump over obstacles.
Characters actually have meaningful relationships with each other that tie into a central narrative in a way that makes sense. You are incentivized to progress your relationships with everyone, not just the character(s) you intend to romance.
Progression system and leveling is good and balanced, 10/10 on this point. You unlock skill tiers in things by doing the thing (i.e. fishing unlocks more fishing perks, farming unlocks more farming perks) but the exp ("essence") you gain from doing any activity is universal. You can allocate those points to anything you want as you need it.
The fact that the characters have different seasonal outfits is a huge point of interest for me. I never realized how much I cared about this sort of thing.
Tons of easter eggs/references to other things, mostly the game's two inspirations: retro anime and classic farming sims. Like Balor's clearly a reference to Skye from Harvest Moon DS Cute, March is a reference to Gray from Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town.
90% of player dialog options are completely meaningless. Please, please, please don't prompt me to choose between different responses if it doesn't do anything. I'm not expecting branching paths or alternate cutscenes, but the other character's next bit of dialogue should be different depending on what I said to them. What's the point of giving me two dialog choices if their next words are identical regardless of what I picked?
I want to enter my cat into the Animal Festival. If Juniper can enter her dog, why can't I?
I was going to complain that the non-romantic NPCs don't have any special interactions/cutscenes, but I now see those will be released with the full game so it's all good. But right now, befriending the non-romanceable townsfolk doesn't show you a whole lot.
