which is why all my PCs are either Kitsunes (I know they're not "real" Kitsunes but it's still a meaningful TF)
I do believe that God TFs, like the Kitsune TF, are much deeper than other TFs. After all, Kiyoko laments how your lifespan will not match hers, but if you speak after the Kitsune TF, she'll mention how now your lifespan will match her own. Along with that, I
think you're getting connected to the communal soul in exchange for giving up your own, along with getting a personal imitation to trick demons, though I'm not sure. So, I think that the pc does, essentially, become a real kitsune, unlike with other tfs.
If it were up to me I would embrace the fantasy of races having their different strengths and weaknesses. For example a PC fully transforming into a Minotaur would gain a bonus to Strength and Toughness & malus to Agility while a fully transformed Mouse-folk would get a bonus to Agility and Cunning & malus to Toughness. Chimeras would gain no bonuses & maluses to prevent min-maxing.
Race does actually impact your pc's affinities. It usually doesn't come up, but if you're another race, your affinities change, like how
Minotaurs have affinities for Strength, Toughness, and Agility, and Cowgirls have affinities for Toughness, Cunning, and Presence. Of course, since you also have affinities based on your class and background, unless you're using an affinity which is only tied to your race and then you change your race (like I did with one of my characters) you're unlikely to notice the change. It is not a bonus, but rather, it's affinities, so it just impacts what you can increase by 3 when leveling up. Also it would be weird for Minos to get a penalty to agility when that's one of their affinities.
Personally, I do want tfs to be more meaningful than they are, but I do not want them to give a stat bonus or penalty. Stat bonuses/penalties would incentivize people to pick certain tfs, not because they want to be the thing, but rather because statstick. And unlike CoC, where tf usage and abuse could be seen as fitting in narratively, since it shows the pc is adapting to the corrupted world and using what they find to morph their body and become stronger, here there's never really been a narrative justification for tf'ing for strength, only for personal taste, except with any god tfs. I do want roleplay effects from tfs, things like a big fluffy mane from a hypothetical lion tf, more characters acting or reaction differently if you're a certain race (Like how Kiyoko's Play Tag sex scene needs you to be a Lupine, or how you can walk through the Orc camp without a disguise in Right of Conquest if you're an Orc, or how you can jump straight to fucking Hashat if you're an elf), but I don't want combat to be affected by race. The mere fact that there's stat affinities based on race and you get a bonus to a stat from picking certain starting races already has a heavy impact on combat based on your race.