My experience with visual novels is, alas, rather meager. I’ve only really dedicated myself to one, while just dabbling amongst others like Umineko and Higurashi. That said, I’ve read a lot into Umineko’s mangas, since it saves a lot more time than the VN, and I’m not forced to conform to the reading speed and comprehension speed the game assumes you to have. I guess that’s my only nitpick I have.
That said, despite the severe conformation that the game offers, Phoenix Wright is one of the few VN’s I’ve actually stuck with, and it was also my first. I got into Higurashi afterwards, and somehow felt robbed of the player interaction due to predisposition about how VN’s work. That said, I guess my favourite type of novel is interactive visual novels, since they essentially function as what they’re marketed as: games. On the other hand, had I not been predisposed about Higurashi from the type of games it hailed from, I perhaps would not have spent the entire game waiting for interaction. Don’t take me wrong here, I’m not undermining Higurashi by saying this, it’s just that I find Higurashi to be more of a ‘book’ than ‘game’, so had I read it as a ‘book’, I probably would have enjoyed it more than I did the first time. But as they say, the first time comes only once.