I'm in the same boat as you in the sense that I think I'll only be playing my main Bella save from now on. Although I didn't particularly enjoy it, I do appreciate the effort DPC made with the haunted mansion and planning mini-game, but the freeroams completely broke me, I was never a hater before but by the middle of this episode I felt like I was doing a chore...
After replaying Bella's scenes a couple of times now, I do like what DPC did with her, despite her being my favourite LI, I also realized that MC didn't look like he'd fit in with her at all even without taking the age gap into account, but man did DPC make it work in this episode in my opinion. MC now understands her better and her sense of humour, their back and forth felt really natural and I found it it funny, their relationship was done well and EP9 Isabella is completely different from EP1 Isabella, seeing her actually smile, laugh and be happy was wonderful to watch and I look forward to see how it evolves.
With this said, I also acknowledge the lack of progress in the story and my main fear became true, even with Jill confronting her, DPC still refuses to bring James into the conversation, it seems a bit absurd to me at this point... But I do understand why Jill is so angry and is avoiding her, Bella really broke her trust, even if MC only goes on one date with her, it was still Bella who incentivized it (in a CHICK route) to the point where she called Jill to the library to try and hook her up with him. The moment Bella involved herself with MC the secret wasn't only hers to keep and should've told Jill as soon as she realized she couldn't fight against her feelings.
Then there's the issue with Bella's route itself for me which is the drama that keeps piling on without none of the other issues she has, being dealt with, there's James, the teacher thing, the Jill thing and now there's also Nick finding out about them, it almost feels like the relationship is reaching a point of no return and Bella's life will be completely ruined... I'm curious to see how DPC will handle it.
But yeah, for the first time since I started playing this game I'm not actually excited for the next episode, I'll certainly play it, but I can't feel hyped after EP9's Bella ending was literally a repeat of EP8 and after DPC pulled that stunt with that bullshit intro which might not even come into play until the end of the season or even on season 4 only.