I am pretty sure I will just state the obvious, but:
All this "forced romance" is a necessary evil. Implementation of the story in other ways would simply not be possible. So complaining about it seems just plain stupid to me ("I dont want to date Josy" "I tried my best to avoid Maya and we still kissed" "I tried my best to piss off Jill and we still went on a date" "That's not how it should be - Stupid Illusion of choice" yadayadayada).
Forced Romance as in: Kissing Maya, Date with Josy, Date with Jill etc.
It is absolutely impossible to avoid those scenarios, due to the plot and how it's driven.
You can ignore Bella and/or Sage during chapter 4 but in the end Sage and Bella will befriend you back in Chapter 5. Same with Josy and Maya. That's cause all of those characters are important for the plot.
And tbh that's how it should be.
DPC crafted a very interesting story, where everything does happen in a fixed way. Your choices technically only affect which H-scenes you can and will see. But the overall plot demands every single Love Interest to be present and that's the best decision DPC could make to create such a good game.
I am pretty sure that the ending will be an accumulation of your choices and different endings will be available, but knowing DPC I am quite positive, that most choices in this game do not matter for the overall plot (THAT'S how it should be btw, lest you want to program/write a 1TB Renpy game).
I am still mad when people complain about the affection system, the dating system and whatnot after they played the game 5 times and gamed the system. It's not really meant to be gamed. If you look at it with a more experienced/gamified viewpoint with DIK points/Relationship points, of course the game falls apart.
But playing the game for the first time and making decisions on a very personal level with the feedback at the end of each chapter how much Chick/Dik you are: Wonderful decision by DPC. Kudos to such a great design.
And yes. That forced romance was a big reason why I did not like Acting lessons that much. It really dragged down my experience being forced into a relationship with Megan, while not being interested in any of those girls. Still... I enjoyed the game and I knew that it was a necessary sacrifice DPC made.
TLDR: Dont complain about forced romance and/or the point/affinity system, unless they are blowing it WAY out of proportion/context. If you do I can't help myself rolling my eyes at you.
