I’m kind of shocked that Steam outright banned this game though. Did they even playtest it?

I haven’t played this game but according to the jp website, this is a D rated game, meaning 17+ for the Playstation Vita. That means no nudity. No genitalia. No sexual activity. By comparison, Cyberpunk, which has all of these and violence is rated Z, adult only. From what i can tell about the minigame, you tap the girls fully clothed to charge them up in order to learn skills? It’s sort of like that Iron Man scene where tony stark invents a new element. You “can” mistaken their Oohs and Ahs for something sexual if you couldn’t see what was happening behind a closed door, but this seems to be as far as it goes. The entire main cast is female. None of the male supporting characters are involved in any scenes. There’s no romance. It’s girls beating up monsters in a wizardry/might and magic 3d dungeon with parody jokes about japanese politics? I don’t know if their costumes can get damaged in battle but no matter how much damage they take, they won’t show anything. It’s classic Playstation “tease but never deliver” that fanservice devs like this are famous for. Even the character designs seem intentionally “unsexy”. This feels like a massive “much ado about nothing”, like Love on Leave. I have no expectations for this title at all. Despite a release from 2017, it did not get any sequels or spinoffs, unlike the massively popular neptunia series or mary skelter. It looks destined to be bashed to death by haters for adult content that doesn’t actually exist and by lovers for the very same reason. I might just get this just for the political jokes if it ever gets a massive discount but i think neptunia or mary skelter are likely to be a lot better overall.

I’d love to hear from people who actually played the vita version, either to confirm or deny.

A publisher can only publish what the developer puts out. In this case, Eastasiasoft released it without the minigame. The only version with the minigame is for the vita. Perhaps it was too inconsequential to bother including in the game given how prickly publishers were getting? I’m not pleased at an incomplete product as well. I suggest either waiting for the political climate to get better or just looking for a vita import. I would prepare myself for disappointment though. I really do think the minigame is inconsequential. There’s more and better content on either side of the spectrum than this.

Not quite. EAS didn't just publish the game, they were in charge of the english localization and porting as well. As a EAS spokesman (or someone who was invovled on the development of this game's localization) said on twitter, they had a version with the minigame that they presented to Steam, but it got rejected (same with another version without it they presented to them and got rejected as well).
There's some tweets that read like they focused then on working on the Switch version on the minigame-less version to the port and GOG was just their "last chance" to release the game on PC, since they said GOG and Switch versions are identical

Since they have the Source Code of the port, they can easily create a "DLC" with all "offending" data and host it externally but they seem scared that Nintendo would cancel the NA/e-shop release of TC (something that didn't happen yet, since the game was released on Asian markets only), something I find nonsense. I still think the minigame removal was absolutely in purpose by EAS.

A reminder that Mary Skelter 2 (published nd ported to PC/consoles by Ghostlight LTD) had a similar issue at release, with a similar minigame removed, but it was fixed 2 weeks later after release, and the minigame can be played with a small file on the game's directory.

inconsequential or not, the main issue here is the lack of honesty of EAS. If they added a small disclaimer on the store page saying that there were some "content removed due issues outside their control", I think they wouldn't had the backslash they got here. In my case If I knew that from the start, I could've kept my copy of the game, but as soon I knew the truth, I asked for a refund, since the idea of paying a full price for a game with less content doesn't make me too happy...

Oh well, I hope they are proud they "saved" the world "protecting" our minds of touching pixel-shaped anime girls with the mouse pointer, so all the backslash they got for this release is nothing for them :P

This makes no sense, there's like 10 hentai game released every month on GOG with uncensored patch made available right here.