Haha, I'm guilty, Jared. I think I've glanced at the box a few times and thought, "Oh there's Jared" before I could stop myself.
I'm closing in on my 100% now. I still haven't finished the moon and the ending, but I think I can pretty safely say I like this better than the original. This is coming from a die hard fan who played the original to death and considered it in my top 3 games of all time. There's a whole bunch of minor annoyances, a few major annoyances, and then a whole lot of stuff that feels amazing.
My absolute favorite change is actually the Bomber's Notebook. In the original, simply talking to a person would fill in their entire schedule for you. You still had to figure out where and how to meet them, but the "when" was all laid out for you. Now, however, you have to interact with someone in a given period for their schedule to be updated, requiring you to piece together their schedules on your own. If it were left like that, it would probably be too overwhelming, but the Bomber kids now give rumors about peoples' schedules and how to accomplish everything. I think this is brilliant! Not only does it serve as a convenient checklist for things you still need to do, but it makes the world feel even more alive, like there's just so much to do. I love walking into town and seeing one of the bombers get all excited because he has some new information, and these clues are just vague enough that new players should have a good time piecing things together. To me, this is the biggest positive change the game has made.