>>11364511Japanese Entama and Western V4 have a pretty different approach despite having the same general concept.
Entama focuses a lot more on the "slice of life" aspects, with the daily events and news articles having more dialogue regarding what's going on in the Tamagotchi/Uratama Town, growths take twice as long as the rest of the series, and there's things like cooking. However, this is also the era where item animations have gotten lazier, in Keitai each character had special animations tied to their exclusive item, here all items just have the character use their generic sprite animations like sitting and admiring an item. As you said, growth has no randomness or even care attached (for teen->adult at least), you can neglect a Mamezoku baby and end up with Mametchi/Mimitchi as long as you do the bare minimum and keep it from dying. However, the challenge comes more in making sure your Tamagotchi meets the requirements for a good job during adulthood, so there's still an incentive/fail scenario, just not one tied to growths.
V4, on the other hand, removes a lot of the worldbuilding approach in favor of more gameplay. More games, jobs now have minigames instead of having text attached, and growths from child->teen are more random so you can't beeline your favorite. Teen->adult growths also have a fail scenario too, taking good care of your Tamagotchi but failing to meet skill requirements result in Pyonchitchi/Pyonkotchi, while neglect regardless of skill results in Gozarutchi/Masktchi. Items are more V2-3 styled where all adults can use items and have specialized spritework for them.
I think they're both fine, and especially like Entama's slowed growth rate since the younger stages in most of the Connection/Plus era feels very overlooked. However, Entama also throws away the classic care mistake-style growth that was pretty important to the Connection series' identity and hyperfocuses on jobs, so overall I'm more a fan of the V2, V3 2024 remake, and Keitai.
