I'm never sure how I should feel when people say it's better than they thought it would be!
I'm seriously interested to know where the low expectations come from? The title or ???
You should feel how you feel. You're allowed to be happy that it's above someone's expectation. You're also allowed to be pissed off that they didn't think much to begin with. However you feel is always valid.
I start pretty much all game with low expectations, mainly because there are so many games and I feel that most developers are amateurs with no background in writing and/or making games. So a lot of the games are simply
bad.
What makes any game into "better than what I thought it would be" is mostly the writing where the writer needs to make the characters alive with their specific characteristics, and not just straight up cookie cutter like "mean big sister who hates the MC" or "innocent girl who has never seen a dick before". Similarly with the storyline, it needs to have certain amount of hook to make me want to see where the story will go. Renders obviously matter too, but I don't need Ultra 8K quality. As long as the game doesn't look ugly, then I'd be fine.
What I consider as top-tier games would be a game that has either:
1. All three of great characters/story/render, OR
2. Two of great characters/story/render, but at least one of them being extremely amazing
Gameplay is a fourth factor that is more of a deal-breaker than elevating game's quality. Convoluted gameplay with excessive grind could be enough to ruin a game for me. But there hasn't been any adult game that has amazing gameplay because honestly I don't play adult game for the gameplay anyway.
Specifically for The Roommate, and please don't take this the wrong way, I think it's pretty safe to say that it isn't quite top-tier (yet?) based on my personal preference. The characters are great, the story is still between good/great at the moment (I'm personally more interested in the overall business side rather than the breastmilk side), and the renders are ok/good. When I started the game, I was a bit worried for the gameplay when there are stats like Energy/Lust (thankfully not like some games that go beyond that with things like Hunger, Hygiene, etc) which IMO is just not hinder the player. Fortunately, the gameplay didn't go to that point and it ends up being pretty straight forward which is a good thing.
But having said all that, I do understand that different devs have different amount of resources. So I think you've done much better than even some devs with more resources IMO.