In the game I reviewed, and as a general rule, harem and NTR are mutually exclusive fetishes. The "harem" path of the game did not change anything beyond skipping the sex scenes. Which I explicitly mentioned in my review.
MC does not get any women. The one woman he slept with is in a relationship with another man, and goes back to that other man. All subsequent dialogue acts as if the MC never slept with her. The episode 1 NTR scene I mentioned in the review has a woman who's supposed to be a future LI having sex with a man (the same man who's in a relationship with the one woman MC can pretend to sleep with) in a bathroom followed by the MC picking up her cum stained panties to hand them back to her. The "harem" choice doesn't show the sex scene and has the MC talk about how they're totally not having sex, only to pick up right at the NTR path with the MC picking up her cum stained panties to give them back to her. How is that not a bait and switch?
Well to be fair the game is only up to EP5 and not completed. Reviews are meant to be for the game you played, you can't say for sure that it is a bait and switch just that there is less content in the path you like
for now. Your "review" makes it sound final.
Plus you're focusing on, arguably, 3 sentences out of the entire review. I also talk about the game not doing anything with its promised impregnation fetish. I shit on the pathetic loser MC for about half the review. Even if you want to argue that I should edit those 3 sentences (and I would argue that it isn't necessary because the game and dev promise a no NTR route that they don't deliver on) that's only a small portion of the review. It is not "the whole review".
If what you posted was the full review then....
Pregnancy.
"Pregnancy is my fetish, so the idea of impregnating an entire town of horny women is extremely appealing to me. But as of Episode 2 The Builder does nothing good with its plot."
NTR.
Episode 1 has an ntr sex scene and while dialogue claims that no actual sex happened, if you choose not to engage with ntr content, the following scenes all act like it did. Episode 2 gives you the option to either cuck or be cucked, and yet the woman you're supposed to be in love with is in a relationship with another guy and refuses to leave him because she's "afraid of loving you too much." If you want to make an ntr story, make an ntr story. That fetish has its own audience. Don't lie to me about a harem game and then hand me some simp who swore a vow of chastity because he's too on the hook to move on from the worst love interest ever. Don't make me sit through this loser cumming 3 seconds after seeing a barely exposed nipple because he's too cucked to be around women.
No harem route.
And don't half-ass a "harem" route where nothing changes but the sex scenes get skipped. "
Most of your review is about NTR, as for pregnancy and Harem, your review seems to indicate that you are reviewing up to ep2 and the game is up to ep5 now and still not complete and both of those are usually late game adds. Expecting pregnancy and harem in ep2 just isn't realistic, at most you can say that the harem path feels empty
for now or has less women than you would have liked
for now. Your "review" seems solely focused on one thing and doesn't mention "renders, game play, writing, game mechanics or any of the other details in the game.
It can be summed up with "too much NTR, nothing I like." and that is not really a review no matter how long you string that out.
I was going to go through this piece by piece, but after reading the whole thing I realize that won't be necessary. You take statements out of context, claim they're irrelevant, then talk about the context being good form for a review. You're also obsessed with the phrasing of my writing. Sure, I could have phrased things differently to make my review seem more objective. But as I said, this game promised exactly my kind of fetish and utterly failed to deliver. I was angry about it and I'm fine with my review bordering on being a rant. There's nothing in the rules against being emotional about the game when you review it. You've addressed no rules broken beyond reaching to accuse me of kinkshaming. It's not the mods job to decide on the quality of reviews. It's their job to enforce the review rules. Even while breaking my review down you didn't see it as complaining about my feelings for a particular fetish. If you didn't see it as breaking rule 5 when going out of your way to attack me and my review, why should I accept that as an explanation from the mods?
...and this..
"Sure, I could have phrased things differently to make my review seem more objective. But as I said, this game promised exactly my kind of fetish and utterly failed to deliver."
is why it's not a review but a rant and broke some rules. The game is not finished, if it was THEN you could say it did not deliver but just because the game only started to introduce some of the fetishes you got upset.
"There's nothing in the rules against being emotional about the game when you review it."
Rule 1. Try to be objective, describe your reasoning and highlight what key aspects of the content were good or bad.
Be honest you weren't trying, you were upset and through objective out the window.
"You've addressed no rules broken beyond reaching to accuse me of kinkshaming."
Maybe they didn't but maybe re-read Rules 1 and 5
Now, if I wanted to rewrite my review to be clearer and more objective this would mostly be excellent advice. I have never claimed to be a good writer, and your feedback would help with improving the review. Unfortunately I don't care about improving my review. I care that my review was taken down despite it not violating the rules. I care that by removing a well liked negative review the mods are influencing scores to make games seem better. And I care that any detailed review runs the risk of being treated as a technical violation of rules because you can't discuss the game's content without in some way touching on how the fetishes are handled.
"I care that by removing a well liked negative review the mods are influencing scores to make games seem better." This is not really true, it just more accurately shows the state the game is in and leaves out reviews that do NOT review the game in it's current state but what they want the game to be.
"And I care that any detailed review runs the risk of being treated as a technical violation of rules because you can't discuss the game's content without in some way touching on how the fetishes are handled."
The content for some paths is still under development and as of EP-X the build up seems slower, the writing is good in places but leaves some confusion as to the progression of those paths.
You can give details without including 3 second MC's or women who "loves me, loves me not" and still have space to "review" the games other aspects...below from the rules post.
" Story, Originality, Renders, Sound, Playability, Performance, Bugs, Animations, Voice Acting, Grammar, Amount of content "
Ultimately, I put my review and the mod actions out there for other people to judge from an outsiders perspective. So far the only opposition to my view has been desmosome accusing me of making up the bait and switch, and you attacking the tone of my review. The thread for the game, and even other reviews, have ample comments on how the game promises a harem but actually gives players an NTR story. So anyone interested enough can see that I'm not lying. Your response is probably the best thing I could have asked for. Despite all the criticism and unnecessary personal attacks, not once do you agree with the mods that I broke the site's rules for reviews. Clearly the deletion was unjustified.
"desmosome accusing me of making up the bait and switch" ...but you did make it up. Until the game is complete you.. guess, assume, think, speculate but you can NOT say for certain it is a bait and switch. As I said before harem and pregnancy are usually added late game and unless you can show the dev clearly saying he will add them early in the game you don't know he won't later in the game.
"Clearly the deletion was unjustified."
Nope you broke 2 rules that I can see, 1, 5 and you yourself admit to not being objective and not being willing to write the review objectively, so even you admit to breaking one of the rules.
I also think I might know why you are confused, you said :" You can call it whatever you want, but a star rating attached to comments about the game are all it really takes to be a review regardless of tone. "
You can't call it whatever you want, one is called a comment and has to follow a set of rules and the other is called a review and has to follow it's own set of rules. I think you might be confusing comments and reviews and applying the rules for one on the other.....
