Wait wait, there's no harem tag on this game. I am about to do a new playthrough because I own it on Steam now. I went back and read some pages of this thread during the aftermath of the "open relationship" release/reveal. Then some more recent ones. It seems the cuckqueen path for Nicole got cancelled, brought back, then cancelled again because people didn't like her. Okay, but did that totally take out harem endings? Is this secretly a monogamy game now where you break up with Nicole, fool around with whichever LIs you like, and then you get the ending with whoever ends up with the most points?
My previous playthrough was only partway through Ch2 I think. I liked Nicole in general but I did not like the relationship with the MC, and having none of the context of the feedback (or trolling) from the devs or the reactions here, I went by just the writing and decided that breaking up was the better option. To any sane human who has ever been in a relationship on the rocks, adding long distance and then suggesting an "open relationship" sounds like a death knell. It didn't sound like she was trying to save the relationship, it sounded like she wanted to look for something better while keeping the MC on reserve in case she didn't find anyone.
I felt shitty about breaking up with her but with how the relationship had been written I was more interested in surfing off into the sunset with Shortstack. I think I stopped playing shortly after she received the assignment to represent the enemies of the hotel because I feared that the NTR was gonna show up with her and any one of the scumbags on the other side. Seems like thats not the case and I'm relieved, but it is a pity that she was written in such a way that no one liked her.