In the later chapters where we getting into the climax Asuza explained the whole Key formula/nakige thing to me and Loopers ended up pretty focused on that towards the end. All of the side characters were discarded after their usefulness ran out :-/ Looking at the post history it looks like you stopped reading in what was like four chapters of Slice of Life material that was not super relevant. From around chapter 10+ it gets pretty focused on the main story and ends up being a fun ride until the end.
I will say it does get kind of easier, particularly the second to last chapter felt like a final exam on what Japanese you’ve learned until that point. I’d attribute that to the writing itself being fairly repetitive. I enjoyed it for what it was, but in the end I personally rated it a B- experience. Not terrible, not great. I’m satisfied with the purchase. It’s hard for me to imagine a better VN for beginners and I’m glad I made it through, even if the contents themselves were a little disappointing for a major developer.
IIRC you also had the Switch version that could go between English and Japanese right? If you’re too busy to do it in Japanese I’d at least recommend finishing it in English.
Edit: For anyone who is considering getting into this and isn’t used to reading native material I’d consider myself as N4 to some N3 and had a relatively good time of finishing it with the use of text hooks. My pace was somewhere around 3k characters per 45 minutes with the average chapter being around 2 hours a week. The first few chapters were the hardest, in particular I know some of the other members had trouble with one character’s speaking habits. That aside, I think it was a perfect beginner VN.