I haven't played this game for quite sometime. I called out the grinding in the review I did in August of last year.
"The real problem with this game...that saps any fun out of it is that it grinds and grinds and grinds with little to no reward. It has to be one of the most grinding games I've played in years."
Is that still the case? If so I'll skip trying to play it again. Too bad, it was an interesting premise.
I haven't tried this or the previous version yet, but as of a couple versions ago yes.
This game suffers from what I think of as "empty grind". I don't mind a little grind, but this game makes it fairly difficult to focus grind on anything and you just spend days and days diffusely building up relationships with a dozen targets. So even if there are solid periodic progression points for a character you don't see them very often and just spend days and days of in game doing mind numbing grind in what feels like an "empty" world with nothing happening.
I have been hoping as the developers continue the game they work to fill in all that empty, preferably at least twice as much fill in events as new major events so the game seems alive and interesting.
I'm going to have to try this version and find out I suppose.