At the end of the day only a minority is here for the "plot", most people play porn games to masturbate.
A few reused scenes with different characters once in a while would have sufficed, they're low effort and keep the playerbase engaged.
Their aim was to make an actual game, that contained lewd content. Not porn that included a game, you're playing the wrong game if that's your expectation. They gave lots of focus to the plot, gameplay, and all other non lewd content for this reason. Just because the game is on here does not mean it's trying to fall in line with the rest. So the plot is very much important, they would not waste time on VA's if it wasn't the case. They could just add text like other "porn games", but VA's along with dialogue animations allow for a better story telling experience which enriches the lore, that is what they want. They also balance, bugfix, and introduce new games modes because they actually want you to play it.
I agree that some people think the game should basically combine honey select freedom with HD and high quality CGI with no compenetrating textures and perfect body physics, but at the same time StudioFOW really is dragging this for far too long. It shows that they lack vision, they didn't properly plan the game ahead of time and just went "with the flow", which is the worst decision you can make in a videogame
They did plan it, you are just not the target audience. You just mentioned Honey Select which is a sex sim, that one is meant for you, go touch urself to that one. This is meant to be a funny RPG/SHUMP not a sex sim, not top of all that it's still in early access, meaningly this is not even the final product. The purpose of early access is to let players help test the game before its actual release, this is why some dialogue scenes don't have a background yet, this does not mean it will stay this way on release. They put together the core components first and polish it up after, no point in having it fully polished now when bigger parts of the puzzle are missing. Same way you don't put your shoes on before your clothes, you put the main outfit on first and then the shoes that best fit with it, followed by any accessories. So unless its stated
by them, anything that is left out won't be for long, many things will be added on release. Which they already announced would be in Q4, so around October.