Pretty cool game! I haven't played the first one, unfortunately, but I really love the professional design of this so much that I'm seriously considering it before I proceed with playing this some more! From what I've seen, this seems like a nice little adventure game: walk around the big world, talk with all manners of wacky characters, get to know them from collecting items to solve their problems with, all the while learning bits and pieces of the larger intrigue behind your existence. Tons of crazy little touches in this game, such as the animated text, speech bubble shadows, great graphics and animations: nice stuff!
That being said, there was something about how well-constructed the game was overall that made a lot of little odd things stand-out to me. It's kind of silly: I wouldn't complain about these for other games, but you've raised the bar so high here that I found it wild that you missed them, so sorry for punishing you for being good, haha. For example:
*Was puzzled at how hidden the save/load feature was all the way in the Settings menu: feel like it would be better served to be more accessible on the home screen given its importance. I actually didn't think it was even possible to save/load at first: even though I saw 'Data' in Settings, I easily thought it was just to access a reset/wipe, not save/load.
*Some dialogue was confusing: felt like sometimes it was implying that someone was thinking the lines instead of saying them despite using the same speech balloons no matter what. Would help if maybe the balloons could change shape: spiky ones for yelling, cloudy ones for thinking, etc.
*Was surprised that the footsteps didn't change depending on what surface you're walking on.
*Found it annoying that whenever you go into a phone option, like Settings, and then go back, it puts the cursor back on the default Messages instead of staying on the option you just selected previously.
*Found the transitions into houses and zones kind of annoying. I would prefer if they activate like anything else by popping up an exclamation point and confirming, instead of just walking into them, as sometimes I would walk past a door, not towards a door, and trigger going in despite not wanting to go in. Furthermore, was disappointed at the transition: would've loved a player animation of them going in, or at least a sound effect like a door being opened or fading footsteps.
*There were some odd graphical errors like misplaced tiles, as well as wind effects that look like they are supposed to be in front of a building yet are layered behind it.
*Would prefer if quest notifications only pop-up once the character has fully told you what the quest was: awkward that the notifications come so ahead of the game that it tells the future, haha.
*There's an awkward period after a zone transition where you're frozen solid for a bit too long: just feels really stiff, especially since it looks like everything is already loaded in and it's just waiting for the transition overlay animation to finish.
*Some minor typos, like "a quick peak won't hurt" instead of "a quick peek won't hurt". Those homophones will getcha like that!
I'm sure I could think up a bunch of other little nitpicks, but that's just me going overboard to provide feedback: these and any other aspects I can think up doesn't really hurt the game or anything like that as I still think what you have here is really cool!