Part 2: I hope this feedback is useful to the developers, this is not intended as a public critical review.
Made it to level 23 and I'm noticing a lot of bugs. A bunch of the graphics settings can't be changed without UI errors/bugs. Successfully throwing a shuriken displays the error text that you have no ranged weapon equipped. I couldn't cook edamame beans at a stove where I could cook bear meat just fine. Getting to Notchi City was amazing until the roof above the entrance bridge started flickering. One of the bridge guards is down below having a swim. The way some prof skills are in the profession tab while some are in the skill book is confusing, and some buttons like create campfire are unresponsive. One of the music tracks in Land of Fire is missing the end of its loop.
The quests in general went grey fast, especially the island tour. The intro to smithing questline felt a bit pointless since academy students are now given a true T1 weapon back in Konoha. I actually liked doing my first couple D-Rank quests, finding the lost cat was a nice callback to the show. However doing this 120+ more times to rank up sounds really tedious. I started to sleepwalk through a lot of dialogue because it didn't feel authentic or accurate. There's an NPC who says "tho" instead of "though" which took me right out of it.
I wish I could free respec as an Academy Student/Genin. It's easy to make a suboptimal choice when you know nothing and then you're just stuck with it. Apparently going bloodline-first is a big trap that I almost fell for, so a free respec could save a lot of noobs from quitting. I never figured out how to use the Paperbomb Kunai skill as I was looking for an ammo item similar to the shuriken.
I didn't like how much AoE grinding there was to get skillpoints. I'd rather fight single roaming ninja/beast than many spiders or bees at once.
Inventory space was a constant burden. Things like the Spiky Thorn aren't grey/junk but I never found a use for them either. I bought as many bank slots as I could and tried to craft often but there just aren't many options (except cooking which felt pretty good, especially visiting akimichi grill).
As a newcomer, a phone-verified Discord on a public game shows the players are trying to say something the developer does not want to hear, like about microtransactions and how they affect game balance. Also the "white name" aggro is crazy considering the server is struggling to stay in double-digit population numbers.
So much of what a new player needs to know exists outside of game in the General Gameplay Guide which I didn't see until just now. You guys wanna see my custom map I was making because I had no idea an official one existed? Turns out the thing I was enjoying doing the most wasn't even necessary looooool. My only excuse is 99% of games use their launcher to spam you with ads so I'm selectively blind to all those little boxes.
This project is so small and charming I want to love it so bad. These bugs are driving me up the freaking wall though. Good luck and happy hunting devs!