I don't think there is any chance of you changing your mind, but still want to put my opinion out there. When it comes to the overall setting I can completely understand wanting to redo that concept since having two entirely different worlds is one hell of an undertaking and could definitely be biting off way more than you can chew. When it comes to the character designs I think that players actually have more attachment to the character designs than the developer (at least in this case). Part of it likely has to do with the anchoring effect (they are the first designs for the character many of us have seen so mentally they are the ones we are attached to the most). I think an artist's relationship with their character designs is different due to the fact that they made the characters, as opposed to the player who experiences them more as a fundamental part of the character and much harder to separate from everything else that makes up the character. For many people, I'd imagine that the new character designs will always feel to them like someone pretending to be the original character. I understand that this is not the first redesign that the characters have had and that you weren't in a very good place when you made them.
When it comes to the character redesigns themselves, I understand they are the first iteration and I have seen the work you have been doing on them in discord as well. For Serra, I get wanting to take the character in a different direction and update the model to better fit with that new direction. I really think that Celeste's model was absolutely perfect though, I don't think the new one is an improvement. Lillian's new model (the discord one) looks different and more "gamer girl-y" but I don't think it has the same kind of tomboyish aspects that both the game's writing and the current character model emphasize. Alex's original model I think did a good job of being balanced between the Mom and the big sister look. The new model feels less "cute" and more just sexy to me, although personally, it actually makes her look older to me instead of younger. Even though if I understand correctly, you are actually going for a more big sister look with her in the new one. Currently, the writing does most of the work for their characterization, and combined with their current character models, they feel like complete people/characters/individuals who have certain characteristics. From what I have seen of the redesigns, especially Grace's, the new designs make them feel more like the characteristic is all there is to the character. Grace previously felt like a super cheerful girl who also liked animals and nature, while the new one just says "Farm Girl" also kind of looks like the Wendy's logo girl if I'm honest. But that might just be the hairstyle.
Sometimes when I am drawing or cooking, or really doing any type of art, I will get whatever I'm making to a point that I am happy with and that looks good, but I still won't feel "done" with it. So I will end up continuing to mess with whatever I'm making more and more to the point that it ends up being either not really any better or just straight-up worse. Then I end up just wishing I had stopped messing with it and let it be what it already was.
In regards to massive re-do's like this seems to be, it does make me worried about the future of the game. I really enjoy this game, and I have played a whole lot of differnt VNs (there's about a TB of them on my PC currently). I have seen lots of developers take on the challenge of making a game like this. There have been many that I found extremely good, that never finished because the developer decided to make a big re-design of the game like this, which ended up burning them out and they never finished doing it. For many of them it seemed like once they started down the path of trying to improve some previous aspect of the game, it then made them want to fix something else, and something else......etc. I just hope that doesn't end up happening to this game. Making your future workload manageable is certainly important, and I think that combining the world is a good idea. But beware of doing stuff that isn't going to add anymore content for the people currently playing the game, isn't really going to make the game better for the people playing it, will end up making it take longer for new content updates to come out for the game, and will of course, also put a bunch more work on your plate as well. Also, a question regarding the character redesigns. Are only the main characters being redesigned or will all of the other side characters be getting changed as well? (Princess Detta, Vivian, Lexy, Sophie, Runa, Willow, Harlow....etc)
At the end of the day, it's your game, you can do whatever you want with it. But, I don't think anyone playing the game would have had an issue if the character models stayed the same and the way some of the characters were written changed. None of what I wrote was meant to offend in any way so hopefully, it didn't have that effect. I hope everything ends up working out with your redesign and that everyone is able to eventually enjoy the new character models just as much, if not more than the old ones. Best of luck.
P.S. At some point when you are happy with them you may want to "finalize" the character models so that people won't have to worry about the characters they have grown to love being changed or removed.
