4.0 was great, and definitely worth the wait in many regards, but I have some thoughts about the unofficial cruel route of the game in this update. I don't bring this up because I want to see Asterion come to further harm, but because the "cruel master" route gives valuable perspective to the player's actions which the "kind master" route is often unable to supply.
The ending of 3.0 illustrated this perfectly. I played through the kind master route first, and I was rewarded with a pleasant lyre performance, so I then played out the cruel master route to see it's conclusion. It gave me chills. Asterion gashing at the walls of his room, playing the lyre until he bleed from the fingers, mindlessly repeating the same delayed phrase- it was haunting. Combined with the the minotaur's detached telling of the performance, the cruel ending of 3.0 brought better insight into the traumas that Asterion faced (as well as his all-too-vivid coping methods) than the kind routes ever could have.
And yet, one of the most significant cruel route scenes is nearly completely absent from the 4.0 version of Minoh Hotel. If the player is perfectly kind to the minotaur throughout the entire story, with his only flaw being that he sent Asterion to the valley in his first interaction with Argos, then the player is "rewarded" with the aforementioned detached retelling of Asterion's performance. The scene elaborates on the minotaur's coping mechanisms, and intriguingly hints that Androgeos has a much stronger connection to the minotaur than one might have thought. But then the game ends. There's no way to continue to 4.0 with this ending, the only message the player receives following the scene is: "It seems you got a bad outcome- the game will take a different path if you got this ending at the conclusion of 3.0, which we will be adding soon." "There's more Minotaur Hotel if you go back and make different choices." I remember similar text being found if one tried to send Asterion to Argos in the 2.0 build, so I assume that this is just a missed relic of development. But I fear that the message may indicate that the scene will be entirely removed from the game in future updates, akin to the two apples vs the grapes outcome based on initial interactions with Asterion in the early parts of the game.
Near the end of the main story of 4.0 the player is pressed by Asterion to reveal their true colors, and is then given four options for how to respond to the minotaur. All four illustrate restrained compassion in the face of absolute power over another, and they are perfect for the kind master route- but they make absolutely no sense for the cruel master route. The cruel master route saw the player give into their base desires at every turn they could, savoring the power disparity between the protagonists, and sending the minotaur to toil in the valley without much more than a second thought. None of the presented options illustrate the depraved character of the player in the cruel routes, and its even jarring to then see Astertion compare this despicable player to his own beloved brother.
The ending of the main story section of 4.0 also seems to disregard the cruel choices of the player. No matter how despicably the player treated Asterion, the same actions plays out. No matter how many times the player threw Asterion out into the valley, the same uplifting picnic ending occurs. The only acknowledgement of the player's sins is some flavor text about how many times the minotaur had been cast into the valley. It simply doesn't make sense for the player who held Asterion in his arms as he cried after leaving the cold room for the first time in over 80 years, to be given the same ending as the player who simply stood and waited as Asterion broke into a panic attack at his knees.
I understand that there are plans to have a cruel route ending in the 5.0 version of the game, and that sounds really exciting. However, for the aforementioned reasons I don't think such an ending would work due to the state of the cruel route of 4.0.
Mind you, I love this game. I've been following the progression of the project for a year now and its incredible to see how far it's come and all the new aspects it has developed. However, I worry that the current state of this update jeopardizes the wonderfully crafted (unofficial) cruel route of the previous versions.