I love all the ROs, but Sieun is my favourite. I'll tell you why his route gets picked less and why some think it's "underdeveloped". It's because you put a lot of his interactions under choices that have no apparent connection to him.
If you play "nice", you just talk to your neighbour and never get to meet Sieun; if you don't play nice, you ignore the whole thing. So the scene is entirely missable. I only realized it existed because of the questions in the quickstart from chapter 3
meeting him as doctor: longer interaction only if you go with him at a hospital; didn't think a mobster should want to, so didn't; Sieun seems pretty cold without that
Not going to your best friend's party but going home: this just doesn't seem like the right choice, since you said you'd go; it also looks like a "skip", since there are options like that later in the game, that just remove entire archs (eg going fishing, going to the Theater etc); so it's way too easy to miss Sieun's visit and concern
If you pick using subway, you miss meeting Sieun & the sandwhich part; subway is way more confortable than a bus
When choosing to take gun or not, it seems illogical not to; you then have to change the route, which doesn't seem like a particularly nice guy move; then you have to not use your gun, which is the opposite, a good guy move; then you have to accept that your friend gets shot; I reloaded, because I didn't want him hurt; so you miss out on Sieun's invite; without that part, the router loses so many scene and so much depth; like treating him like you own him and getting irrationally jealous dialogue and so on; it gives too much context early on to be so easily missable
If you miss all these scenes (which I did my first playthrough), you're left with something that looks too fast, too underdeveloped. Because almost nothing points to those choices leading up to more interactions with Sieun. It's a shame, because the entire Sieun route (& interactions with Seb & Dominic) are so intersting and well done.
I really appreciate you taking the time to break everything down so clearly. 🤎 You're absolutely right that some of Sieun's content is too easy to miss, and that's something I need to improve. I'll likely add at least one more mandatory scene with them.
There's a similar (if not bigger) issue with Seb—his romance currently relies on a single moment in Chapter 1.
The other problem is that Sieun's route has a lot of branching, and I think I may have gone a bit overboard with it. Right now I still have two unfinished branches for the male MC: 🍅 and another where the MC gets kicked out of Sieun's apartment during a date.😪
I really appreciate your thoughts.💖 It helps me see what isn't working as intended, and I'll definitely be revisiting earlier chapters and finishing these branches.