I just replayed the 1st part of the game and I gotta admit. It definitely does flow a lot better because it's very clearly just the story of the main trio and every other character is literally just a side character (optional even) in most cases. There's also very few if any filler days, or contrived shenanigans' going on. It's quite literally Asuna x Inoda agree to do the girl friend practice and every day after they slowly escalate + do things in game (for some reason she agrees), and it becomes routine for Asuna towards the latter end, from only after school sessions to doing it the morning, doing it outdoors, and then doing it in game as well. It climaxes in a pretty lame way but at least it's kind of the pay off you expected. It's basically a short and straight forward NTR game that could've ended there and I don't think anyone would think too much of it afterwards.
By comparison the 2nd game really is kind of everywhere so I more so understand why there are so many divided opinions since it genuinely feels like a "bigger" project without a clear roadmap/goal of how to get there. Such a shame honestly, I think had he kept it simple like the 1st game we'd probably be much further in with the main story at this point. Probably at a new game/parody by now too.