I just replayed parts of the VN to refresh my memory a bit so I can talk about different routes and characters.
First: !A WARNING! There are some spoilers in this first part of my post.
Second: I want a Mao route. ;) Somehow, for her character (because she is so animal/cat-like), the broken grammar even works in her favor, because it makes her more adorable. Actually, she was the first one I wanted to go for, but sadly, that wasn't possible...
Then, Diane and Honoko. Like most girls from this VN, those two should be discussed together. I liked them, because they had such a firmly intertwined past. That made it easy to imagine the rivalry between the two, which I guess has been going on for quiiite some time. Going for either of them feels a bit like a "childhood friend wins" ending (which I love by the way).
As for our "newcomers" Rena and Ria (sometimes called "Rie"?!), the right word for the two sisters would be "contrast". At first glance, one is warm and kind, the other brutal and cold. Their routes were quite short, but I liked their endings, especially Ria's. I guess I'm a sucker for her type of character, like a Kuudere spiked with a slightly more than healthy dose of jealousy and vengefulness. A character that gives you a strong shell you need to break through to get to the soft core - that's good, some people enjoy this type of person.
And what about our best friends, Iori and Nene? Hmm, to me they were the least interesting, even though Nene was quite fun (what with her teasing our girl and all that).
I guess my favorites would be Diane, Honoko and then on a very close 3rd place, Ria. So yeah, in that order. Although, depending on my mood, I might give that 3rd spot to Rena...
Alright, that covers the girls. Now as for the story... Hm. It didn't sit quite right with me. But for that, I guess I have to say:
!!!MAJOR SPOILER AHEAD!!!
The whole "virus" thing seems strange. Sure, humans are often brutal, but not everything physical is bad, so that's why I call this setup some kind of strange "spiritual elitism". If we take a look at how tremendously brutal both Lumen and Diane were in the past - they basically committed wide-scale mass murder, if not genocide - I can't see them as being any better than the worst regular humans would've been. One scene for instance quite graphically describes how Diane kills a crusader, fantasizing about "torturing him more".
Also, what is that so-called "virus" to begin with? In some parts it feels like the VN is trying to tell us, that "being a human is the virus itself". Because, the few humans shown in the Diane/Honoko route didn't seem infected at all. They seemed like the classic witch hunters we would imagine when thinking about a somewhat more fantastical medieval age, but nothing that seemed fundamentally wrong. Criminals maybe, from the players' point of view, yes. But clearly not more so than the magic wielders who decided to burn them to ash by the thousands (actually: tens of thousands, just to pay for one life that hadn't even been taken at that point!).
The VN goes ways to show us, how hideous and horrible regular human beings are supposed to be in this world, when compared to "pure, spiritual" ones, and that just rubbed me the wrong way, because it appeared to be too extremist for my tastes. This is especially true given the actions that the "more supreme beings" have committed before their ascension to Astral.
In my opinion, such people would probably go to the nine hells and become demons rather than gods. ;)
This went so far, that at some point I felt I should side with the normal humans, against this magic/spiritual supremacy thing, because the magic wielders seemed like the actual threat to life and safety of common people, and they seemed quite hateful too. They didn't even treat humans as intelligent, sane beings but just as things that need to be extinguished...
Astral itself (its system of ascension to godhood, and its division into several parts, the priest caste etc) was kind of well-crafted. I just don't feel right about what happened back on earth and the initial step of ascension based on the information given to me by the VN's storytelling.
Seems weirdly twisted, also the memory erasing thing. If a spiritual world like Astral erases some of my memory permanently, it feels as if it's trying to hide something very important from me. And I don't like that, as I wouldn't wanna lose even my bad memories - because they are a part of me, that shall not be taken from me. And how people just wholeheartedly agreed with the erasure didn't seem credible to me.
So that part of Astral seems a bit fishy in my opinion. If I were there myself, I would'nt want to learn more magic to ascend further, but to dissect and learn about Astral's own inner workings and true purposes first, because it didn't seem all peaches and cream to me. Almost like there are some horrors sleeping below that pretty-looking surface...
Because there was always this feeling... "Something here just isn't right".
Alright, that was a VERY long reply and a major wall of text, mostly full of subjective views and opinions, but I hope this can still help at least a little bit.
PS: I want a Mao route! ;) Mao is cutest! ;)