I quite liked this route and in that it is one of the side routes I thought it was timed pretty well, the flashback in particular seemed just about perfectly constructed amount-of-content wisel. Misae and Tomoya generally had a good back-and-forth and I enjoyed the consultation scenes as well. The flashback was quite good and Misae and Shima has a very good connection, though I will say that the total amount of time they spent with each other was obfuscated more than I would have liked(but I always have this problem in VN’s when they stop giving the date after a common route).
The ending was quite bittersweet but definitely not in a bad way and it serves fairly well as an explanation of why Misae is how she is. I’m not sure it was explicitly stated but I definitely inferred that the reason she came back to the school was that so she could somehow meet Shima again and probably the most bittersweet part of the story is that, despite not realizing it and probably never realizing it, she was able to see him again and he has been with her “forever”.
As far as Tomoya and is concerned I definitely think he was largely looking for someone as a something of a surrogate mother. If I’m remembering right the relationship he ultimately has with Misae is entirely chaste and he never really makes any sort of effort to move beyond that, maybe some desultory suggestions but nothing really meaningful. I suspect there really is no reciprocity coming from Misae in that way but she probably does see him in something like a mother role, similar to the boys who live in the dorm, just maybe to a greater extent. It is kind of sad that they will probably continue to see each other in these ill-fitting combinations of roles but, then again, it seems like it works for them.
Some additional thoughts: firstly Saki and Yuki were both fantastic and really deserved to get some sprites even if they only showed up Misae’s route. It would have been nice for them to stop by as adults and have them meet Tomoya either before or after he sees the flashback. Secondly the scene where Sunohara catches cat-Shima and is planning to skin him definitely gets a lot more meaningful in retrospect, particularly in that that scene led to Tomoya going into Misaes room if I remember right. Lastly the scene where Tomoya tells Misae what he likes about here is also so much more meaningful in retrospect that I kind of misted up a bit when it came up in the flashback, thinking about how she must have felt about it.