So based on a post from the creator on the AA subreddit:
- The game only got 2/3 of its funding during the kickstarting phase.
- Because of this, they had to cut out an entire case
where Aster was the solo final villain and merge it into Case 5. - The creator also got feedback during the alpha phase to speed up the pace of things. This lead to them, and I quote: 'I may have fallen into a bad habit of moving the plot from point A to point B as efficiently as possible to keep the players engaged.'
Basically most of my issues with the game apparently came down to a lack of budget and poor feedback. Damn.