I think that when at a signpost, one can hover over each location to see its contents (i.e. the information shown on the loading screen), and thus make partially-informed decisions, as well as allow for lots of trial-and-error type exploration.
I've found that the vast majority of my time in-game is spent trying to get materials to make food and drink to replenish my mood and energy. This is excellent for the first part of the game, while still learning to play and mess around, but I hope it's not like this the entire time!
Although it took a while, I've grown to like the very self-driven pace, and the laid-back, community-centered efforts.
My complaint about all the places being the same still stands; although many are different from each other graphically, it doesn't change anything about the way one interacts with the environment. The places (to me) which are the most fun are the ones which are structured differently, whether it be through hills, or rock-climbing to get places, or some of the Ix levels. Finding a way to make graphically different environments really feel different would be great, for instance: making mushrooms and treetops in Uralia be bouncy. I've found Sonic games differentiate areas really well by giving them unique attributes, in addition to having different graphics.