After this episode, I don't particularly trust Bella anymore. It really felt like she was trying to turn the MC against Elaine and she was playing up the whole lovey-dovey, girlfriend thing (if you're on that path with her) a bit too much. Elaine's reasons for thinking Bella should move out are quite understandable; she feels like she's a burden to Bella and holding her back from her own life, so she thinks that Bella moving out would be good for her to get her own independent life back again. But Bella just went straight to conspiracy town and thinks this is some tactic to get rid of her as part of her wanting the inheritance.
Also, I kind of agree on your point about the relationships, because it does feel that by limiting the relationships you have in the game, it limits the content of the game, and not just in terms of sexual content, but in terms of character development, relationship development (the non-sexual aspects), and general character/plot exposition.
The release version of Episode 19 made Bella a lot less of a crazy stalker, which was a big improvement. If you believe her dialogue (and presumably the MC would know if she was lying), she did have a somewhat close relationship with him over the years, which makes her lovey-dovey act at least potentially legit. I do agree her paranoia over Elaine is pretty extreme. Unless Elaine really has gone off the deep end and is putting on one hell of an act for the MC, Bella is either jumping at shadows or lying to us.
As far as locking out relationships, I see what you're saying but I can't quite agree; just because you've locked out of a sexual relationship with a character doesn't mean you can't still develop a different sort of relationship with them. It's theoretically possible to become, say, close platonic friends, confidants, mentor/protege, or rivals.
The catch is that it would require spending time and resources creating unique branches for each of the non-sex routes; these being
Adult Visual Novels, it's unlikely you'll see a huge return on that particular investment. I'd still prefer it, because I find that sort of attention to detail awesome and because it really can make the different paths genuinely different and engaging, but it would definitely be going over and above the call of duty. (It would also be easier in a game with fewer LIs).
So in a practical sense we're mostly stuck with the option to get a bunch of content by fooling around with a girl or get a tiny portion of the same content by keeping it chaste. Personally, I still prefer the option to get the stripped down chaste routes as long as they still cover the basics.
This game could use a little more work on that front, unfortunately. For example, AFAICT it's impossible to tell Katie about the will conditions unless the MC is sleeping with her; that's sort of a big deal that would just as important to explore on a friend route, and it wouldn't take that much time to add it. But because the opportunity to tell Katie came during her date, it couldn't just be cut and paste into the platonic route.
So it was cut and has been forgotten about since then, which is a shame. (This may happen with Monica too, but I've never tried her route.)
So we’re at the “beginning of the end” -game? Dang it! Okay then after the Next update would you then classify us as being in the endgame at that point? We’d have ~5 updates left, right?
I don't know exactly what's in store for us, but I'd say we're still in the middle game. We've had a lot of teases, but there really hasn't been anything that changes the way the MC has been going about his life. I was hoping the big orgy at the beach house would finally change that, but it seems to have gone out of it's way to avoid that. Even the hints about one the other heiress from the lawyer is limited almost entirely to information we cannot act on (and frankly already suspected).
So yeah, middle game in my book. I'd say were getting to the end of that phase, because there have been a few small details starting to change (like Monica guessing at a relationship with Jenna/Katie, or the end to the long-running Debbie/Lily UST). So hopefully the proper endgame is coming soon, because I'd hate to leave all the resolution until the last minute and wind up cramming it into too small a space.
I'd simply say we are at the beginning of the end. We have some big things happening very soon, but still plenty to come.
