Reddit reviews BELIEVER!

Honestly I wouldn't listen to dumb boys and their Japanese elitism, which is likely to be the bulk of people around there. There are just as many bad Japanese VNs as there are good ones. The only reason we don't hear about the bad ones is because, well, they were bad. There's actually even Japanese term to address really bad games, which is "kusoge" or "shitty game" in English. Here, have an amazing example of a commercial Vita game published by D3Publisher, which everyone is more than happy to refer to as a kusoge. It was so bad that it's selling for almost 70% off...as a new copy.

Okay but see, you're comparing indies to commercial stuff. I never suggested comparing to big name visual production houses in Japan like Otomate or Rejet haha. I suggested comparison to indie works in japan, like The Second Reproduction, oooor I guess Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni, if we're going for stuff that isn't just otome but original indie.

I think the fact that we still call this genre 'otome' even in English, shows the lingering attachment to Japanese, as opposed to breaking free of the stereotype.

I don't believe there are actually any real big time commercial visual novels being produced in the west, which is a sign it still hasn't quite caught on. I want to say Zero Time Dilemma, the 3rd installment from the Zero Escape series is close, but it is still primarily developed in Japan (albeit the production company has stated clearly its promotional focus shift to the west, where the game found a better niche audience - it never did well in Japan). And with the shift in ZTD to focus on Western audience, they actually moved away from visual novel format and went for FMV. It's just a sign that VNs are still the niche and the industry bigs are afraid of it.