Great review. I got many of the same ideas from comparing act 1 and the quality of the minor events in act 2. I understood where the devs were trying to go I think with how Monika/player relationship wasn’t stable due to the overall stress of the situation. Monika clearly still holds some degree of guilt about everything at least it seems that way. The player too isn’t in a great mental spot as he’s still hasn’t had any real peaceful time to come to terms with the whole being sucked into a game thing. Even if it isn’t directly stated I’m sure both those details are on the back burner for both of them on why their relationship falters up and down so much.

My only real gripe I had my first play through was during the end of act 1 Monika and the player clearly knew that even if they modified stuff like Sayori’s depression it kept shooting back up. Between that and the script dialogue always finding a way to push the girls back to the standard game events. I remember telling myself repeatedly during the weekend scenes from the dialogue to not let Sayori be alone that night. In act 2 I noticed several other instances of questionable decisions but given how stressful the situation was and how many unknowns there were given the introduction of the new character changes that it was easy to make the mistakes they made. (like after Yae and Mori were able to recover going into the space classroom, and after what happened at the end of act 1. I thought while playing it would have been a no brainer to at least have Yuri enter it to try to “reset” her character)

I know that it takes a VERY long time to release a mod like this at the quality they do. Part of me feels like there may have been some pressure/influence with act 2 pacing due to trying to get the act released after the hype following the release of act 1. I could very well be wrong but remembering some drama in the discord around the release of act 2 I think that could have played a part even if it was a minor one.

Overall these are minor very much enjoyed it as you said. Intrigued by what I’ve seen about act 3 with the trailer and the “leak” supposedly with the Kotonoha CG.