Sarianna

I'm not sure how you decide SG;0 is an "unnecessary" VN without playing it. This kind of argument really bothers me; I'm not sure how anybody feels comfortable critiquing a piece of media (or anything else) they've never bothered to look at. The original has a special kind of magic to be sure, but that hardly renders the sequel/side-quel pointless. It's very well done, as you can probably tell from watching the anime; but like the original, the experience of passively watching a truncated version of one route can't really be compared to immersing yourself in the many different narrative possibilities presented in the VN. I haven't replayed SG;0 since it first came out, and I can still remember some of the more shocking plot twists that happen outside of the route depicted in the TV adaptation like I played it only yesterday. The Amadeus mechanic is far more interesting in the game than in the show, and there were whole plot lines and character threads that greatly enrich and contextualize the overall story but that never made it into the adaptation. There are a lot of different criteria by which the quality of a story and its delivery can be judged: a surprising ending is far from the only important metric. I'd argue that, when it comes to many of the best stories ever told, the ending is less important than what happens along the way. The notion of "spoilers" get a lot of hype in the modern world, and maybe that impacts how people receive stories; but unless you're talking about a mystery/detective story, knowing the ending rarely spoils anything.