Dude, this is exactly where the difference is between a basic Harem game and this one.
The girls are traumatized, sure, but their life goals actually grow out of that, with ups and downs. Because they each have a personal goal, they go through corruption to reach it, even while they’re denying that goal at the same time.
From a writing standpoint, that’s the whole difference: you move a character to tell something meaningful, not just to fill empty space.
In the top-rated games on the site, the girls are “traumatized” too, but their life choices have nothing to do with it. Like in "Being a Dik" with Maya : she has a rough past, but her daily life isn’t shaped by that at all. She acts like a normal college girl except for her money problems.
Meanwhile Cecile in this game, everything she does is driven by something she wants to prove about her past.
Here, you’re actually watching the characters get heavier and more layered, instead of just watching the Drama escalate into something more and more “epic” while the heroes basically have white-knight plot armor running through their veins.
The devs create a character because they actually want to say something with them. Compared to 99% of the top-rated Harem games, where they make a character first and then try to glue something “edgy/epic” on top just to make them look interesting. That’s the difference.
Are all the characters’ actions ultra-credible? Are some things rushed? I don’t know, that depends on your taste.
But does the game explore actual facets of the characters? Yes. So it’s well written, it’s relevant.
We’re not stuck for 5 years repeating the same dialogues with characters who go nowhere unless the Drama arc shows up.
I love Desert Stalker, THE best Dom game on the site, but its drama and its serious characters are at zero points. For the fun/FAPPING side, it’s amazing, sure, but otherwise it’s fast-forward city. And the rest of your list is the same.
This game, even without the fapping side, could honestly be a very good book, because it’s not complex for the sake of being complex, and the characters move forward every time they appear without unnecessary fluff.
The only other game that could pull something like that off is Katawa Shoujo,and funny enough, it’s not even a fapping game.