Seraphim

Well, I'll spare you from too much detail, since the full story would be a book (and, like Noble☆Works, it might be a book with a higher word count than Ulysses).
But allow me to validate your point about the scenarists: I had some early inklings that the producers lazily divided routes among different writers, but this fact became all too clear once I embarked upon Shizuru's route. I quickly noticed an obscene overuse of em dashes, and had to force myself to diverge from the Japanese text's style and use alternative forms of syntax—but this soon became the least of our team's problems, as every aspect of the Shizuru route writer's prose was simply aberrant. I'm sure you've noticed that the route's story itself is strange compared to the others, but more importantly from my perspective, the text's grammatical structure, word choice, flow, etc. were all a mess. This might be all well and good for somebody willing to take great liberties in translation; unfortunately, having been influenced by the chorus of translation puritans that characterized that era, I was not willing to take those much-needed liberties. As such, the translation surely ended up unnecessarily stilted and lacked the flow that a dialogue-heavy work so badly wants, and for that I apologize.
Now, my comment above was actually half-sarcastic. The thing is, I can barely finish a single medium-length visual novel before undergoing an acute sense of repetition. You might imagine, then, that I—somebody who's almost certainly "played" (as in, had open while paying some attention to) Noble☆Works longer than any other human—would become a bit sick of the game. Indeed, I myself cannot say to what degree my opinion of the game should be untethered from the trauma it wreaks upon my mind.
But regardless, I'm pretty sure it kind of sucks.

And in the meantime, people are complaining about lack of h-scenes in KEY VN
I was really shocked after seeing that. The notion that VN=eroge, and that whenever story involves characters having sex, you absolutely HAVE to show it in every detail, seems to be strong. (I personally find it ridiculous, and legendary bad quality of KEY's H-scenes only reinforces that )
 
On a side note - when browsing Steam reviews of Flight Diary, I saw some people who claimed that they could feel when h-scenes were cut from Akari's route
 

Yes, this will probably take a while, but 'Being a DIK - Season 1', the successor to 'Acting Lessons', will be released next week and I'll probably check that out as well. I guess it won't be too long anyway, so it should be easy to squish inbetween the other VN's I'm currently reading.

Actually, your conversation with @adamstan a while ago inspired me to play those two titles. 

Out of curiosity I've also tried two of those new western render VN's, and for the most part I was positively surprised. Apparently Acting Lessons and Depraved Awakening are the ones that stand out the most at the moment and so I picked those. The former goes more into slice of life and drama territory, while the latter is pretty much a nukige.
Depraved Awakening:
Overall, I found the quality of the two titles comparable, although Depraved Awakening impressed me a bit more with its erotic thriller approach. H-heavy titles with a solid plot are pretty rare and Depraved Awakening certainly tried to give you an interesting story to keep you engaged. You're playing a detective trying to solve a murder case in a film noir setting. There aren't a lot of Japanese VN's like that. The Innocent Grey titles have a similar setting but are way more serious and plot focused with less H-content. Except Cartagra maybe which was also quite H-heavy. The closest thing are probably the mystery titles of Astronauts: Sirius which have a strong western touch and a lot of H-content. Writing was a bit crude for my taste, but I liked the atmosphere and the fast pacing. It also had a decent soundtrack, but almost no sound effects and no voices.
Acting Lessons:
I think the writing of Acting Lessons was a bit better (except for the H-scenes) but I had the impression that it struggled a bit with what it wanted to be. Some plot developments towards the end were a bit... odd to put it mildly. It was also bit 'slow on the uptake' so to speak. I mean, if the VN asks me twenty times if I prefer Melissa over Megan and I'm answering "HELL, YES!!!" and the conclusion of the VN is 'Deeply in love with Megan, but plays around with Melissa', then I really don't know what to say anymore. I think the plot arc with your buddy was the most consistent one, even if I found some of his escapades a bit too over the top lol. The actual acting lessons and 'Improv' in particular was a bit boring for my taste, but I liked when they were just hanging out with each other. H-scenes were poorly written with almost no text in them which is a serious issue considering it had quite a lot of them. Soundtrack could have been better and just like Depraved Awakening, it had spare sound effects and no voices. Overall, I think if you want slice of life and drama and don't care too much about the style, then you probably find a lot more and better stuff amongst Japanese VN's.
3D versus 2D:
Nevertheless, there are a few things that stand out in both VN's and I guess in render VN's in general. First and foremost, the art content is way higher than in tradional drawn VN's. I guess it's way easier to come up with lots of render images and even animations if you have a finished scene in your 3D-render program. Roughly estimated, traditional 2D VN's usually have around 100 - 200 CG's if you include backgrounds, but 3D ones have thousands of CG's. Though it has to be considered that 2D VN's usually create their scenes on the fly by adding sprites in different poses to a background. In 3D VN's those are all pre-rendered.
However, a common problem of the 3D VN's is still the somewhat synthetic look of render scenes and as nice as animations are, they often feel unnatural if you do them without motion capturing. Though both VN's made huge improvements in that regard through the chapters. On the other hand, rendering seems to be a good technique if you want to produce glamour girls with an emphasis on sex appeal. While the faces are still a bit of a problem, hot appealing bodies seem to be easy - there's certainly a lot of potential in 3D VN's with an emphasis on sex. It can't really compare with the 'cuteness' aspect of manga art though. If you want adorable characters there's nothing to see here.
Style differences:
Another point that stood out amongst both VN's is the unique western style of them. The age group of young women in the age of 20 - 30 almost doesn't exist in Japanese VN's. Judging by appearance it usually goes from 5 - 15... and then continues with 30+ in milf nukiges.  Furthermore, since there's fortunately no obsession with school life scenarios, the heroines are older and more mature (and slutty) and less childish than their Japanese counterparts. The pacing is also way faster - almost too fast sometimes. But I definitely appreciate that they don't stretch 5 minutes of story content to 50 hours of slice of life like Japanese VN's.
Overall ratings:
Acting Lessons: 6.5/10
Deprived Awakening: 7/10
But Acting Lessons had best waifu with Melissa...
I've also tried the first three chapters of the upcoming City of broken Dreamers, the successor of Depraced Awakening and I was quite impressed to be honest. It has a cool cyber punk scenario and is more plot focused than its predecessor. And the technical advancements in comparions to the last title are impressive. There's certainly a huge potential here for western developers to make their own thing. Think 'Resident Evil 2 - The Visual Novel' with Leon as protagonist, Claire as waifu and Sherry as walking hugging pillow. Well, I guess I can dream... 

