I bought a physical copy of it back when it was localized in 2013 and played through it. You are...not wrong. It was fairly lauded when it came out here, but I would tend towards it being a bit overrated. The core plot is interesting enough, but it skews right towards graphic Japanese horror (synopsis
on Wikipedia) with porn to help sell it, because it's a VN after all. Still, I don't think those aspects were entirely necessary for the story, and it's not exactly a little softcore stuff tacked on.
Frankly, if you haven't played it,
Doki Doki Literature Club is both cheaper, at $0, and pulls off a better narrative, without resorting to tacking on porn. Or maybe
Analogue: A Hate Story (I haven't played the sequel though).
If you didn't play
VA-11 HALL-A then you might want to check that out. It's effectively a visual novel, done up like a PC-98 game. While it does highlight the bartending aspect, it's effectively the way the game does conversations - give people the right drink at the right time rather than pick the right dialogue option. It's on Switch now, even.