I'm pretty sure every game on F95 is marketed off as wank material

This one was no exception really, it was initially just seen as a rage bait VN harem parody, that essentially played like a typical harem but subverted your expectations.
I'd imagine that the average/typical initial experience of most of the thread dwellers on here was something like:
"Oh this game seems good, let's see what this is all about. Damn, the characters are cute, the writing is pretty decent too. Oh fuck, shit's going down already, neat. *unzips pants* *FUCKED UP THINGS HAPPENING* *pants getting aggressively zipped up* NOPE.EXE"
And then you just eventually stay for the story and kind of just theorize what's actually happening.
It essentially turned from a "Anime isekai parody harem horror" game into a "Sherlock Holmes if it was set in a weird alternative universe and Sherlock was a depressed piece of shit with childhood trauma and strong Ephebophilia" game.