It's hard to write meaningful main character development in a sandbox game. You can do it reasonably well with secondary characters, as their sidequests form natural character arcs, but the MC is stuck, because the player can do these quests in almost any order. You can structure the sidequests into acts, forcing the play to complete all sidequests in act 1 before act 2 starts, and I think PL does that kind of thing, but that still means that the MC will behave the same during all of act 1 (and act 1 in PL is huge).
Yes, the MC is a nice guy and not a fuckboy, he starts out as a slacker that lacks initiative. He is easily browbeaten by not-Branson and the Indian guy. It's frustrating to watch him agree to the sex chip economy in act 1. It's frustrating to watch him scrounge for chips to build a bungalow *after* he shows some spine in act 2. There aren't even that many pageant girls that still care about the pageant. In a more linear VN I would expect the MC to start a rebellion against not-Branson by that stage of the game.