I respect Gabe and her works, but I have to admit I understand why some people would rate them low. There's truly not enough sex in between especially since the gameplay is gated behind lots of grinding. It reminds me of the so-called "adult" games on Steam that barely have any sex scenes and yet they're labeled as Adults Only so naturally people get upset because their expectations aren't met. I mean of course Gabe's games are 10x much better than those, but I hope you see where I'm going with this.
It's kind of like LOQO being a more hardcore version of Game of Thrones, but still not hardcore enough to be a straight up XXX parody, where sex scenes would literally happen every other five minutes. (Game of Thrones is completely watchable without the sex scenes imo, just like how you said LOQO is completely playable without it.) But many people who download hentai games expect to use it as fap content, so when there's too much story and grinding and gameplay loops getting in the way you end up flaccid and feel the need to look elsewhere.
Again, this isn't a knock on Gabe's works. But I've also taken my rose colored glasses off long ago and I can now understand people's complaints. One of those complaints is how long it's taking her to finish Origin, but that's best left as a topic for another day lol.