Ok finished it up.
Thoughts:
Pacifism route still fucking blows. I'm sorry to say it. But it really does. There is nothing worthwhile in it, to me outside of dipping in to get Alice to grab your dick before she goes off to fuck someone else. I was hoping there might be something interesting you'd get for skipping out on watching Melody masturbate, but there isn't.
On another replay, my issues with the MC come a little bit more into focus. Even doing the perversion route he is just milquetoast as all get out until he randomly decides to be assertive. It's actually a fair bit of tonal whiplash. A perfect example of this is actually the Melody scene from 0.51, the MC is totally fine with Leah and Alice, then suddenly hates the idea of her. Basically, his internal monologue is consistently passive, but then you get the option to randomly be assertive. It's an issue.
The Leah scene was both cool and awful. Cool in that hey, Leah is hot. Awful as it's one of the more cliched ways of keeping the main character from actually having 'the sex' that I've seen. It's OK for the MC to have sex without dragging it out into eternity. They can fuck early on, the porn game police will not break down your door and throw you to the ground for promoting premarital fornication.
But honestly, and I fully admit that this is a pet peeve of mine... the rubbing on the outside of the pussy instead of sex is nothing but a transparent stalling tactic. Period. There is no good story reason that the MC should not have actually fucked Leah. Especially as he seems to have forgotten that he was a virgin and was acting very much like he was not.
Finally, there is not nearly enough interaction with the Step-sis-friend. Look it's fine if their interactions were limited in the first couple of days because of school, and the detentions or whatever. Now it feels like every day it's some new excuse to not share more than a few sentences with her. It feels like the biggest conversation that she and the MC have had thus far is about her fucking someone else. The interactions they DO have are usually highlights, but it still feels like wheel spinning. Truth or Dare would have been a great time to learn more about Alice, but she bows out early on. We learn nothing new about her. Hell, both of the biggest revelations about Alice come from someone else, and they are both missed opportunities for drama with her.
Highlights are still the scenes with Melody, even if she did back out on her promise to fool around with you from the night before. The dialog still pops at its best, and the characters are well drawn and fit their types well. I love the nickname running joke thing as well. Still, want to see where this goes and I hope that the annoying stuff gets pared back going forward.