The retainer issue is absurd, and something that doesn't get enough discussion in the community imo. It's essentially a form of pay2win, as they are indeed a direct source of ingame income.
It's also pretty obvious that the immense amount of unnecessary material bloat in the game are designed to fill your free storage and try to push you to buy additional retainers.

Mogstation has always been scummy. I think it's getting additional heat now because players have so little relevant content to do in the current state of the game. Seeing high-quality stuff getting added to the cash-shop while we get less and less content in each patch can be frustrating.