@Craigp heck it, I would have settled for a simple Zelda dayside/nightside hard transition, with sitting on benches or ocarina song analogs to just let me choose which thing I'm doing now.
The gradients between the two just, weren't interesting. Any of the "NPC does different stuff depending on time" they had could have been resolved, literally, the same as Zelda. Namely: all NPCs can have a lil script they execute on start of day or start of night, some of which can kick you out of that time entirely if you interrupt them wrong. There, done.
I did play the game for a bunch of hours, but after a point it just became a slog. That point being, when you started to have to travel really far, to all the various POIs, heh. I liked the beginning, at least!