While there’s been an uptick recently, the criticism has basically been there since beta testing, as @Shoelip could attest:
HR has always been the most bashed game on the forums, precisely because it’s also one of the all-time most popular ones. There’s little reason for people to keep bashing City in the Clouds or Treasure Seekers today, however much people grumbled about them on their release, because those games never found the passionate fanbase that HR has. Also, because it’s so popular, the mods have tended not to rein in the language of the bashing as much as we might have for other authors who can’t console themselves by rolling in their mountain of fanart and royalty cash. (Or as we would have if Zach Sergi hung out on the forums, which I don’t believe he does.)
I enjoyed HR when it came out, was rather more critical of the core concept of HR 2, and thought HR 3 was a perfectly good end to the series. I agree with the folks on this thread who have suggested that HR 1 has roughly as much variation as the other games of that early CoG era (besides Choice of the Vampire), but because it’s twice as long, there’s also a lot more consequence-free choice.
Sergi himself recognizes that HR 1 was linear, and describes it as “my first opportunity to (pretty quickly out of college) tell a story… in this original format (the learning curve was steep, though—coding that first book was a doozy, nor was there a deep CoG catalogue to study yet).” He also recognizes that his early attempts at trans representation weren’t great. Both are things he’s tried to amend in his later work.
@MeltingPenguins, I’ve often wondered after reading your critiques whether you knew that Zach is himself a gay man. I don’t know him personally, but it’s obvious that he cares passionately about writing good representation; within the circle of CoG authors, he worked harder and earlier than anyone else to push out the boundaries of LGBT representation in his games. That doesn’t mean he’ll succeed in writing good representation, of course; even he will be the first to admit he got some things badly wrong. I haven’t read his post-Herofall work, so I can’t speak to how he’s changed. But it may be worth considering that the reason he makes more mistakes than most CoG authors is because he’s trying more, taking way more risks than 99% of us. It would certainly be a mischaracterization to say he makes mistakes because he doesn’t care or because he was lazily repurposing a straight male MC.
@Voldy, it’s fine for you to disagree with Eiwynn’s call for consensus, but MeltingPenguins offers a better, less shrill example of how to do this.