Yeah, it felt too much like it was neatly wrapped up and a bow placed on it.This really gets to the heart of the issue for me, which is how the whole thing was resolved. It was a resolution without much sense, where M&J not only forgave each other easily but also literally kissed and made up leaving the MC to feel like the spare prick at a wedding and then, for some arbitrary reason, rejected him if he wanted something before because of a game mechanic even if he did absolutely everything he could with each of them.
I have always maintained, and will likely continue to maintain even after this game is completed, that M&J should not have gotten back together but instead been unsure of where this whole situation leaves them. They could still forgive each other because they both cheated on each other with the same person for the same reasons and so they understand each other, but their relationship should now be uncertain and so the MC could have jumped in to say how he feels and then either propose the 3 of them keep seeing each other, or take some time to all just be friends and figure things out. That would have been more satisfying and made a lot more sense.
I don't mean freedom in the "GTA Online" run around with a rocket launcher causing mayhem type of freedom. More that I would like to see the branching paths sooner than later... I really want to see the story moving forward and the MC being shaped and the paths being opened or closed off. As I only played AL after it was completed I don't know how long it will take DPC to develop this story to where the choices matter and we will get to pick the MC's one or two or ???I see people say this a lot, and not just about this game, but "freedom" in these games is largely impossible. It's not like we're playing The Sims and we can totally control the life of the MC, there's always a level of linearity to these stories, even choice based ones, because the choices lead to certain pre-set outcomes. The MC and the story have already been designed to be shaped in a certain way by certain actions, so even VNs that feel like they have freedom still don't have total freedom because you're still playing a path that was created by the dev and one that can be followed by everyone so there's no uniqueness to that "freedom".