When I started playing this game the previews on the OP of this thread were the new ones (probably the same that you can see there now) so I was disappointed that what I was playing seemed so much worse, but the story grabbed almost immediately and the art grew on me, when I finally reached the updated art I confess I was disappointed and missed the old art I got attached during the long playtime.
Now I got used to the new one but as you I still got a soft sport for the old art.
Seems that's the case for many of us here, I think it was like a year and a half ago, more or less, I saw this one pop up when I searched for good rated games, I didn't dislike the art style but it looked a bit dark, used to think the story would be depressing as fuck or a bunch of lore info dumps and such, at that time I was looking for simple house dynamic stories but one day I wached a video about vns and the latest Alice fight was there so it caught my interest, downloaded this game just to see and all of my preconceptions were erased, the story nudges you in little by little so it's unnoticeable when you're deep in lore and a bunch of characters while retaining the same structure that lets you digest the story at your own pace. I said this a bunch of times before but I think it's true, WW has room to improve but the basics of narrative are his forte.