Not a huge fan, often i find them grating and/or annoying. Probably the only one I think works is RMAWH (owing to quality), other than that never really been a fan.
Branching paths and such are good, but when it comes to the minigame stuff i usually prefer just not engaging with them or turning them off, so no to the difficulty lol.
definitely depth - there's way too many games that just keep introducing new characters, and that's fine, but not every single one needs to be a storyline - all too often you have only one or two scenes and then with such a huge roster that has to cycle through them - beyond it just not making...
as with any genre there are easy tropes that are going to dominate - its like that for just about every type of content, and they're not necessarily bad - as others have said its the same reason you see a lot of cookie-cutter backgrounds and extra models and such - those can satisfy just like...