I don't know why people act like this was downgraded because of politically incorrectness. There's a whole host of issues like the social system being uninteresting, that maxing out relationships affection requires no effort, crap story, and the combat not even be challenging until the end of the game, and that someone can just rely on auto-battle the entire game. Maybe something like bad story and uninteresting characters could be ignored for a game with great and challenging battle elements but there doesn't even seem to be that.
Anyhow, the line everyone seems to be freaking out about is THE GOOD / THE BAD tagline of:
Relationship element is too easy and packed with sexism
But what the review had to say about it in that regard is:
The story presents the classmating ritual as innocent enough, and the act is initially accomplished by both "parents" merely holding hands. But while the game states that classmating is a pure-hearted process, it implies inappropriate levels of lasciviousness. All conversations about classmating are packed with blatant innuendo, and the game doesn't shy away from adolescent levels of sexual humor, featuring talk of bust sizes and looking up girls' skirts, and depicting an uncomfortably perverted priest. There are moments when the game does an acceptable job of at least contextualizing the sexual overtones and providing balance to this kind of sexism; there are even times when the story explores its themes of teenage sexuality on a mature level. Too often, however, the winks and nudges of the dialogue go too far into the realm of crassness, as if the writers are constantly poking you and shouting, "Get it? It's like we're talking about sex even when we're not!"
I think the problem here is the maturity of the delivery, as if Beavis and Butthead wrote the game's dialogue. I think the heavy sexual overtones aren't inherently negative by themselves but how they're handled I think makes more of a difference.
Anyhow, GTA V still scored a 9 even with sexism concerns addressed, that's why I feel there's more weight added to the other criticisms that bring its score down (bad gameplay, not challenging, bad story, bad social elements). A game with sexual elements though does warrant a lot more attention when the game is void of any other substance, then it becomes exploitative. If it's a bad thing for any reason it's because it's totally lacking of substance in other areas. Then again, exploitation as a genre has it's own kind of tone and flavor to it, in that sense shamelessly owning that angle can actually be a positive depending on delivery.
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