I've been fairly critical of the changes, but I'll acknowledge some improvements. Mainly trying to find justifications for the changes, and where to go from here. While I find pixelart charming, the reduced fidelity puts more emphasis on strong character design and posing which is a lot for a first time indie dev. Also it's a hard balance between dark tone and cartoonish. Even acclaimed titles like Lisa struggle with it. Development was pretty sluggish before this, and Vel is clearly more comfortable with his cg artstyle than pixel art. He wasn't really doing anything with level design, and the different zones were fairly random in how they were connected. I did still enjoy the sense of exploration which I miss in this linear progression. If everything is going to be this art style, then I think Saria's character profile should at least match the tenet outfit. I have an idea so you don't need to redraw all the other assets I'll explain later. Now that it's a VN, conditionals and branching narrative are easier than ever. Corruption can be as simple as a single value affected by cutscene choices. Give dialogue a neutral, corrupt, and "chaste" version. Give some consequence to being too corrupt or being too much of a prude. If you're feeling generous make tenet specific cutscenes. Clearly at some point you changed your mind on Saria being a mercenary to a samurai and it's been divisive. Why not keep the backstory options and character creation? There's that completely unexplained samurai outfit that appears in the tenet selection. Let players choose which outfit to start with based on the character creation!
Character progression, leveling, items, combat, and corruption have all never worked. There just aren't enough encounters for leveling. You could implement a hub, zones, and random encounters like CoC without a bunch of new assets, but he's struggling with just finishing linear progression as is so let's move on. The stamina, off-guard, endurance, will, clothes, health, and tenet mechanics were all a mess, and what triggers enemies into doing lewd attacks is too random. Never ending fights was a big flaw in previous versions as well. It's never been clear what Vel wanted to do with corruption. Is it just another health meter when you're stripped? Is being stripped supposed to be a toggle for the adult content? Is it an alternative to physical attacks like mental/magic? I love the idea of corruption, but it was way too slow to be used without serious grinding in the earlier versions. The body part breakdown was also way too complicated and random. There needs to be a tutorial section or a little dialogue showing Saria can't get out of every fight with brawn alone, and she may need to use her other assets. This should at least be the 2nd encounter and give you a starting corruption/lewd card. It's also a good chance to introduce the tenet system as Saria literally steals the clothes off the roughnecks back while interrogating them and figuring out how she's going to sneak into their hideout. Makes the dialogue more believable too.
I think there should be a single health bar and maybe an excitement bar that builds up with each turn which limits how long fights can last and keep it consistent for Saria and enemies. With an excitement bar, using corruption/lewd cards could require a baseline level of excitement so you can't spam them at the start of a fight and you have an idea when lewd attacks will start appearing from enemies. Once excitement is maxed it could cause stance bypassing damage and reset. This means gameplay isn't a binary between combat and lewd, and it doesn't trap you the way sensitivity did previously. With a single health meter for Saria and enemies, lewd cards are a high risk/high damage moves that can greatly weaken/damage enemies but also increase excitement further, limiting when they can be used. I would make it more streamlined how torn clothes, the tenet system, and cards work as well. You can begin a fight with a set of clothes/tenet on or off. Clothes tear at fixed health percentages and increase the rate excitement builds up each turn. You can't mix and match tenets and cards. Most cards should be tenet specific and different tenets should have baseline excitement levels, you know sexy outfits. This means you don't need to redraw every card for each tenet combination. When you're naked you no longer have access to tenet cards, but a baseline excitement level giving you constant access to lewd attacks for glass cannon gameplay.
But what about deck building? It's a balancing nightmare and you're already spinning so many plates. If you want customizable decks, I'd get rid of tenets, fetishes, stances, stats and all other mechanics entirely and do a pure cardgame like hearthstone. Everything is just cards you find/unlock. You have a turn, your enemy has a turn, you can only play cards in your hand and only what your pool allows. Maybe make tenet a field card and you can only use one in each deck. Your character creation gives you a single unique tenet card, and it also decides your character profile.
Finally all of this could have been ok if Vel was less defensive and more forthcoming. He had months to tell backers he wants to/needs to change direction. He could still win people back if he just communicates.
Doesn't want to shackle himself to the will of patrons
Well it's an awful lot to ask for their money then.