Taking away all context of development - as if you’re me a clueless vagabond just dropping in and playing this without concern for any drama that has ensued related to this game/dev/patreon/community:
Is this game (with / without content restoration mod?) better than rated? I’m having a hard time judging it - will check it out either way but just figured I’d ask.
Development has definitely impacted this particular game when speaking about quality, so I don't think it'd be fair to you to write up a response without such a factor included.
The content restoration mod doesn't hold significance on the game's overall rating. While the game as a whole can be considered slightly above average, it falls short of being classified as 'good.' It was definitely very good back in it's hayday. But the primary reason for it's lack of quality currently is the sluggish pace of production, which has left it lagging behind other titles in the adult game industry as developers have simply improved their craft. Let's say I were to compare this to older games (Basically older than 4+ years), sure it may better than average, but against recent releases newer than that time-frame, it'll struggle to compete. That's about as unbiased a review as you might find if I'm gauging outside of personal feelings like a lot of others do.
If I were to use an extremely basic tier rating, there are other games out there that can be consider S/A-tier, and I'd currently rank this maybe B-. So, it's not "bad", per se, but I don't know if it'd qualify as a "must-play".