I actually feel the opposite. One of my gripes with Three Houses is that the default routes are so similar, especially if you recruit everybody on every run, that a lot of it end up feeling like padding for a small amount of extra stuff. (Crimson Flower is radically different to the others, but doesn't give anything you won't get on the Verdant Wind and Silver Snow). Three Hopes and Fates, for all their flaws, give more unique experiences in each route.

I would asume you kind of have to. Three Houses was very popular and took for sure a lot from that game. And usually in Sacred Stones, Fates, Three Houses you have to play multpiple times to get the full story. Think it looks good as well and my september prediction was correct