All i can suggest is play and decide for yourself.
I agree with this, and that's always the case for anyone's impressions of a game.
MC doesn't act like a doormat, he just acknowledges when he has made a mistake in regards to Sam.
I can't agree here. He acknowledges and apologizes for something
other people chose to interpret as a mistake, where he had no obligation, and he repeatedly takes insults and degradation without complaint or challenge, even when blatantly untrue. He also then has internal dialogue that shows that he basically likes the degrading and insulting treatment.
You've also dismissed the fact that we don't get to choose how the MC reacts to most of this. He's backed into a corner regarding events we had no control over and that the MC likely had no control over, either, and the MC's response (without player input) is to
like being insulted, degraded, and humiliated. He specifically says he likes how Akira acts.
Beyond that, I think you're giving everyone some wildly unearned benefit of the doubt.
We may also have different definitions of doormats.
I clipped out the Sam part, but the possessiveness I'm talking about isn't about MC/Lily or MC/Casper. It's about the insistence that the MC is at fault for not acting like a child keeping his parents informed of his whereabouts at all times, and her attitude about Valentine at the MC's apartment. She is acting like she and Lily
own the MC. And given that Akira had just told the MC that
she owns him, I am not giving anyone the benefit of the doubt for that shit.
in fact play your cards right and he talks Akira into a down-blouse selfie during a business meeting
This is the part I called cognitive dissonance. That
flirting during her meeting was completely out of place and out of character for her, and was so jarringly different from their other interactions, both before and after, that it felt like different people talking.
and gets her all hot and bothered by licking her hand and winding her up. Certainly doesn't scream femdom to me personally.
So you missed her insulting him throughout the whole library scene, and the repeated descriptions of her disdain and hatred? She had literally just called him her "pawn" before that starts.
We really don't know enough about her to be making assertions about her personality right now, other than she likes emojis I guess.
We do know that she was willing to physically threaten the MC with a deadly weapon to his throat. She's also completely unapologetic about it. We also
DO get a lot of insight into her personality in her scenes with the MC in his apartment, when she talks over the MC and tells him how he thinks and what he is, regardless of his or the player's opinion.
If you are looking for a harem game where you can self insert into a blank slate and have all the girls fawn over you this isn't the game for you.
But if you want a game with interesting characters with plenty of room to grow and an MC with a distinct personality then I would strongly suggest playing chapter 3 and deciding for yourself.
I'm just looking for a harem game where the MC isn't treated like shit (by people who are supposed to be romantic interests) for the entire duration of an update, and where the MC stands up for himself instead of taking and enjoying receiving heaps of abuse for, effectively, an entire day and a half or so.
I agree that, so far, the MC hasn't done anything worth being attracted to (since the one positive thing he's done with some actual agency just resulted in being treated like shit by four different LIs), but the insulting and degrading treatment he's received and accepted from Sam, Akira, and Valentine in particular, is enough to write them off for good. Since they're all central to the plot, I don't have high hopes for the rest of the game, because those impressions and interactions from this update are so egregiously bad that they will have to flavor every interaction from here on. The characterization won't make any sense if they don't.
Basically, I want to play a harem game where the LIs have a reason to at least
like the MC, and vice versa. Those reasons are now missing from this game for four of the LIs, including the one who appears to be the primary LI.
If I were in the MC's place, Akira and Valentine's behavior so far has been enough to just make me leave the city again. I would have felt bad about leaving Lily and Sam, except that Sam showed so much insulting and possessive behavior throughout this update, too. Since the dev doesn't understand why people wouldn't like Akira, it is clear that we have wildly different priorities, and wildly different opinions of how much verbal and physical abuse is acceptable because someone is pretty.