I am a little curious as to what it was like back then. I looked back to when I first started posting and realize that it was during chapter 11 that I first began to play.
It could be that EK is writing very slowly so as not to spoil an erotic adventure. It is much easier to lazily throw in a shallow sex fest than to slowly tease your way in the mind gaming fashion that the LSD arc demands.
Btw, SerHawkes , while I respect your wanting to see a Tokyo slave route, I do not believe it is in the cards. If Lena does ever leave Dubai, I fear the final destination will unfortunately, be Bangkok.
Not much has changed from back then until now, with the exception to the reworkings of Stan and Wade, and Billy's whitewashing which to this day hasn't been explained. Ever since around Chapter 6 and the start of the reworkings, things have gone from a story that could have had either Lena vs Geymour or give into it, and Ian go either way with his writing or martial arts, and firmly build up the pairs and characters already in the game (which EK had said in a FaQ that she wasn't going to expand on the cast of characters at the time because there were already too many, lo and behold that turned into a lie) through each chapter, has turned into what we currently see now.
To me, and I'm sure others will agree with me here, EK lost her confidence in her own writing. Rather than stick with her story and give a little pandering here and there and let her story be it's main focus, she stopped doing that and has gone full on 'gotta try and make my patron happy with kink shit'. That's my analysis of what this games turned into.
Also, I don't want to see the Tokyo slave route, or anything involved on that route with Geymour. I want my Lena happy with Holly and my Ian with Ivy and 12 kids. Sadly, that part won't happen any time in the next decade.