No, im about simon. Looks like he is mandatory everytime, unironicaly dropping the game because of it. What's the point of gazilion harem members when you can choose only 3
Simon is the MC of the game so he will be around for most of the game. When it comes to the other harem members there are a lot of them and after the first part a lot of the game will have the characters be split into different teams, at some times you can pick the teams while at other times they are set or semi set. If you feel like Simon is underwhelming, it's kind of the point of the story since he goes from being a veteran soldier, which puts him at around the bottom of the power scale, to becoming a god pretty much.