[Coda]

I suppose for me that part of it is that I'm semiconsciously extrapolating what their unaltered personalities are like instead of the Monika-fudged versions.

Sayori being the type who compensates for her depression through extraversion is the kind of character that appeals to the caretaker part of me. Without Monika ramping the depression up to fatal levels and without a power rush pushing her to mania, the implied baseline personality in between them is at a level that's probably manageable.

Natsuki's sanity is certainly appealing, and visually I find her the cutest, but her personality doesn't quite click as well for me, which keeps her from being an obvious winner.

I don't get the edgelord vibe from the hypothetical baseline Yuri. Baseline Yuri recognizes that her self-harm and her knife obsession are dangerous and unhealthy, so she keeps it secret, and she focuses on her other interests with other people. This by definition makes her baseline personality not an edgelord, because (without Monika twisting her knobs) she's not reveling in how edgy it is and she isn't using it for social signaling. So yes, I think the way the game forces her character in Act 2 probably IS coloring your perspective.

For me, learning to cope with my own interpersonal issues while growing up makes my default means of interacting with people center around empathy and trying to understand their motivations while accepting their flaws as not being central to who they are. On the one hand, it does leave me looking kinda naive about people, but on the other hand, the reason I ended up growing up this way is that it made it a lot easier for me to get along with a wide variety of people.

And speaking of altered personalities, I had an insight while I was driving earlier: Natsuki and Yuri aren't acting like themselves in Act 4 either. Sayori, too, adjusted their code. She knew that trying to make them unlikeable wouldn't work because Monika tried and failed, so instead she made them develop attachments to each other in order to keep them distracted away from the protagonist, giving her time alone with him.