Phew, quite a lot to read, I shouldn't have done silly things such as sleep and work ...
I love the last version of Deluca Family, it is in my top 5 out of hundreds of games I've played here. However, I really can't stand grinding for content. In my younger days I could play classic RPGs for weeks straight, but I have a lot less patience for that now, and with VNs, content is king, really, so obscuring content behind repetitive gameplay, really takes all the enjoyment out of it as a player, for me at least.
Just to counter this point (has been made multiple times, but I can only counter one opinion and chose one constructive one) while I want some content, I also prefer some gameplay - hence why I can't stand Kinetic Novels.
So in general I like the new system, brings back fond memories of the olden times and works pretty well, it is obvious how much love and creativity has gone into it. A few kinks here and there could optimize it but with CTRL skipping a possibility a mission doesn't take too long if just repeated for some XP or similar. I do think though that the first mission should be more easing in - either slightly change it or make an eaven easier, so that you can get accustomed to walking around and exploring and testing without failing most tests. As it stands, the first experience is more likely to fail than not because players still don't know what they are doing, don't know the map, and will stumble into the wrong things. Give MC a contract with somebody experienced who will explain "recreation areas", and maybe some indication on whether or not something is likely to fail. But it is - to me - a major improvement on the one click contracts which did not have any feel about them at all.
However, I feel that in the long run this can become very grindy if we need a lot of money for stuff or a lot of experience to advance the story. If I remember how often I spent a day at Wilfred's with three "daylight" and one "nighttime" mission CTRL skipping to get the money for item X, I dread doing the same in this system a bit, although I am not advanced enough to truly judge the balancing so far.
Another aspect that I think hasn't been mentioned are the character portraits to know where to find somebody: great addition, the drawings look great, however in my opinion the comic style clashes with the general graphics and very distinguished look (especially post update) of the interface and just doesn't gel. Pics from renders would be more boring but IMO also less intrusive.