Totopo

I'll toss in a few more I'm not seeing mentioned here over time. For now here's 1. Love Esquire is a really good dating sim VN. Note it's not a pure visual novel, it is an actual dating sim hybrid VN with time management, map movement, stats, resources and a few mini games on top of having a lot of reading and choices. You play as a voiced Squire, and with an upcoming war you have a few things you want to accomplish before you march off to battle: You want to get some training in with your Knight partner, and you want to experience "Man's Greatest Pleasure". Your choices for girls are your farmgirl stepsis, two flavors of royalty, a brawler loli, and a shy pink haired nurse. The general style and writing for the game is silly with lots of comedy, though drama and serious plot does kick in especially later in the routes for each girl. This is the sort of game where the MC's inner thoughts are often dirty and crude, like the MC will drop his pants and smack his butt to taunt enemies as a combat minigame move. There's a light general theme about growing up and getting serious within the game, but even near the end of routes the MC is still a bit of a goofball outside of scenes where he's risking his life or dealing with a girl's heavy drama. The production quality is way above expectations for EVN. The art is really nice, it goes for some tropes like hiding the MC's eyes that might turn some people off but the girls all look great and the game has a nice variety in CGs (some of which are animated) and good UI art. The game sounds great with pleasant music and lots of English voicework too, the casting was well done and I think most people will recognize names like Kira Buckland and Amanda Lee in the main cast. They handled H-scenes elegantly enough for Steam: the base game just fades to black, but you have 2 easily accessible options to add H-scenes. There's an official free DLC (Love Esquire - Greatest Pleasure) that adds H-scene CGs, and then a much improved mod available for free on the Steam Workshop (Hip To Be Squire) that adds extra story and animation to the H-scenes. The devs themselves recommend playing using Hip To Be Squire if you want H-scenes, so I'll have a 2nd link right to the Steam Workshop page for it. https://store.steampowered.com/app/849740/Love_Esquire__RPGDating_SimVisual_Novel/ https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1884758461

Yeah Kukrushka is a hard enemy for many early builds, she has huge charm but abysmal logic (2nd only to Comet). Until you have late game stats you need to rely on the "Definite Enemy" skill (or keep Raqio alive) to take her down. I had the most real trouble with Jonas just because he's essentially the wildcard character, his greatest strength as a gnosia and weakness as crew are the same thing: he acts on whims that only make sense to himself. When I'm sure he's Gnosia I can take usually him down, but he's one of the harder characters to pin down as Gnosia from my experience.

Gnosia was one of the games I preordered back when it was coming out to Switch, due to how highly people thought about it on the Vita. It's an incredibly good Werewolf sim considering it's single player, you touched on it but I want to elaborate on just how well they pulled off the transformation from a social game based on reading people into a single player story based game. Each character has AI and likes and dislikes and preferences, even down to the little known fact that the player selects a favorite color for their profile and this gives them minor bonuses and penalties with individual characters, setting up individual player's casts slightly differently from the very start. It works wonderfully as a social deduction game despite being single player because they set it up where the main plot mostly involves just learning about the cast, which directly translates to a better understanding of what is happening in debates. Every character has invisible values for how much they like and dislike each other character. You find out X character loves Y character, which might make some of their previous actions make more sense but more importantly helps you "read" X better. You need to plan around the fact that X doesn't like accusing Y, and if they do end up accusing Y then you better pay attention because that is not done lightly. The RPG style skill levels for things like if they're good at lying all tie into their personalities: The shy dude can get away with not speaking up because everyone knows he is shy, the loud and rude dude can get away with some bold actions because people expect him to take them, the cute girl can more easily charm certain people into being on her side just by asking nicely. These are all real types of players if you play any social form of Werewolf, and Gnosia does a perfect job at making them all feel alive. It didn't take long before I was thinking about the characters and not meta gaming, just like IRL Werewolf, with thoughts like "she's being a bit aggressive today/he's staying oddly quiet/why would X say that about Y out of nowhere/oh damn I think this person just pissed off the group with their personality and not because they are guilty". It's the little quirks that really make the cast shine in the end, the stuff beyond the personalities the RPG stats indicate. Late game in Gnosia the cast shines the brightest, several characters gain a complex moveset they can use, with some characters even having unique moves (that they can teach the player) far enough into the game. As new discussion skills are introduced, characters will have preferences on how to approach those skills. An easy example is to demand everyone say they are human (aka not Gnosia), each cast member has different innate feelings on this question. There's at least 1 cast member that actually hates the idea of admitting they are human, on top of several cast members that are wary of this approach because they don't like to think of themselves as human or aren't a member of the human species or they dislike speaking up in general. Characters can stay silent and just let the rest of the group speak up, and some people can flat out demand the group stop this activity. There's a lot of good mental work involved in these situations, did they stop the group because they just hate the idea, or are they the Gnosia, or are they a role that wants to cause chaos, or do they think it's a waste of time for a character specific reason? It really makes each character feel "real" because they all have different opinions and thoughts that the player can never directly see, only learn through observation, which is the heart of a game like Werewolf. Also something important to note, I've talked to several people that think they finished the game but actually haven't. The credits rolling do not signify the full ending of the game has been reached. For a more direct spoiler for anyone that is unsure what I mean but wants to be sure they get the ending: