LMAO, maybe cool it with the mysogynistic framing here. Exclusivity is much more important to women than to men. In a nomadic hunter/gatherer society (where most of the base human instincts come from) if she is heavily pregnant and unable to work and he left for some other women, she's gonna die.
So, before I answer this, I have to acknowledge this:
It doesn't matter too much anyway because it's a power fantasy harem game
Absolutely correct, thanks for not losing sight of that. Now, back to the thing...
It's interesting that you bring up evolutionary psychology, yet also call my framing misogynistic. Evolution doesn't care about morality, "fairness," or cruelty. Evolution asks one and only one basic question before all other factors come into play: "Will this organism survive long enough to reproduce?"
So when you call my framing misogynistic what I think you
really mean is, "You're not allowed to talk about women unless I agree with you." Which is gross. Knock that off. But to engage with the story you're telling, there's an easy way out for this woman: cheat. The genetic record shows that there are half as many male ancestors as female ancestors. Is it also misogynistic of me to know that and point it out?
I went ahead and wrote a lot more out on that subject (evolutionary history/psychology), but remembered that this post has pretty decent odds of getting deleted for being off-topic as it is. So, to keep it concise, here's a few bullet points:
>I do, in fact, happen to think poorly of women
as a cohort in many 1st-world nations.
>I happen to think poorly of several cohorts where crime, health, spending, and politics are concerned (and I doubt you're any different).
>Thinking poorly of these groups
does not mean I wish them harm or intend to deny them basic courtesy and human dignity.
>I attempt to judge every person that I meet
on an individual basis based on the
content of their character.
These points, despite claims to the contrary, are not mutually exclusive. The first, despite claims to the contrary, does not make me "one who displays prejudice or looks down upon women," as a quick web search defines misogynist. Just as the last, also despite claims to the contrary, does not make me racist, prejudiced, or bigoted.
Now, to follow your example and make a token effort to discuss the game:
I'm turned off by the loli content. More than personal preference, I think that's a hell of a lot harder to justify in-game than having multiple lovers; if they're in the harem, everyone else in the harem who knows about it is now an accomplice to an act that ranges from criminal to distasteful depending on the legal setting and a few other variables. Sure, it's fictional and everyone is somehow of age (even when indicated otherwise), but it thoroughly disappointed me that "opting out" was really just "we'll skip over this, but it's still happening and people will reference dialogue you never read there later on."
I'd also gripe about romancing family members being as overused as the isekai genre, but incest
is kind of a staple in these games. I think it's because devs don't want to make the MC's family members ugly or annoying, and if a character is hot then players are going to want the MC to bang them, but there's a lot of complications in this nascent harem: some characters are related, some are married (unhappily), in relationships (unhappily), and they all want different things out of a partner based on where they are in their lives. For them to be happy with the MC, even in a harem, I think they're going to need some way to tie their daily lives together outside of the odd booty call and the occasional heart-to-heart. As the potion business expands, it might be worthwhile to try and swing some of the girls a job there somehow. It's been a while since I've played, but I may need to run through it again to see what the LIs are interested in--someone might be interested in research, or learning from the old man, while some might be interested in sales, the business, logistics, or management side of things. PR, maybe.
Or maybe I should just shut my brain off and enjoy the renders, animations, pretty backgrounds, and dialogue.