This want to play The Joyful is a huge improvement over how I felt about playing The Painful.
To apply the bleed status ailment, you must press the action button when the outer circle approaches the inner one.
Aside from the aforementioned Ricky and Cheeks as party members, the trailer also shows them having a team attack that implies that moves can be done with certain party members in the same party, a party member named Hawk that is nowhere to be found in the final game, a sneaking mechanic, proper battle backgrounds instead of the in-engine generated ones, and more blatant foreshadowing of Dr.
We'll see how it goes.