I probably freaked out about it because of my bias. I mean, Gray lost his hat (and what looks like ten years of life), Ricky the Chicken Man looks more girly, Cliff... I dunno what exactly's wrong with Cliff, maybe his hair. And his clothes. Doctor just plain doesn't look as good, though I'm also not sure why, and Kai's hair is showing.
To really understand the appearance differences you'd probably have to look at their art from the original Friends of Mineral Town. For example:
https://harvestmoon.fandom.com/wiki/Gray_(FoMT) As you can see, Gray looks quite a lot different. I like Gray's older appearance more, so I flipped out a little.
Oh, and some characters got random name changes that confuse me. If my memory serves, Mary's name was changed to Marie (which weirds me out slightly), Won's name was changed to Huang (I plain don't understand that one), and Ann's name was changed to Ran (which apparently is an actual name?). Some other characters might've had name changes, but I only remember those three.
And the name "Story of Seasons" is dumb because Harvest Moon sounds cooler. Change my mind.
(OK I'm going off on way too many tangents)
