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I think part of the problem is the new story style. I don't hate it, by any means, and I love Amagami, which follows a similar style, but it still damages the plot. In the more typical style, you either had a work follow one heroine's story and leave most of the other girls' routes alone so as not to interfere (rare to nonexistent in my experience), or they followed one girl's story and yet tried to shove all the other girls' stories in as well with a final rejection, hesitation, or other interference (or the possibility of a harem like with Sia in Shuffle). In either case you have one long plot line, with steady development.
In Amagami, they keep the stories short, but they treat each girl's story separately, so that in each 4-ep set you have a perfectly linear style. If I understand right, this one isn't trying to squeeze the girls together OR separate each girl into an individual section, but instead shows a mixture of universal eps and eps that lead from them down different paths, mixing things up. There's also the fact that they compressed the stories even more than Amagami, and then decided to compress them yet further to have room for ero scenes. As a result, things are a little rushed and quite confusing. It means that if you're just interested in one girl's story route you have to watch the first couple eps and certain eps later in the show, jumping around a bit, rather than just starting at ep 5 or 13 or something.
Also, the ero is a little excessive. Even if they're doing two or three eps per girl, it shouldn't be jumping into the erotic stuff too soon or it makes the girls look easy/loose, like they'd jump into bed with anyone who asked them out. If you make the girls look cheap, then you take away alot of the value and meaning of their romance.
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