Aah thank you so much for this thorough review! I really love reading people's thoughts on the characters and I'm so happy to hear you think they were complex and went through some development! It was really important to me to make each character in the cast feel real, part of the world and of the quest.
SPOILERS
I'm also happy to hear you liked Aerona specifically! I feel the same way about female love interests, they can (sometimes) be too one-dimensional and only allowed to be pure and nice, so I'm glad Aerona didn't come off that way! She did get treated pretty poorly and deserves happiness, I just had to give her someone who loves and supports her even if Seren decides to break off the relationship.
As for Ikemma's route, his various endings do all have some drawbacks/sacrifices. I feel like so much has happened to him and he's done so much that there was no way to have a purely happy ending. I feel like it really ties in with one of the main themes of the game, that your choices will always have both positive and negative consequences, and that everyone just has to live with them and move on.
I might make more games about these characters in the future! I'm also really emotionally invested into them haha, and I have lots of ideas for Thisbe's and Beca's lives after the quest.
Thank you so much for playing and for writing such a thoughtful review <3