Fuck no, this is legitimately bad writing and creates unnecessary drama for zero reason. And for your information, I reject her all the time cause frankly she pales in comparison to the girls in the main routes.
explain to me this, you take 8 fucking episodes to finally establish a relationship not that “dating” just for a character to come in on Episode 10/11 and derail that effort with zero input (your character decides to meet them all the time, and decides to meet them in their house)
Well like it or not but there is not character but Neil in this story who shaped/influenced tremolo as much as Zoey. Sage is next but theres a biiiiiiiiiiiiiig gap between them (and Sage is my fav).
Tremolo is not you even when you like to self insert. You may dont give a shit about her but the protagonist of our story does. There is no "effort derailed" if you dont chose like that, and if you take the choice to get back to her that can lead to interesting subplots too.
Im for example kinda curious how a chick playthrough where you go 100% with all maingirls (aka break Josys heart and so on) -> decide for Jill -> cheat/flirt heavy with bianca -> go back to Zoey and than maybe going for bianca again or who knows would look like.
I think the opportunity existing is fun. This doesnt have to be your main playthrough.
You know sometimes less is more, and it could lead to be a more consistent storytelling. I feel like DPC started to go overboard with a lots of things now.
Well at least the choice in this episode didnt needed any bonus renders or anything as it already existed for the others path and will probably stay like that (DPC using others path zoey scenes for the mg -> zoey path zoey scenes) so its not really thaaaat much more work i would argue.
He does way more other timewasting stuff imo, the branching is what makes being a dik so good imo, being a dik as a more or less linear story would suck ass. I would prefer him skipping 90% of the minigames instead of story branching.