Finished Baldr Sky yesterday, and sadly, it didn't live up to my expectations.
The final/true route managed to fall completely flat and made me uninterested to the point where I didn't really care about what happened to any of the characters. Quite an impressive feat, considering how much I enjoyed the other routes. (Well, I guess it's not that uncommon for Japanese works to start off interesting and then fail to deliver in the end due to going way over the top, adding too much nonsense and whatnot.)
I also have to say that this is one of the worst gaming experiences of my life. Every moment the story wasn't progressing was more or less just a pain in the ass. I didn't enjoy the combat one bit, and it didn't exactly help that the text skip function was more or less useless, so I was forced to wade through repeating content for hours on end as I progressed through the different routes. I probably had to spend at least 20-30 hours on manually going through stuff I'd already read, just because it wasn't properly flagged as such in subsequent routes. Not exactly my idea of fun.
Anyway, I'm done with that now and have started playing Evenicle. Does the story get interesting later on? I've only finished chapter 1, but so far it's just been some shallow plot mixed with rape and the protagonist going around calling girls cute every 10 seconds. (Perverted protagonists really aren't my cup of tea, and it's one of the main reasons I'm skeptical about delving into the Rance series.)
It's kinda annoying that there's no gamepad support, and I don't understand why there has to be unit bars covering 30% of the screen at all times. (It would have made sense if there were real-time battles or as a way to mask a 4:3 resolution while converting the game to 16:9, but that isn't the case.)

