Well, I played through about a half-hour's worth of the game just to take a look at it, and I'm pretty happy with what I saw. The main thing -- and call me a graphics whore all you like, `cause I am one -- is it looks great. They seem to have used the same building blocks from Rune Factory, though there are more 3-D elements in this game. The sounds are all pretty much the same as what was in the last Cube Harvest Moon game, which is pretty cool. The menus are easy to navigate, and there's a hotkey thing where you can set various items / tools for easy access. The only thing I had a small issue with is the detection of the highlighted-action areas. Like in Rune Factory, where when you're plowing, watering, etc., and there's a highlighted area over a piece of land, in this game you have to have your character situated in just the right place in order for the action to engage properly. It's not a big deal, and I quickly got accustomed to where I needed to be in order to plow and all that, but it's something worth noting, I suppose.
Anyway, the game seems to have a lot of nice touches, including being able to toggle to top map, and I very much look forward to an English version. As with any Harvest Moon, this game isn't going to appeal to everyone, I'm sure, but for us folks who dig this sort of laid-back adventuring, it looks to be fun.