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I prefer this brief guide

Hihi~ I just made a guide that explains all the -ge visual novel terms. I am aware there are many other guides for that out there, and many of them were discussed before, but I tried to make mine more detailed and easier to understand. Specially for people new to visual novel who came from Anime world (and they are many). Hope my guide is to your liking, and it's the definite guide I want it to be, and of course, any feedback about it is welcome. Here's the link for my guide:- https://SweetMonia.com/The-Lost-Konpeitos/a-guide-for-visual-novel-terms-genres-charage-moege-plotege-chuunige-ichaicha-kamige-kusoge-nakige-utsuge-eroge-nukige-lolige/

Childhood marriage promise. Imagine not only remembering but also taking seriously some dumb shit you said at an age where you were still eating sand off the playground.

I hate childhood friends routes, they're so samey, bland and boring.

Just wondering. Feel free to pick some broad terminology, like "bullying" or "mysterious identity" (or call them tropes if you feel like that term fits what I'm describing better). I'm going to take a guess here and say that a lot of respondents would pick the infamous "love triangle", which I personally don't mind as much. The top of my own list of infamy would definitely be "incurable disease", but I am also very tired of "arranged marriage"- and "heroine has to move away"-stories. - Keep in mind that you can dislike a premise at it's core, even if you read such stories and thought it was good or great. On the contrary, I would love to hear examples of stories which you liked despite them involving your least favorite type of narrative trope. Oh, and please mind spoilers.

Might want to take the 'e' out of plotge. *smiles dryly* A small correction on moege vs charage... moege is a generalized term for all games that carry the 'stylized cuteness' that is 'moe'. As such, similar to charage, it is closer to an umbrella term than an actual genre. If one were to show a family tree, it would show that charage and nakige both come from moege but sometimes edge themselves out of the larger umbrella. Charage are a product of the mid-2000's, whereas moege and nakige first began to appear just before the turn of the century as they dragged themselves out from the nukige muck. Charage are essentially an evolution of moege born of the fans wanting deeper characterization and character interactions (as opposed to the purely surface-level interactions that were common early on). Tsukihime created the chuunige genre, though most people consider Dies Irae the flagship game of the genre as a whole (as in, the one that went the farthest off the deep end, lol). One stipulation about utsuge and nakige... the greatest difference between a nakige and and utsuge lies in the endings. Nakige almost always have happy endings (there might be a bad ending or a normal ending, but these are exceptions). Their purpose lies in catharsis born of release from stress and joy in renewal. Utsuge, however, are essentially games with similar (but darker) themes that don't end well for the characters in general. There are supposedly two different 'levels' of utsuge, 'soft' and 'hard'. Soft utsuge tend to focus more on sorrow and loss, and they don't necessarily drive the characters off the edge, though the endings are sorrowful and/or bittersweet at best. A few examples of a soft utsuge are Konakana and Tapestry, both of which are focused on a protagonist with a terminal illness as he tries to come to terms with his inevitable death and what it will do to the people around him. 'Hard' utsuge are focused more on despair and extreme suffering. Swan Song is an obvious example of this 'level' of the genre in English, whereas Houkago no Futekikakusha is an ideal Japanese-only example. Even a 'hard' utsuge might have one ending with a certain level of salvation, but it usually comes at a massive emotional cost for both the reader and the characters involved.

The type of plot where a character is ostracized in school for literally any reason. 100% of the time, this is because of rumors or some fabrications. I have never come across a story where a character gets into this scenario for a remotely valid reason, but then again - I don't think this kind of story about someone who's in fact worthy of being an outcast is all that common (because such stories generally involve clearing the character's name and putting an end to all of that). I generally dislike this story because they always use a random side character or a group of them (this group tends to be literally all the students in school who don't have a character sprite, because why would the author want to antagonize characters that are actually relevant) for the sole purpose of being an absolute annoyance to everyone else and to the reader as well. IMO, there is nothing interesting about a story like this, regardless of the decisions the characters make. At the end, they either forget all about it, as if nothing ever happened, or change in a random way, as if becoming a new person, which never makes sense. Most of the time, the unimportant characters that caused all of it don't get any repercussions (and that's not even a bad thing, because nobody cares about these characters).

Death.

I don't think they'll ever do that, and honestly they are not that bad when you get used to them. I mentioned them because they usually have this trope, but I think they're very good on handling those.

Literally my thoughts on childhood friend routes as well.

Oh, this is weird. I can't think of any tropes that were overused to the point that I hate them. I believe that since I usually read story-focused games [which doesn't make me better than anyone] instead of romance-focused ones, I never get into the risk of reading more of the same - thus, i can't think of an example to add to the topic. I actually like "incurable disease" when the VN focuses on getting through it and in the drama instead of "loving no matter what". I've just finished watching Air [spoiler? I mean, I can't talk about it without naming it lol] after reading the VN a few years ago, and I think the conclusion of is very satisfying. Maybe I have problems with loli routes and "she is my step mother's daughter so she is my sister and we can't date", but I usually avoid these two as the devil runs from a cross.

It's because OriginalRen is no longer with us. In the end, we were all here for the opportunity to court him.

https://fuwanovel.net/reviews/2017/11/15/karakara-2/ I actually really like this series. It's not deep or anything, but it reliably delivers the goods. Also, what's not to like about a kemonomimi harem?