/end of whining

So, I finally decided to clean up my VN library and read all those VNs that I got on sales or in bundles ages ago and never played. As a result, I finally got to Alice in Dissonance titles. fault milestone one was one of the first VNs I bought on Steam, back in 2016, and while I liked the first 20 minutes of the game that I saw during my play test back then, but for some reason I never finished the game till now.
Overall, the fault series was pretty different from what I expected judging by these first twenty minutes. If I had to describe this series in a few words, I'd say, it's an episodic fantasy with heavy focus on characters and drama. What I personally found rather impressive about these games is how well they use CGs and visual effects in certain scenes to make them look really dynamic. In my opinion, it's really impressive that a doujin VN manages to use its graphics a lot more consistently and more creatively than many high-profile titles. The quality of the art itself, however, is a bit inconsistent. Overall it's pretty standard anime-style drawings, and there are some minor characters who look a bit strange, but, overall, it's pretty detailed, and there are some pictures that look really beautiful. Also, the first game got a major graphics update in 2018, so now it's one of the few VNs in 4K resolution.
However, if we exclude the graphics, there are some minor flaws that I would expect from a doujin game. First of all, there are no voices. I personally don't consider it a major flaw and believe that some VNs actually work better without voices, but it may be crucial for some people. Secondly, while I personally didn't dislike the music, its usage in the game wasn't ideal. Some songs were looping with very small interval and it was very irritating. Also, there are some melodies that may sound well on their own, but, I believe, don't fit well in a visual novel because they distract from reading. Finally, it's not very important, but the opening song is kind of... meh, if you ask me.
As for the story, the first half of milestone one is mostly focused on introducing the setting and important characters. Which leads me to the biggest complaint I have with this game - the first half is basically just one massive infodump. I mean, I understand that it's necessary evil because of the episodic nature of the series, and they tried to include the infodumps more naturally in the dialogues, but I still can't help but think it could be done even more subtly. There were some occasional small details in the story that, I felt, either didn't make much sense or could be done a bit better. Other than that, I don't really have any complaints about the story at all. As it shifted from the worldbuilding more toward character drama in the second half of the game, it got a lot more interesting. The last quarter is especially cool. All the little details actually come together in the final reveal, and overall the conclusion felt pretty emotional to me, just like it was supposed to feel. Overall, I'd give this game a solid 7/10.
 
fault milestone two (side: above) is pretty similar to the first game that there's little to add. Still, many small details were definitely improved. There's no problems with the music. Actually, I can say that I liked the soundtrack in this VN. In my opinion, the general quality of writing also improved. There are no infodumps, and all the new information is introduced naturally in the story. The visual effects are used even better than in the first VN, especially since there's a bit more action (though it's still not the focus). The overall pacing of the story is also pretty great. Though, I suspect it may be a problem on my side, but I personally had some annoying stability issues in the second half of the VN. It really didn't help the emotional impact of the final scene that I had to replay the whole scene four or five times simply because it was constantly crashing. Still, I don't think I've seen anyone complain about having any similar problems with this VN, so most likely I just finally need to buy a proper desktop PC instead of my three-year-old laptop.
The only major complaint I have with the game is that, well, it's incomplete. As you can probably guess from the title, this game is something like a half of the second episode in the story rather than a proper episode. Excluding the overarching story that started in fms1 and will probably continue before the last episode assuming that we actually get to the last episode eventually, there are two major plot threads that started in this episode, and while one of these threads comes to the proper emotional conclusion, the other is completely left hanging. Well, it's a pretty obvious thing to expect from an episodic release. Still, I can't really give it anything higher than 7.5/10 for now. I will probably raise it after side: below is released. Though, it seems like they are going to release the prequel to the first game first, and, after massive delays, it will probably come out this year, so I'm not really expecting the continuation for another two or three years.
Just for the record, the trailer to fstp looks pretty amazing!
 

