[nsf39k]

Odoacer also recognized Julius Nepos as de jure Western Emperor (although Nepos only ruled over a small rump state in Dalmatia) until Nepos was assassinated in 480.

The Kingdom of Italy also maintained Roman institutions like the consuls and Roman senate, which continued to exist as an organization until the 7th century.

With Odoacer acknowledging Nepos as the nominal ruler, referring to himself with Roman honorifics (usually as a patrician), and Roman institutions being preserved, I bet the average Roman civilian wouldn’t have experienced too big of a difference between 474 and 478 even if the Western Roman Empire had already been ‘replaced’ by the Kingdom of Italy.

[jjk166]

There wasn't much change in the 470s, but that's because the big earth shattering moments happened decades earlier. The Sacking of rome in 410 was really the moment everything changed for the common person. Rome had long since stopped being the capital of the west but it was still thought of as the core of the empire, the eternal city, and you can read accounts of how shocked everyone was when it fell for the first time in over 800 years. This led to many changes in how society functioned, for example the elites in italy stopped their euergetism which maintained the public works there.

By the time Rome was sacked again in 455, the empire was already beginning to disintegrate into autonomous states, most of which were distinctly not Roman. Roman civilization may not yet have dissapeared from the world, but it was no longer present in many of the places it had been.

By the time you get to 476, odds are the vast majority of people in italy weren't old enough to remember Rome as a functioning civilization. Sure some traditions carried on, just as some do to this day, but people's sense of identity and cultural values had long since changed from the days of Augustus.