Yes, it is important. The devs are telling a story. There might be elements that don't always line up because they want to give us something like an "endless mode", but that's outside and separate from the story.
counterpoint that you just yourself made: gameplay should take priority.
the task is not to write a book or film a movie, it is to make a video game.
it is not the most orthodox move to have the player really start to unlock the porn in a porn game after the actual game is over. generally speaking, you'd want the story and gameplay to be centered on the porn aspect of a porn game.
and to be clear i was just making a counterpoint, think what you think, and like what you like. i know the devs are going to do what the devs are going to do. it does not matter in the slightest if it makes sense to me what the devs consider important.
Gameplay already takes priority. But they are telling a story. In order for that story to make sense, certain things have to happen in a certain order.
As for the *porn* aspect? It's very common for porn to have to be unlocked. It has *long been* orthodox for porn to have to be unlocked, going all the way back to the OG visual novels of the 90s. The fact that some games don't do it doesn't mean it's wrong to do it.
"unlocked" is not quite the same thing as "beat the game to /start/ unlocking."
also the argument "things have to happen in a certain order" does not gel with the evidence of the "overtime" segment and the hour leading into it. you cannot really defend that disorder the way you did, citing a game mode that does not (yet) exist. and it's not like "if mode == "endless" than play sound X at time Y, else play sound X at Z time" is a thing that is impossible to program.
it's important to note that this "disorder" has persisted through hotfixes, so i can only assume that it is intended. hard to see something that massive as a goof that went under the radar beyond hotfixing.
so, if the lore and story are as important as i am being told, can anyone explain why poppi gets an hour of grand finale time /after/ she's been arrested? once that question is answered, we then might want to get into why ari would keep working normally after the first bomb fell.
if this is the important lore, it might be about time the team hired an editor.