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Glad to be helpful! I'm admittedly not too knowledgeable on animation myself, I only learned this recently trying to look up an explanation for why the walk cycle was bothering me, but I'll try to elaborate on the whole contact pose thing.

Basically, walk cycle animations tend to have 4 key frames: one contact pose where both legs are on the ground, one on the front and one on the back; a second contact pose where the legs' positions are reversed; and two passing poses in between where the legs are superimposed.  So for example, you could animate a character like this:

1. With their left leg on the front and their right leg on the back (first contact pose, idk if it matters which leg goes on the front first)
2. With the right leg raised behind the left, both right below the body (first passing pose)
3. With the right leg in front and the left leg on the back (second contact pose)
4. With the left leg raised in front of the right leg (second passing pose)
5. Loop back to the first contact pose.

It's admittedly a bit hard to tell because the animation is so fast, but here, each of the playable overworld characters seem to have only one passing pose where the legs are perfectly still, which I think is acceptable under this limited pixel artstyle; but also only one contact pose that repeats after every passing pose, with the same leg on the front and the same leg on the back (which one is which depends on the side, since the sprite is mirrored) every time.  So it ends up looking like the character is only ever taking steps with one of their legs somehow, if that makes any sense.

Again, I wasn't even sure if this was intentional, especially since the forward and backward walk cycles look much better, and it's argurably a very minor thing many players won't even notice. But I did find it quite distracting myself, so I thought it was worth mentioning. Hope this helps!

(Oh, and I'll have to think about the playtester thing)

Thanks for letting me know! Already finished replaying the normal route, haven’t done the evil route (I don’t think I have the guts for it, lol) or managed to beat the Warbear yet.

My previous praise still stands, and most of the new additions are pretty neat! I don’t know how many of them are new and how many I just missed on my previous playthrough, but I like the optional interactions that depend on your current party, like young Sarah staying behind if you try to take her to the fight against the Majestic Deer, or Billy being confused at the Sarah in the tree claiming he’s still in his camp. The trapped bunnies are a nice way to liven up some rooms, and the fact that they become shadows when you free them is pretty intriguing story-wise, especially since the same thing happens to the one young Billy butchers near the end. Speaking of, I also really liked the nuance added to Billy’s character at the end, and the apparent parallels between his childhood and Sarah’s. And it might not be quite for me, but the addition of a dark route is bound to make the game a lot more interesting and replayable.

I did notice some of the things I mentioned in my previous comment aren’t fixed yet (mirror disappearing, Swagger bar not being visible in the Strats menu, young Sarah’s collision in the hidden pond), but I understand they might take some time. As for some new issues I had:

• I don’t remember if this was also an issue in the original version or not, but some of the rabbits seemed to have their animations “reversed” from the side. Their midair pose is the default and they periodically switch to the grounded pose instead of the other way around. I don’t remember which specific ones had this issue, unfortunately.
• I found another instance of sprites transforming when interacted with from the wrong angles: the chest in the room below the Hunter’s Camp momentarily transformed into a completely different chest sprite when I opened it from behind. I haven’t noticed this with any other chests, though.
• I forgot to ask this in my previous comment, but is there any way to reach the red slime things in the room below the Camp? They really look like they should be able to be fought or otherwise interacted with.
• I’m very confused about how Swagger carries over between combats. On the previous version I was under the impression that it only reset when you use a healing spot like Sarah’s room, but now I’ve noticed I’ll sometimes lose a lot of the Swagger (but usually not all of it) I built up and didn’t use in one combat when I start another. Doesn’t help that the Strats screen will always display the amount as 0 regardless of how much you have at the beginning of a fight.
• The Euthanasia never used the healing move she had in 1.5 when I fought her this time. Is that intentional?
• A minor one, but the bosses’ health bars seem to go a bit offscreen while you’re attacking them, making it harder to tell how much HP they have left. It also seems like boss minions, like the Majestic Deer’s organs and frozen Sarah’s jellyfish, don’t have health bars of their own, which makes the mechanic feel pretty inconsistent, but that might be intentional.
• The computer on the Southern Fields tower is pretty broken. Someone already brought up the background being stuck on the screen, but on top of that the AI chatlog file won’t open at all.
• The second paragraph of the message on top of the path to Anatea’s grave seems to be missing one or more letters at the start.
• It seems like when you talk to the Sarah instance in the Frozen Lake, she’ll refer to Winter as James regardless of what first name you actually gave him. Don’t know if that’s intentional.
• In the Frozen Cavern, to the right of Sarah’s memory of Anatea in the hospital, the entire wall is missing collision, allowing you to walk into it.

I also felt like the difficulty spiked a lot towards the end, with the Spirit of Rebellion and the Jackalope both being able to one-shot my party members on a whim; but I didn’t fight a lot of enemies that run, so maybe I was just underleveled, and either way I managed to beat both of them in 1-2 tries each. And I don’t quite understand rebel Sarah’s role in the story, particularly the way she attacks Winter and hardly acknowledges it after you beat her, or how the scene where she leaves home is abruptly cut to from the Jackalope fight; but you could argue that the ambiguity enhances the surrealism of the game.

Either way, I’m still very interested to see where the game goes from here! Hope this feedback helps.