But right around August/Dungeon 4 is when things have taken a turn for the worse; summer vacation is when the game seems like it's opening up and letting you take control of your days, but after that you get locked into like two weeks of cutscenes and now I want to strangle the damn cat every time it tells me to go to bed.

It's not so much about min/maxing as much as it's "I just watched 10 minutes of talking, please give me some agency in this game", and instead it's "hey, buddy, you just had a long day of pondering deep thoughts, you should definitely sleep".