I agree with you that Hreinn Games don't seem very productive. I would like faster updates, too. But I don't think you can compare Our Red String to Kingdom of Deception. Not to say I didn't enjoy ORS or that it's bad, but as far as I know the art is traced, which means art creation goes a lot faster. And the Virtual Novel consists of choices, which is generally what Virtual Novels are. Whereas KoD also has a Battle System, Shops, a Raid System, Stat Overview, Panels, Naming Saves, ...
To adress the recurring topic of Noxian Nights, RPGMaker has all or most of these features automatically. In RenPy you need to make them yourself and you have to fill actual playtime with text instead of running around.
So both comparisons lack a bit in content, if you ask me.
Without claiming to know how they work, the project does seem a bit planless. I think they know how the story ends and some milestones along the road, but sometimes it seems they didn't plan things out. Like dropping the raidsystem after a few updates again. Maybe a clearer roadmap would help.
Also in regards to those promises you mentioned, I think a lot of people here in this forum misunderstood some things there.
But they definitely need to step up their communication.
Yeah, the fact that they didn't have a full plan for the game from the beginning is extremely obvious. There seems to have never been a roadmap for the game story, which definitely doesn't help since that causes the game and story to drift and stagnate rather than continue forward.
I'll admit I haven't played the last 3 (I think) KoD updates properly, just used the JDMod to look at the scenes so I don't know exactly what game contents (vs visual novel contents) there have really been in the latest updates. But raids were programmed in, and used in 1-2 updates and been abandoned since then. No idea if the battle system has been used in recent updates, but I don't recall there being many battles included since the tournament (again, it's been a while since I played the updates and honestly didn't pay much attention to a lot of the last updates I played properly).
On the art front, most of the art in the both Hreinn games is make a base image of the body (sometimes used for multiple characters, especially in NN) and then use a separate layer / copy paste the base image and add the modifications in for each different art piece. I've not played or looked (that I recall) into Our Red String, so no idea how many different art assets they create per update, but to me (not being an artist) tracing several images and creating one base image which then has various modifications (many minor, like just a different expression) to it seem like a pretty similar processes to me.
As for rpgmaker having a lot of features built in that you need to code into renpy, that's true to an extent. But there's also a large number of code examples and premade code examples for both renpy and rpgmaker that you can add into or base your game on. This is again, where having a good roadmap or plan from the beginning helps with that, since you can code in an focus on what's actually going to be used in the entire game rather than something only used for a short time that may not warrant the time to make a more complex system (in the case of KoD the raid system is a good example of this).
I don't think anyone really misunderstands their promises, since nearly every news post and game update that I recall has had some variant on "After this update we're focusing on a faster turn around" or sometimes a "Now that we have X implemented updates will have more content / be released faster". Now, I'll freely admit that I may just be having a confirmation bias and only remebering the posts (that have been public / leaked)
