The hard part for me is the dissonance pre-the Ruthless route's start after Chapter 12. The Ruthless Master's actions versus the rest of the narrative still going on before the story forks - recruiting Kota or Luke, the other times you're chatting with Asterion about starting up the Hotel and not being the worst etc. Once the route begins after Chapter 12, it is a lot easier to separate the character the Master has become from me as the Player/MC and the choices I'm picking to see the content. It's still tough seeing a very traumatized person not only be denied the help and therapy they need to deal with their trauma, but instead getting new trauma heaped on to them, but once you're in the Ruthless chapters, the Master is more of their own character with their own hubris that they need to get foisted by like any good tragedy. In fact, I'd say these chapters are a great tragedy that really has punch because you're in some control over what type/details of the tragedy you see.
I do think this helps underscore a point the devs made about the Ruthless route before it was done: it does make doing the right thing more impactful to do because you can actively chose the wrong thing to do to someone like Asterion. The tough part is how much a VN wants you to self-insert to the story, so it feels much more personal not just choosing to do evil things, but hearing the dark thoughts in Asterion's head and actions behind closed doors that an abuser would never see as a consequence of their actions. It's really important to note just how much they wrote the MC to very intentionally not do anything that would abuse his power over Asterion beyond the ruthless content and maybe trying to send him out naked or just in his underwear. The main route MC talks with Kota about this because of the power dynamic, and the only reason our relationship with Asterion can work is that Asterion knows we're never actually ordering him to do something, even when we say "refer to us by name, not as Master" - he knows it's never truly an order, just colloquialism.