Endless Nine

I was browsing VNs on Steam with black friday sales, and since I'm currently broke I wanted to ask some details about the game: are the characters generic dating sim stereotypes? Does it actually try to tell a story or is it just mindless comedy with terrible forced romance? I'm stuck between this and some other VNs like Planetarian, but I wanted to buy something that would be longer than 10 hours and that would hook me, also I want to buy something I haven't played yet. By the way, I'm aware of the censorship in it, but I'm going to ask this anyway: is the fanservice mild? I don't mind if it is, but if I had to read a borderline-hentai VN I'd rather watch good porn instead. In the end, if what I listed above is only shown to an acceptable extent, I'm willing to spend my money to buy it, plus, if there are any nice reasons I should play this, I'd like to know them.

I'm looking for a romance VN where the romance is actually light-hearted and "real", so excluding excessive fanservice or blatant otaku pandering, rape, and typical harem archetypes. I don't mind if it has routes, but I want to read something that doesn't have "romance" shoved in it for the sake of completeness. I'm not looking for yuri/yaoi or homosexual romance in general, also no incest romance. Possibly only Japanese VNs translated in English. I've currently played only these VNs: Higurashi & Higurashi Kai, Umineko & Umineko Chiru, Inganock, Gahkthun, Sharnoth, Forest, Steins;Gate, Fate/Stay Night Realta Nua, Narcissu, Chaos;Head, Tokyo Babel.

Maybe that's because that's what the main target wants? I don't know if I'm being ignorant here, but I don't think I'll ever find a better VN than Umineko. It surely had romance only through the end, but Ryukishi ended it in the worst way possible, which I could accept somehow, it's also my favorite VN because of its atmosphere, BGMs, and character development. I'm at chapter 7 of Steins;Gate, but up until now the game doesn't really hold a candle to what I have read in Umineko, not that I don't like it, it's just that IMO it's a good visual novel which talks about time travels, it surely is cool, but it doesn't have many characters and the BGMs are repetitive so I barely notice them. I'm going to try these suggestions, but I might leave the genre after finishing them or probably I'm going to finish those Umineko/Higurashi extra arcs since they're very short. And yeah, unfortunately I'm still waiting for Witch Hunt to release Rose Guns Days' final season's translation. But I think rather than waiting more years for a single episode I'd better learn Japanese somehow.

As I said before I have already completed both Higurashi and Umineko. I don't really mind because I'm really fond of fighters, though I don't like BB's gameplay. Another thing I forgot to mention, I have already completed half of Chaos;Head but unfortunately the English patch corrupted my save files and I can't load from chapter 6 anymore.

Sorry for missing an introduction. I don't really intend to post on this forum except for this topic, because I have been desperate in finding a good visual novel without romance and without hentai content, I have asked everywhere I know and all the other threads I have found so far here were quite old and I couldn't find anything that suited me. I am currently playing Steins;Gate, though I have heard there's only a little romance, that won't bother me that much, the main issue is that I really get annoyed from romance because they're very repetitive whether they're forced or not. So far I have completed almost every 07th Expansion VN (both Higurashi and Umineko, including Rose Guns Days which I'm waiting to finish). I can get used to the H-content but I can't really stand romance, as I began to hate Umineko during the final episodes, but i kept myself away from spoilers, that's why I never knew the whole story was based on romance. Getting straight to the point, are there any decent VNs without or with very little romance in it that I should know about? By "decent" I mean I dislike VNs which are focused on the slice of life/comedy genre, that doesn't mean it has to be totally gloomy and serious though. Thanks.