And I just want to state the obvious, leaving Selena alive after killing her sister doesn't make any sense!
Unfortunately, no matter what I think, the dev wants her alive to cause more problems for me in the future. --"
From a purely dark standpoint, this is (what I think is) why; She can't hurt the MC physically. Can she come after Eliza again? Sure, but
she didn't do the damage to her herself. So what is the worst thing you can do? Well, she burned the bridges she just made in order to save her sister, so let's invalidate all of her gains. We made her watch us as we killed her sister, whom she loved. Who was the sole reason why she crossed us in the first place, after seemingly taking a liking to us. We took it all away, and now she has to live with the knowledge that everything she did was in vain. Now she'll start questioning what could have happened if she trusted the MC more? Could he have helped save her sister? Would she have a larger family in the MC and everyone else? It'll eat her up. It's far
far more damaging than just killing her.
Exactly, this is how I find it also. Her first impression was horrible and I immediately wrote her off, I figured there were going to be several girls more deserving of the MC's time and attention that she just isn't worth it. Now the other girls on the ship are great and they do deserve the attention and chance but not Kira. Sure she is trying to make right but if you remove her inner dialogue and just focus on her words and actions she just gets in her own way. They only time she did anything that was decent was when she cared for the MC after the attack in the cave. Sadly, even though I've only chose friendly options and NO romance options, I'm still apparently in love with her and want her badly. It's just sloppy writing, I think the developer is assuming you are going to want Kira so everything is leading to that whether you like it or not. I'm not saying I've never changed my mind about a character later on but so far with Kira it's been one step forward and two steps back.
All in all this is a really good game so far and I'm very interested in seeing how the story unfolds but I'm hoping these types of issues are fixed when choosing girls. It's fine if the developer keeps the girls around that you just want to be friends with if it is important to the story to have them there but if you end up having to be in relationships with them when you choose not to that is a problem.
There are only two characters that I ever changed my mind about after a bad first impression; Yui from My Real Desire, and Lyriel from A House in the Rift. And even though Lyriel is unavoidable, at least she's hot. Kira... really should have a better personality with her looks. Does she soften up over time like the two aforementioned did? Maybe, but I'll (hopefully) never have find out.
And I wouldn't call the writing sloppy, just... simplistic. There are no flags that trigger based on relationship points, so everything is as if we are on one single path except for a line or two after a dialogue choice, it seems. The internal thoughts of how much the MC cares about her could be triggered by LP >= 10, or something, so that those of us who have not gathered any points just skip that line and continue on with the normal/neutral thoughts that otherwise come after. With how fast the updates come out, and they're not super small for the timeframe, it's just corners being cut, really.