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Late to comment here, @Pallas_Raven, but I suppose it would be better late than never. Anyway as for the side route, I agree that it may help to expand the story or world building, as shown in Suzune's route of Cafe Stella in that her route is focused on the non-supernatural aspect. I should also make a note that Yuzusoft is already started their sub heroines routes tradition starting from Tenshin Ranman, in which generally their sub routes are more or less half of the main routes length. That said, Yuzusoft can also fumbling in regard of the side route, with the most (in)famous example of it is the teacher (Hotaru) route in Noble Works, which if we know usual Yuzusoft side route is not good enough material seeing that Hotaru has less interaction with the MC compared to either Makoto or Chiaki. There's also another example that you can consider, namely Akane from Kirikoi in which she's more or less detached from the theme (Blonde hair). While mod Clephas did ask on why Akane become the heroine instead of either Mina or Ayaka, I think may be the writer want to write the side heroine route with the heroine didn't have connection to the main story, which coincidentally both Mina and Ayaka had (Of course both got their route in the Golden Time (The FD), proving that they're quite popular). It should be noted that the writer also use the same pattern in Tsujidou, with the side heroine is the MC stepsister who is a math teacher while Tsujidou theme is delinquent. Since you mentioned Sukiren, I should also mentioned another example from ASa Project VN. Of course what I'll mention is not something like Momoko or Hama route in that it count as bad ending, but rather what would be happen if the writer manage to write a sub heroine route being too successful. Yes, the exact same thing is happen with Yuna's route in that it happen to be the most romantic route in Royale, which to be fair is not that hard considering that Royale focus is comedy with the main heroines tried to do their best in deliver the gags. Ironically though, it mean that being romantic mean being detached from the theme, and I should also mentioned that I can see the writer did their best to write Yuna's route as much as possible, so much that her position are equal to be the main heroines if not overshadow theme. Well, that's all for my belated comment in regard of this topic.