I fucking love harem games so fucking much, but this game was never promised to be one. And so there are many other games where to some extent you can romance all (or almost all) girls but there comes a point where you have to choose one.
BaDIK did it, BARS did it, Broken Dreamers did it, WTHI did it and STWA: Unbroken is doing it. None of them were conceived as a harem games and were never promised to be, but they let you "test the waters" and romance all or several love interests, but at a certain point you have to choose just one of them (or 2 of them in some cases).
In all of them it was known that eventually you would have to choose just one girl. It wasn't an abrupt change.
I don't agree that it was "always known" that they would turn out like that. Depending on the game, it seems relatively uncommon for a game to tell you up front that partway through the game you will be restricted to one LI and only see scenes with them from then on. Ending the game with one LI and no harem isn't the same, as up until the very end you can still see content with other LIs. Most games I've played may say "no harem" right up front, which is fine, or just kinda leave it open and figure it out later in the game's development cycle. YMMV
CoBD let you continue your romance/sex with pretty much anyone up until the end (although some of that may be the mod I'm using, don't remember exactly).
The last BADik episode seemed to divide a lot of people because depending on which path you were on, you got like one single scene so you had to replay over and over again to see all the content (which many, including myself, found tedious). Look at the people clamoring for the BADik "harem" mod to come out (not a true harem, just allowed to see all content with all girls in a single playthrough). At least BADik let you choose "none" where you could still play the field, WtFW doesn't even give you that choice.
WTHI absolutely does not force you into monogamy. What a strange thing to say. You "can" choose just one, or you can continue with multiple women. Hell, you can be in a foursome with one of the "sisters" and 2 other girls.
I never expected a harem game, and never did I say or imply that. If you re-read my comment that you quoted, you'll see that I am generally fine with something in between monogamy and full harem, no need for extremes. And I never said or implied that ending the game with one single LI was bad in any way. I personally like having that choice at the end, because for me there's usually one that I prefer by the end.
What I dislike is the sudden funneling down, mid game (unlike CoBD), to a single LI where you see only content with them, making each subsequent update more likely to be extremely short since the developer has to spread the content out between mutually exclusive paths. All this without the option to "not" go full monogamy if you don't want (like BADik pretty much did, and WTHI absolutely did). WtFW doesn't give this option.
I maintain that that is a perfectly reasonable position to have. Not the ONLY correct position to have, but anyone saying I'm unreasonable for having this position is either misreading me or needs to get over themselves.
Never played BARS, what game is that?
It's just weird to have person after person hear, "What's with the sudden mid-game forced monogamy?" and think "He just wants a harem!". What a strawman that is. That's like me saying I don't want people who smoke a joint to go to prison, and someone coming back and saying that means I want school children to get free heroin. No, #strawmenlivesmatter and people should stop beating up on them so much. Just saying
