Hello ahnkra, thank you for leaving us your comment, we hope that some notes that we leave below can help to make our point of view understood. Thanks for playing and for stopping by to comment. We hope to read you more in the future.
No, not at all, not being interested in a character usually results in spending less time with him or getting less general information about the story, but it doesn't penalize. The story is quite long, currently, it takes fifteen episodes of development. Some options are saved and returned to in the future, but above all, in the first episodes, everything is completely introductory.
In episode one you can meet two of six characters in a single lap. To unlock the rest of the images and character profiles you must take different options. However, in the following you will definitely meet the entire cast. Episode two (Hasiel and Zihel), episode three (Arael and Ariel), episode four (Akane and Maske), and episode five (Kyeran, Joe and Pin). From here you can choose a lineup and thus choose if you want to be 'bad' or 'good'. Your choices constantly affect your morality bar. The only thing the game asks of you to get proper endings is to be consistent with your decisions.
Hasiel is a trans man, we wanted to make that clear early in the game. His pronouns are he/him and it's an important part of his character's story, because it's something he has had (and has) to deal with on a daily basis.
Zihel is an evil character. He isn't a 'bad boy' he is a real criminal. His acts won't be justified, because they aren't justifiable. The cast was selected to generate different stories and different interactions. There are many different personalities to choose from and if you want to see the world burn alongside a villain just as corrupt as you, who are we to stop you? We don't see any fun in giving only morally positive options in a game where we consciously try to play with those aspects. History also allows us not to limit ourselves. Things would be different if, for example, we talked about the protagonists being high school students. Zihel is a corrupt, evil, age-old demon, and yet it's perfectly okay to want to be in a relationship with him. We understand that he isn't a character for everyone, but that's fine, there are eight others.
CHR is buggy, it's obvious to us, especially in the beginning (It's our first game!). But we wanted to create a different experience. We come from playing too many games that don't let you choose how evil you want to be or choose who you want to be with in a gang war. Here you can and we won't penalize you for it, we want it to be fun and stimulating and not a form of reprimand for the player who wants to make flawed choices.