You guys probably had too many of these but here goes, I honestly believe this game is received superbly only because it caters to a specific niche and not much(tell me if i am wrong and this is not an attack FFS). So, anyway now that it is out of the way i find it odd about how grindy and repetitive the battle is and not to mention the QTE is rigged for the player to lose( i am pretty sure a random dude will come out and call me out to gitgud noob because he beat it in the first two tries), setting aside the completely random damage the antagonist dishes out, i think this is just dev forcing the thingy on players( the rng in this game always works against the player). This is simply a forced feet fetish simulator and i thought i might like it (foot fetish) because i like some titles with femdom but i am positive i don't now.
The game world was too claustrophobic and restrictive(not fun IMO).
No hard feelings against the game or fans, simply not my cup of tea, and for those who love it enjoy.
/
P.S: Most of the reviews are biased because they like foot fetish.
Edit: I am gonna take a wild guess and say there is no penetration and or females taking their clothes off.
You're not 100% wrong about most of the praise being catered to fulfilling a specific niche. And in some cases, I agree with you Foot fetish isn't really a niche that many would go after. But, this thread has already aired some of their grievances about TOT outside of the occasional Fuck Bowei and Fuck Koda harder post. Many here have bashed the story, the writing, and some of the mechanics (I have myself). You're not the first and definitely not the last to air their grievances (welcome to the club buster). The only reason these people haven't brought this stuff to the review section probably has to due to either community guidelines, are like me and rather wait for the game to be finished (if it ever gets finished at all), or wants to discuss their overall experience with tht game since the review section doesn't really bring itself up to discussion. Even then, I rarely go to reviews on F95zone to get an understanding of what I'm getting into and I recommend that you either take them (and most review sites in general) with a grain of salt, say fuck the reviews and enter the game blindly, or play the game while being aware that it might not be good or bad (Depending on the reviews). I have already ran into games that unfairly get waaay too much praise from the reviews and turn out to be absolute garbage (I sometimes question if I'm playing the same game as everyone else) or not be of much help. That's largely why I personally stick to the discussion page but this game is a lot special in that regard due to how things get easily buried in there so I wouldn't blame you for thinking that this game gets blindly praised for the niche it fills (Maybe if there were more interesting and better foot fetish games out there I would see this game still be top 5 material nearing top 10 in the list of foot fetish games). In the realm of media, your mileage will always vary some people unironically love bad videogames like Sonic The Hedgehog 2006 or hate praised films like Pixar's Soul.
The force to lose:
The game somewhat conditions you to want to lose either out of curiosity and or interesting content like many other games before TOT like MGQ (And many others) and games after TOT like Domina, Katalist (and other femdom games). In those games, a lot of the content comes with losing. At this point, it's a common trope since many femdom games incentivize curiosity and losing. MGQ especially since there's many incentives to want to throw a match. Whether you see a monster girl you like, completing the compendium, or out of curiosity since outside of the occasional regular attack that has a CG, there's not much porn stuff (outside of scenes with Alice and scenes where other humans are getting raped in your place) if you're trying to avoid the monster girls and options that give you a bad ending. In terms of QTE's eh depends really. The more you fuck around with Swan's kiss the harder it gets but other than that, the other QTE's are doable while others (like Lady Cobra's minigames QTE's after buying your stats back a certain number of times that gets harder after each time you pass/fail) are largely avoidable. Nowadays the game has a QTE difficulty selector bandage solution maybe but the option is there (I'm trying my hardest to not come across as someone saying getgud but...). Hell, you can make it through without engaging with most of the porn content if you know what you're doing. But why would you do that in a porn game outside of doing a YouTube-friendly speedrun? If I had to make an assumption on Scarlett being a spike in difficulty it's to introduce you to the game's mechanics and encourage you to occasionally throw the match even if you might have the potential to one-shot a mistress.
Setting:
I agree that the tower is claustrophobic but In my opinion, it adds to the femdom aspect as some femdom porn out there has a thing with imprisoning people so it's not something out of the ordinary in terms of femdom porn. If Boda actually brought their focus to TOT and not the countless side projects and floor extensions, I kind of imagine the later floors being a lot more pace changers 7th floor has a house inside a Tower but we probably won't ever see it due to the Dev's lack of focus or interest for that matter. So stalemate this time. But then again, some could argue that the fact that Boda are adding pace changers that deviate from the tower aesthetic that much like 7th floor it goes to show how restrictive the setting really is. In a sense, an alternative is to probably make the area into some sort of town (Like the TOT fangames: Femdom forest and The New King). But then the problem there is how to not make it into an ever bigger foot fetish simulator or into a somewhat boring pseudo dating sim with RPG elements (not trying to throw shade at Leoneli he seems like a nice guy and for the most part I like his fan projects even if they are short).
Your Edit:
Not much female nudity outside of the occasional revealing of a vagina (That will more than likely piss on you), a nipple or two, or the implication that a warden is not wearing a bra as they are dominating you (Lily). There are a few penetration scenes (With strap-ons) and one sex scene with one warden.