What is the most important part in a Visual Novel for you?

[Arcadeotic]

Everyone has that one thing that they look for in a VN: Be it art, story, characters, voice actors, BGM or even moe-factor, everyone has one, but which is yours?

Mine was art for the longest time, but when time went on, I started to pay more respect to the characters in a VN, and art got triumphed by characters. But I still like good art in Visual Novels immensly. Although I appreciate charages and nakiges more than ever before, standard run-of-the-mill SoL with good art is still good sometimes. It just isn't as good as before. Even so, even if the story is sub-par or the story is generic, that doesn't matter to me; if it has good art or decent characters,  then 99% of the time I still will find it enjoyable and find it in me to finish it, most of the time.

But enough of that, please do tell me your opinions.

What is the most important part, that makes a Visual Novel?

[MoeKyun]

For me that will be : Art, storyline, bgm (a good bgm can stuck in my head for a long time~ )

Oh, and H-scene for "motivation"

[gijimu]

For me, they are characters, storyline, art, writing and BGM. I don't really put strong emphasis on moe element, but it is one of factors that makes me interested in a VN, albeit in small scale (like how I became interested in your Bishoujo Mangekyou because of the white hair heroine ).

Character, BGM, art, and writing pretty much decide my first impression upon playing a VN, and storyline may come sooner or later. For example, what got me into playing more VN was my first impression of my very first VN ever, If My Heart Had Wings. The art was really nice, the characters were interesting, and BGM made me want to enjoy the VN more. At that time I thought "So this is what Japanese VN like, I want to look for another".

What got me decided that storyline is another important part of VN is Muv Luv Alternative. I remember playing MLA almost until dawn, something which is very, very rare to me, just because the story was so intriguing, and in the end I felt that the VN really worth it (I was almost late completing my thesis because of reading MLA).

Another important point is, uniqueness. For example, Kazami Yuuji is different from common protagonist you will find from VNs of same genre, so does some tropes in Grisaia no Kajitsu. At this point, reading VNs about school life has made me bored about VN of same setting, so unique VN setting is what I want, imo.

H-scenes are not that important for me, maybe because they are a bit exaggerated in my opinion, and most of the time I feel something unnatural of them. But yeah, good h-scenes will make the VN memorable .

Good BGMs, especially the ones that appear in climatic scene (not h-scenes), also are nice, and probably important for bringing the right mood. 

Maybe I am writing too much, but that's my opinion on important parts of visual novel.

[ヤミハナ]

Me:

The main reason I play a Visual Novel is because of the art. If there's a waifu material girl in the said Visual Novel, and she's one of the main heroines that you can do H with, then I'll definitely play it. 

The second main reason is story and character. I mostly play utsuge and nakige, which purpose is to make players get emotionally attached to the character in the VN, and eventually leading the player to an emotional breakdown in the end. So that kind of storyline is of great importance to me.

[Kaguya]

Story and secondly music. Can't say I care too much about anything else. 

It's why I don't even read moege (and very little charage) nowdays.  

[Yuuko]

Probably characters, their behavior usually give me the fluffy feelings.

Many people were probably expecting me to say art.  

[LittleBustersforEver!]

Story, art, writig, bgm. The first thing I look for in a visual novel is a decent plot.Good art is another thing I appreciate, but it is not a decisive factor for me, a prime example for this would be 'Higanbana no Saku Yoru Ni', one of my favourite visual novels- a sound novel to be precice- in which little to no ottention has been payed to the art- yet, I really enjoeyed it, just like with "Umineko no nNaku Koro Ni'. Then, third but under no circumstances to be looked down upon, writing. It is what will make me read through the visual novel all the way to the end. And, secondary but powerfrul nonetheless, the music. On another note, the development of the characters could be importannt, too, but if the plot itself is good enough for me then I am okay with just having them cover the basics, without too deep of a development. 

[VirginSmasher]

The story is the most important part for me. A bad character can have a great story, but if a bad route has a good heroines, I can't excuse a bad story like I can with a bad character.

[DarkZedge]

Story, Characters, Art Style...in that order i absolutely need to get engrosed by the story in order to fully sink into the Vn that i'm reading..then again it might be the case for many people.

[The Striker]

The character development.

[Dergonu]

For me its the characters.

 

Of course story is really important, and stuff like art etc. is a big factor as well, but for me it all comes down to the characters in the end. I just wont really be into the story if I don't have any strong connections to the characters.

I'm able to read a VN if I absolutely love the characters, even if the rest like art, story etc. isn't that great.

Give me a set of great characters and I'm happy.

[nos4r2]

Character especially protagoinst if protagoinst suck ass and annoy as hell i usually skip for the sake of my sanity

[Valmore]

TEH LEWDS!!!!!

Well, not entirely...

