I'm feeling a bit conflicted about the art, it is lovely and objectively better than the first game. But at the same time I do like the crisp moderatedly generic art of OL1 for a visual novel medium, it's probably just a matter of preference but I can see the OL2 art style + fall imagery getting a bit tiring on the eyes as the game progresses.
Also I'm dumb & couldn't find the display options for the VN or Comic style they mentioned at the beginning of the game, I think the default is the comic one?
First, to help you out with the text boxes, don't quote me, because I currently don't have the beta installed (saving space on my PC), I believe it's if you switch to "simple text/font" or something like that, all games typically have it, and it takes out the decoratives/fonts and send everything back to basic. I dunno, sorry, I really didn't focus on this because I was anticipating experiencing, and rather like, their immersive textboxes. So, to answer the question, yes, the comic one is on by default (I would assume this is a good thing, because who wants to downgrade? I don't think the set up was too visually impairing...?).
As for your art critique, could you elaborate? I don't understand much of it, but the "fall imagery" part, I think the art looks very similar to OL1, other than obviously having "crisper lines" and better measured anatomy, which is a given since OL2 is made practically years after OL1 (you can see the artist coming into their own through OL1's journey), I think it's a nice improvement, and can't imagine reverting back. On the "Fall imagery", part, I'm afraid I have to disagree as well, both because Autumn is my favorite season, and orange is my favorite color, one of which I hardly ever get to see anywhere, ever (
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and blues seem to be the popular colors for anything, this is me complaining because I hate both of these colors, but I get they're "earthy"). But, I don't think this is going to change, because the feature of OL2 is that you play out the moments of these characters in Autumn; OL1 was Summer themed, and I think they want to make a point to switch it up with an Autumn one, now.
Speaking on this, I'm curious how they plan to implement Autumn moments, for the grade school ages, because this is typically the time when children go to school; do you think we're going to get some school drama? Some detention scenes? School projects? Now I'm just spitballing ideas, here, but wouldn't it be cute to have the age old cliché of a baby partnership project? We might even be able to experience child raising in this game, without having to age the characters at step 5+ (homage to OL1's marriage in step 4), and the characters don't even have to be committed/dating/adults!