Mhakna Gramura and Fairy Bell is quite an interesting... experience. It's written more like a children's story book, though there is a bit of a twist in the last quarter of the VN. It's also fairly short: it took me just two hours to finish the whole VN. Overall, you can definitely read it even if you didn't read the main fault series since it's pretty standalone. Well, it's interesting example that VN format works even for something so vastly different from the usual galge and otomege. I gave it 8/10 on VNDB, but, honestly, due to the nature of this VN, I don't think like rating it even makes much sense.
Anyway, I'm really looking forward to the later fault titles. I can't really say this was the most impressive VN series I've read at this point, but it has good potential, and I still enjoyed it a lot.
~~~~
Now, let's see what Kindred Spirits of the Roof is about.
PS. Also, I stalled Baldr Sky for now. I don't know, I just can't make myself enjoy this VN for some reason. I'll return to it eventually and at least force myself to finish the first route, but I don't know when it will happen.

I second this.

I'd say Rin's route is either hit or miss; more so than any other route in Katawa Shoujo. The people who like it seem to really love it, but for everyone else, it ends up being pretty "meh". I think one of the main reasons is that a lot of people, myself included, find it a bit hard to relate to her personality and problems, which in turn makes it difficult to get truly immersed in the story.

I second this.

I'd say Rin's route is either hit or miss; more so than any other route in Katawa Shoujo. The people who like it seem to really love it, but for everyone else, it ends up being pretty "meh". I think one of the main reasons is that a lot of people, myself included, find it a bit hard to relate to her personality and problems, which in turn makes it difficult to get truly immersed in the story.

It was my least favorite route as well, even though it had many good elements.
My two favorite routes and heroines were, quite unsurprisingly, I guess, Lily and Hanako. After those two there would be Emi and Shizune, and then Rin in the last place.
Since each route had different writer (with the exception of Hanako's route sharing one of the writers with Lily's), it's no surprise that they're so different.

Well, there are quite a few of them, so I'll just go ahead and list the ones that came to mind first.
 
in SubaHibi
in Grisaia
in ef
in Rewrite

All of these hit me pretty hard, but I think the one from SubaHibi affected me the most. I still get depressed whenever I think back on it.

So, I mentioned this in another thread but I'm currently reading Fata Morgana and dear lord, they weren't lying when they said it's a VN about people suffering. Just finished door 7 and that was really painful. Much like a lot of VNs I rated in the 9s it have pure sadness backstories so it's looking good for the final score of FataMoru. 
And from those feelings that comes my question. Who are the characters that you think that suffered so much you can't help but want to protect them from all evil? Or well, characters that have the most awful backstories that even if they deserved it because they're awful themselves you still feel pity for them?
Alternatively, I know some people might not like to go through stories that aren't only happy feelings all around, then did you ever felt like crying because some route outcome was so so happy and so so satisfying or is it just me?
 
Let's relive those tragedies, bring me your tears.

So, I've finally finished this VN. Though, I've only finished Misaki's and Asuka's routes, Rika didn't interest me and Mashiro, despite being adorable, was a bit too loli for me for a romance route.
Overall, this was certainly a well made VN, where a lot of effort was put into it by the creators. Not only in terms of art, but also the whole flying circus scenario was well-developed. Regarding the art, the VN doesn't only convince with its detailed backgounds that even include background characters, but also with its massive CG count. There are well over hundred of them and the flight scenes aren't even included in those. The flying circus scenario also lifts this above your average school life moege. Although some descriptions and diagrams didn't really make sense, the sport itself was well-thought out with specific rules, equipment, tactics and the whole media spectacle around it.
The quality of the side characters also deserves praise. Aoi was a convincing mentor, Saki an impressive opponent that really had a special aura around her, Madoka was just hilarious and Satouin not being a main heroine was almost a crime. But not only the female side characters did impress, Shirase was a pretty cool dude I could really imagine to hang around with and Shindou... honestly, he should have been the protagonist.
Which brings us to some of the not so glowing aspects of the VN. First and foremost, the protagonist. While he wasn't bad personality-wise, the VN clearly set itself a goal to bring Masaya back to flying, and to be frank, the VN completly failed in that regard, at least in the routes I played. The whole thing wouldn't have been so bad if they wouldn't rub it in your face the whole time. Everyone is literally worshipping him for his apparent greatness in the past, Irina even considering 'him' the only true opponent worthy to face Saki and everyone else being pretty much just small fry. You also see Shindou being a real team with Satouin and Rika and not just the lazy coward on the ground. I think I was still fine with it in the common route, but in the heroine routes it started to get really on my nerves.
Another negative aspect were some of the main heroines. I think Misaki and Mashiro were fine overall, and I really liked their funny interactions. But I have no clue why Rika was a main heroine. She's a rather bland character, not part of Masaya's team and doesn't even have a lot of screen time in the common route.
And there's Asuka, the supposedly main heroine. But even if she grows on you after a while, there are some aspects about her that just didn't add up. On the one hand she's introduced as being super-clumsy and on the other hand she's supposed to be the next super-genius. As a result you get some akward display of clumsiness with a Deus Ex Machina thrown in every now and then, like 'accidentally' making a back-flip out of full sprint. And it got even worse in her route when the duels with Saki develop more and more into over-the-top chuuni battles with glowing halos, teleporting and what not. And Asuka never really looked like the sporty type anyway. Her true and most admirable strength was her positive attitude and never-give-up mentality. They should have focused more on that and let her win against the odds instead of coming up with that whole Deus Ex Machina bogus. Misaki was a lot more convincing as genius girl hold back by lazy attitude.