I need a good story with well-developed characters. Even if the story is cliched, if it's told well, that's fine, as long as the characters are fresh.

There also needs to be some sense of logic if you're basing it on things that are potentially real, i.e. slice of life, modern day. I can suspend as much disbelief as you want in sci fi, fantasy, horror, etc. But if you base something in modern times in something close to reality, you damned well better cover your logical angles or I'm going to rip into it. (My two main examples are Amane's route in Grisaia, which while written well, fails my logic test, and recently No One But You, which was a logical clusterf--k.)

[Dergonu]

11 minutes ago, Valmore said:

TEH LEWDS!!!!!

Sasuga onii-chan

[Jade]

Awesome MC,

Everything else is tolerable as long as the MC is fucking awesome.

[Turnip Sensei]

Probably story and writing. 

Stories are what makes visual novels for me. Pretty graphics, good music and such can only carry the VN so far. If I don't find the story enjoyable, interesting or worth my while, I'll just drop the VN in most cases. Reading an uninspiring story is the worst.

Writing is something I've learned to appreciate as I've read more and more VNs, especially in cases where it focuses on narration. While dialogue is good way to portray many things, I can't help but prefer visual novels like Fate/stay night where the narration is used to greatly enhance the storytelling or Sakurai's Steampunk games where even the writing itself feels really satisfying to read.   

[Fiddle]

User interface. I want multiple organized menus, I want my buttons to light up when I roll over them, I want my buttons to make little noises when I roll over them, I want a bunch of virtually useless features like "Skip opening movie on skip mode" in my config, and I want shizzle to be shiny as hell.

[OriginalRen]

Dank memes.

I don't think anything else needs to be said here.

[Deep Blue]

story primarily if you fail with this the vn can't be good and second the music I don't care about anything else

[Valmore]

1 hour ago, Fiddle said:

User interface. I want multiple organized menus, I want my buttons to light up when I roll over them, I want my buttons to make little noises when I roll over them, I want a bunch of virtually useless features like "Skip opening movie on skip mode" in my config, and I want shizzle to be shiny as hell.

Not certain if serious... or sarcasm.

[Funyarinpa]

Plot (twists).

No VN for me has become a favorite on good character interaction alone (the only thing that pulled that off for me is Persona anyway). It's the story that I'm in for, and even if the OST or art is shitty, a good story can still make an amazing VN.

 

 

[iamnoob]

Atmosphere.

How scary it can get in horror  ( Like Rewrite's Lucia ( Not really horror but I like the way to was portrayed))

Clover Day's childhood nostalgic feel even though you just met the characters just an hour ago it already feels like they are your childhood friends.

AstralAir. Specifically in the common route when talking to Yuki. It feels nostalgic and mysterious at the same time.

[mitchhamilton]

Anal.

 

 

butt seriously probably if the story and characters and art are appealing. i just look at its vndb page first and look at the art and see the synopsis and decide if i wanna read it or not.

[ChaosRaven]

For me it's mostly art, characters and immersion followed by BGM. I consider the immersion in particular as one of the strongest points of VN's. No other media gives me this feeling to experience the story myself and the possibility to influence it. And the combination of immersion, strong character focus and interaction with the highlight of romance and H-scenes makes it an extremely tempting medium.

While I would certainly appreciate a good story in visual novels, I definitely don't read them because of it. Simply because I can probably count the number of visual novels with good stories I've read on one hand, and even those had major issues. Stories I consider as interesting almost don't exist in visual novels: Classic fantasy like Lord of the Rings or the Wheel of Time, science fiction stuff like Star Wars, Babylon 5, Perry Rhodan or The Matrix, interesting war movies like Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List or Das Boot and many more. If I would really care about a good story, visual novels would probably be the last thing I'd read. That's not to say it wouldn't be possible since it certainly is. But let's face it, currently most of them are just simple school life moeges or worse. IMHO, good old fashioned books, movies and TV series do a better job if it comes to good stories.

[Templarseeker]

At first, the reason why I started playing/reading visual novels in the first place was for its colorful arts/character design for it really resembles the ones commonly seen on anime. Being a avid anime viewer, I was really intrigued about Visual Novels as a general for the very first time! As time went on and I stumble upon other Visual Novels along the way. My overall expectations and taste or preference or whatever you called it just suddenly changed.  I'm much more concern nowadays about a Visual Novel's particular translation quality since no matter how impressive or wonderful a specific Visual Novel's Storyline/Setting or Characters or the Arts could ever be. If a VN wouldn't bring itself to fully convey its emotional significance to the readers which is me and keeps on encountering mistakes all over. When that happens, how can I or someone will care for the VN's storyline or the character as a whole since weren't able to really understand it or enjoy it? 

Secondly aside from the Translation quality and overall writing, I also onto the Art Style and Character Design and their developments throughout the game.