Although Cindy is a minor character, her revealing outfit and sensual demeanour became widely discussed following the release of Episode Duscae. A major complaint from European respondents in a survey for the Episode Duscae was that Cindy, the only female character who interacts with the main party during the demo, was oversexualized. A common point of contention among reviewers of the final game was that Cindy was inappropriately dressed for someone in her line of work. Game Revolution opined that Cindy's design made Quiet, another character who has received criticism for her design, seem "subtle". Nadia Oxford from USGamer felt that her outfit and window-washing cutscene was "obvious fanservice" as the outfit is seemingly inappropriate for her surroundings, but said it was inoffensive because the game is ultimately not about "male wish fulfillment". The Guardian gave a harsher assessment, labelling Cindy's scenes a "laughable male fantasy" and claimed that it draws greater attention to the lack of playable women in the game. Mike Diver and Patrick Klepek from Vice both disliked her design and were surprised that it had not been toned down in spite of negative feedback to her depiction in the demo, which led them to feel embarrassed for the video game medium. Klepek described Cindy as his biggest negative of the game and said that she stands out as an incongruent form of fan service that is otherwise not present. Tabata and Marketing manager Akio Ofuji have publicly defended Cindy's visual design and insisted that she is not meant to be an erotic character, although the former noted the value of moderating her presentation to avoid the impression of oversexualization.
