All you need to do to "hear him at the mike" is to look at his weekly public posts on his Patreon. (He now seems to have settled on a two-weekly schedule, where releases for subscribers are on a Monday and then for the public are on the following Monday.) Yes, the heavy combat emphasis at the start of Act 3 was probably a mistake, but he's largely rowed back from that over the last couple of months, and in recent updates there's been lots of character and story stuff again. About the only characters that we are still waiting to reconnect with are those on the far side of the Nexus, but it seems like that can't be far away..
The game has been like this for nearly a year now. The fact there is like 30 districts, which take 3-4 wins each to "conquer" with a lame, juvenile "horny" battle system. I mean, he designed it like this so not sure how anyone can say the "heavy combat emphasis was probably a mistake". The game did not write itself and he has had a LONG time to fix this now! I mean, any real one would have received the feedback, realized this was not the right way to go, and worked on bringing back the game as it was and progressing the story. Nope, add dice and other nonsense and keep on making people wait for game updates.
This is like starting a book about World War 2, taking months of reading it, getting to the good part, and then the book suddenly turns into poetry. If you wanted a book about poetry, that would have been the book you started reading in the first place. Or watching a Horror movie and getting to the good part, then turning the movie into a teen comedy. As
I would not play a turn-based combat pixel game featuring head-swap porn "rewards" with women who have no backstory and repetitive porn rewards. That is not the game I started, or asked for. Not to mention, all that time and effort getting though ACT I and ACT II, with all the stuff I acquired playing through it, suddenly being taken away. Waiting many game updates over years to progress.
This was a story-based AVN game, and that is what drew all his fans and support, not to mention money! AVN games take effort and time to go through. You progress the story, have to find the girls and build your relationships with them. Then, you have to wait for multiple game updates to further the story, which can take a long time. Often years, and years in this case.
Only for Arc Games to say, "Well, let's throw in this repetitive, childish, boring pixel battle game with lazy rewards and call it ACT III!" If it was a 2-3 fight thing and then the story continued, I would have thought it was pretty neat. Nope, it takes 3-4 battles
every district to "get rewarded" and progress, plus
there are many districts. Too many to remember, and the girls you "defeat" are forgettable fodder and mere head swaps of the last girl you "defeated". Meanwhile, all that time and effort you spent is on the back burner, the story is thrown out the window, you cannot even be with the women like Gwen that you are not locked out from. You got to defeat them districts, or do what I do and turn the shit off!
This is not arguing with you by any means, it just frustrates me to no end that this was the decisions made after waiting all those game updates over all that time! Meanwhile, I am playing and supporting other AVN game developers that know how to focus their games and not switching the game format for no apparent reason.