I have played a few games in the past where it's treated as though you're looking to have a single love interest at the end, but you can play the field in the beginning to get a better understanding of who all the characters in the game are, that at the end, if you manage to play your cards exactly right, has a harem ending. Not exactly the same feeling as a game where you're building a harem all the way through, though.I would say that there are not many games with a 'harem' tag, where it is avoidable. The amount of work involved (especially with this many LI's) would be utterly insane. Even the ones where it is kind of avoidable, almost all require you to at least be with the 'Harem Queen" as part of the main story.
You also run into the problem of everyone being pissed that their favorite (Bailey) didn't get more content in each release. With something that has the number of LI's that this has, individual paths MIGHT get a single update once a year, maybe once every 18 months. Even that would only be if content releases were done every few weeks, and the Dev didn't do anything else in life except updates.
Until recently (by that I mean the last 5 years maybe), that was the only kind of "harem game" I'd seen, and I think it's still what a lot of people are expecting when they see the tag. Both ways can be fun, but the version where everyone involved goes in with open eyes and is okay with what's happening from the start is really growing on me.