Wound up playing through around four and a half hours straight tonight, it's definitely a slow starter but oddly engaging almost despite that. Got through the first major dungeon and it's at this point that it feels like the game's really opening up more with the ability to form full parties and having to start planning for who to take along and who to keep back running shops. Keeping everything stocked really hasn't been a problem yet aside from the garden's starting fruit-output being a bit low, and by the time those demands ramp up with a bigger oasis, more tools will be put in place to delegate a lot of that basic farming stuff to other people anyway, so I feel like the micromanagement isn't going to ever get that overwhelming. It kind of reminds me of the farming/duplicating structures put into Monster Hunter games, where your need to gather and produce basic stuff is eventually made much quicker and easier.
Overall the game's really charming so far, although I do feel like the main impetus to kick things off is oddly glossed over a bit quickly in terms of how the player character reacts to it. Overall I guess I just feel like, as in many other cases, there's no real value had in going with a silent protagonist for this game, since it makes all the resident interactions feel slightly more hollow than their real potential. Really, "potential" is just the key word that sticks with me so far, I want to see this particular game continue to grow, and hopefully a sequel that can ramp everything up even further. There's a lot to like here in the way the game balances town and party development.