Except that does not add up well. From their post about Sierra's departure we know that Nomo is the one behind the story and character design for both visuals and personality. If only Sierra wanted to make a story and politics based game, then why would they leave the story writing to Nomo? A more fitting explanation is that Nomo accepted the shift in direction while Sierra wanted to focus on writing something more interesting/challenging to her and she already had at least one other project to work on anyway.
It's only hard because they didn't do it at the start of the project.
That is pretty much the point exactly, but i'm not sure we view it the same way.
We aren't talking about a company here, not even a small one but rather a duo/trio of writers and artists. As far as i know, renpy was new to everyone involved at the start, so problems were bound to happen. The inventory system is a good example. In RPGMaker you don't have to worry about that, because the inventory, shop, loot, treasures and equipment systems are all integrated. But not in renpy.
Due to the nature of patreon and game development in general they had to create a demo version early on. 0.1 and 0.2 were basically just that, demos. Then they started to add things to this demo step by step as they came up. This is obvious if you look at the development history. With hindsight it's easy to tell that this was a bad idea, but i don't remember anyone bringing up the lack of complex background systems in this thread either when the game launched.
Pointing out a mistake in the past is quite easy, but to prevent it one from happening in the first place would need the expertise of a project manager and several years of experience in the industry.
Hreinn should improve their communication and planning, not just for the players, but for their own sake too. But too many complaints in this thread are about things that could only be solved with a time machine.
