I experienced something similar in VV1 -- but I figured it was because I possibly wore the game out.. as I played it constantly from August last year until this new one was recently released! About a month or so ago, I realized that many of the villagers were under the same name, even after they died..their headstones would all have the same name, so it was hard to tell who had just died, etc.

I tried uninstalling/reinstalling it, and it fixed the problem, after which everything ran smoothly again.