This is why I feel like dom Sabia is the more interesting route, it feels a bit more realistic to see what was once a commander of some number of human forces act this way as opposed to just spreading her legs for orcs and getting blackmailed by a catgirl. But from what I've seen, the devs have put more effort into the sub route, the content just feels a bit more varied and plentiful.
One thing that specifically bothered me is that Sub route has two ways of handling the shaman, either apologize to him or deal with him normally via 'court'. But the dom route only has the court option, I feel like it would have been a lot cooler if dom Sabia managed to do something to flip the tables on him, humiliate him further, beat the shit out of him, make his named lackeys turn on him, or really anything that hammers in that this Sabia is not one to be fucked with.
Another thing that bothers me is how meek Sub Sabia is, does the writer even understand that a person can be more than one personality trait? Sub Sabia literally shakes at the knees when some subordinate orc glowers at her, that's after she beat up orcs left and right in the arena and went on several raids that ended in blood baths. How does that make any sense? She can be submissive in bed but an actual human outside of it, but apparently that's too difficult for the writer, so he just settles for Typical Meek Hentai Girl #4505.
But, maybe they'll address such things in V0.5 in 2060, can't wait to enjoy Sabia's tent via brainchip gaming.
Personally, i prefer the sub route , but a lot of the best scenes are on the dom one. But several people who are more knowledgeable than i am, have explained here that a lot of the scenes on the dom route are basically active subs, so that might explain my position. And yes, even with this included, the dom route has way more variety on themes and set ups.
Given this, i had several problems with the shaman story line too, but at least most of them could be fixed later on. I mainly focused on the sub+shaman route, because the dom version is cut quite short, but after reading your post, yeah, it would be nice if Sabia found a way to punch back a bit.
My problem with the sub version was mainly how Sabia apparently forgot what a "set up" is, even tho, coming from a powerful noble family, she should have more knowledge about them than the whole orc camp combined. What i think could fix this and add a cool twist to the story line is if sub-Sabia's goal was to fuck the shaman's henchmen well enough for them to spill the beans on some of their plans or manipulations, preferably publicly.
This could be added later on and it would mean that Sabia went along with the Shaman's plans both because she enjoys a bit of humiliating sex AND because this was a way to knock out a known trouble maker / rival AND from a writing perspective, this could give the erotic scenes a purpose in Sabia's plans. And if someone wanted to stay allied with the shaman, it would be easy to just add a choice to go along with this plan or not and the following scene could go almost the same way.
So i'm with you on this one too. It can be sexy and funny (a nice combination imo) when Sabia gets hot and wet during a confrontation, but it should be emphasized that she is not scared and she shouldn't just drop to her knees every time. She could also sometimes taunt her partner into action (Tekrok's raid and Avion's dom version) or initiate or dare i say tell the orcs that sex comes after work and they should do their job first.
A sub can still say things like this and still be a sub, right? Sub =/= ragdoll, unless i'm mistaken.