I completely agree, Kozue SJ was the better game. Hell I'd love to see that game remade with this game's artwork....but I'd also love to see some new stuff from this developer. If only they were big enough to outsource that kind of thing.
Could just be me, but I feel a lot of people were underwhelmed with this release. I still love the developer's work and am excited for the next project, but it was definitely a step back in gameplay from the previous title. Artwork and music were awesome though.
After inspecting the game, I have seen so much cut content that either he felt he was aiming too far with this, or (most likely) he ran out of budget/time and had to rush it out.
There are several unused maps (almost all main locations from Kozue's Strange Journey are recreated), unused outfits (extra underwear type for Sumire hints at that), there is a cut party member (female version of Kozue's brother), 3 scenes and 9 h-scenes that are not present in the game:
Missing scenes:
1) Kozue's brother transforming/discovering he is now a girl
2) Kozue and the other party members helping him/cheering him up after discovering he' a girl
3) Kozue's brother discovering he has a period/can get pregnant
Missing h-scenes:
1) Sayuri going to hot spring with her dad(?), having sex with him while other visitors observe (according to code comments)
2) Kozue, Hina, Miu Simure and Kozue's brother (in female form supposedly) group orgy/prostitution at Yakuza office
3) getting defeated by a tentacle boss resulting in sex scene with all party members
4) Kozue's brother (in female form supposedly) prostitution
5) Kozue's brother (in female form supposedly) group prostitution with Sayuri
6) Kozue's brother (not sure if male or female form) masturbation scene
7) Sumire and Kozue's brother (male form assumed) sex scene (scene fully coded, missing dialog and probably scene trigger)
8) another scene like #9 (probably for female form) but no graphics included
9) Sumire and Kozue's brother (male form assumed) sex scene (scene fully coded, missing dialog and probably scene trigger, code is 1:1 with #7)
Taking into consideration that and the lack of outfits, I'm inclined to believe the 1-year-of-no-news either caused all this to be removed, or he is outsourcing the artwork to someone else and just couldn't afford it so that stuff got cut.
Regardless, what we do know for sure is that the game is killing it when it comes to popularity on DLSite and definitely sold really well. Considering that he has most of the world re-created and not used, I would honestly love it if he would just decide to go with a template approach - remove the events while keeping the world and mechanics and quickly push out another game based on another party member, or just create a bigger game faster.