To be fair, I do think that the majority of the fans of this game were here specifically for the Dark Mind patch content. That was the primary draw of the game, and obviously the way the game was "intended" to be played.in your mind maybe or for you...
I never played with the Dark mind patch and I enjoyed it...
again... in your mind...
That's not to say it had to be for everyone, but it really cannot be denied that this game got the following it did explicitly because of the multiple niches it catered to at a time that - at least when it was initially being made - those niches were not all being filled in a way that satisfied many people. This game did, until Blue stopped working on it, and then other games came and filled in the gaps.
And oddly enough, now some of those niches are becoming more barren or are not being given satisfying results again in the last year or so, bringing us closer to a situation like we were when Ecchi Sensei first started releasing.