Heroine ranking: Satouin > Misaki > Mashiro = Madoka > Saki >> Asuka > Rika
Overall rating: 7/10
During the common route I had the VN still mostly rated at a 7.5, but the routes itself were a bit underwhelming, mainly because of the protagonist and the VN's obsession to make Asuka someone she really isn't. Nevertheless, this is certainly a good moege well-worth checking out, even if it doesn't reach 'very good' level in my book.

The routes diverge sooner and to a higher degree the further you get into the game, so there will be less overlap between them. You have to read most flashbacks again though with little additional content added once you finish the fourth route.

Since this is a spin-off, it's fine to read it without any prior knowledge, but you might not appreciate the characters as much, and, as wyldstrykr said, some references will go over your head.
I still think you should read the original trilogy first though, simply because it's awesome (or at least it was to me). Grisaia no Kajitsu is by far the best out of the three, but the sequels are still worthwhile reads, although they're not nearly as good as the first one.

The way it goes is if you're close range and not holding down the movement buttons but have already used the close range attack it will use the attack that is listed below it in the equipment menu and if that one is also used, the one below that etc.
It can be rather helpfull once you get used to it since you can't use an attack again until your heat gauge has depleted anyway.

The only really challenging battle on normal is the final battle of Dive 2... the rest can be handled fairly easily if you have a good combo set up, with fairly minor adjustments for tactics on occasion.  I won't make any suggestions on combos, because this game provides a decent array of weapons/attacks that can be stringed together in ways that suit your temperament.  In my case, I used the basic sub-machine guns, homing missiles, and the grenade launcher the most.  

If you press the same button several times, it switches to a different type of attack. I don't remember the exact sequence, but if it starts with a short-range attack, it will later switch to a long range. There will be more tutorials soon, so that will be explained.

What I heard is that after completing all good endings  (baldr 1 & 2) you'll obtain a way to be teleported anywhere you want in the story so you can do the other ends

Hmm... how to say it without being too spoilery... there's more to this VN than SoL and romance. It kind of reminds me of first episode of Sailor Moon - you have your SoL, and then suddenly strange things start to happen, or, as @GXOALMD has put it - shit goes down

By combining my knowledge of how storytelling works with my knowledge of how spoilers work, I've most likely inferred an appropriate hint: shit goes down.

Amber Quartz already managed to surprise me pretty hard When you read vndb summary and look at screenshots and (non-spoilery) tags, it looks like just another nakige/charage, focused on the themes of group of friends, memories, etc etc. And the beginning of the game seems to confirm this - it starts similarly to many other high-school romances. Also, just in line with summary, we see some of the MC's flashbacks from seven years ago, when he was playing with his group of friends, from whom he's been estranged later on. And now they (a bit unexpectedly) meet again. So far, pretty typical setup, and I actually liked it.
But then they
That was totally unexpected, but now I am really curious what happens next.
Also, I love character designs - they have that classic 90s anime style.
BTW it seems to be pretty obscure VN, with only 18 votes on vndb, and, if memory serves, something like ~380 on EGS.

I read so much good stuff last year, it's pretty much impossible for me to just choose one favorite in particular.

When it comes to VNs actually released in 2019, it's a battle between AI: The Somnium Files, Chaos;Child, Damekoi and Bokuten. I considered putting Aokana here too, but it didn't quite live up to my expectations so I'm choosing to omit it from the list.
If I have to to pick one of those, I think I'd go with AI: The Somnium Files. It's the only one out of the four that I went into completely blind, and it turned out to be a really great experience with a well-balanced mix of both humor and seriousness.

As for VNs that were released earlier but I read in 2019, it's even more difficult to pick a winner. I'd say it's either 999, Chaos;Head, Kazoku Keikaku, Symphonic Rain, Narcissu, YU-NO, Little Busters or Acting Lessons. I'm kinda leaning towards Symphonic Rain, because that was the first one that came to mind when I started racking my brain over this. The soundtrack is amazing, and there's something special about the overall ambience of the game. I have yet to reread a single VN, but Symphonic Rain is one of my top candidates for when it eventually happens.

https://youtu.be/nSuAD3Nsjhw?t=16
 

If I'm to list VNs that were actually released in 2019, I have two candidates off the top of my head:

1. Majo Koi Nikki
It's mostly due to the fact that I found the male protagonist utterly unlikeable, but it also felt kinda unfocused due to all the jumping back and forth between different stories. There's also the fact that the way to reach the true end was so ridiculously obscure, I imagine many people could outright miss it without even realizing it. I actually had to write a forum post and ask what to do, because I wasn't able to figure it out for myself and even the guides didn't mention it for some reason. It's a good example of bad game design, considering that ending contains one of the most important puzzle pieces of the story.

2. How To Date A Magical Girl
I honestly had fun with this, but it was all ruined because of an immensely cliché and unsatisfying ending. If it wasn't for that, this would have been one of my better experiences of the year.

As for VNs that were released earlier but I read in 2019, I think Rewrite takes the cake. Don't get me wrong, I think it's a good VN; just not as good as I was hoping it would be. My expectations were rather high, and when the actual experience fell short, it ended up as a disappointment for me in the end.