Recommendations will depend on what you are into.
But I will share some of my favorite games that have story and character development, especially if they have emotional hits.
As mentioned above Leap of Faith is one of the greats.
Summer Scent has some very different paths "choices matter"...
I usually use the default names on the first play through. If I go for other routes in the same game I sometimes change to a different name to separate the routes.
A couple times I have renamed LIs after people I know .. but mostly not.
I wish that developers would add the following when there...
The computer generated voices are a no go for me. I turn them off quickly.
Bad voice acting by actual people is worse than no voice acting .. it distracts from the story flow.
Decent or good voice acting can take a game from fun to really good if there is a decent story being told.
Sex sounds...
Use things from the public library. Not just books .. audio books, dvds, magazines, music cds, whatever ....
Play games .. online and card and board games with actual people.
What would be actually good is if AI could generate 3D models (with all the "rigging" and texture maps and stuff) and then a separate AI could manipulate those models to create scenes. That would probably take care of the consistency problems (although not the ethical problems). But it would be...
More and more I find myself preferring games with emotional impact.
(Not to be at all dismissive of the value and enjoyment of lewd-fest games which I continue to enjoy too.)
It doesn't even have to be romantic emotions.
Most recently I have been playing through the alternate paths in "Summer...
I haven’t been caught "enjoying myself" since early teenage years .. which was long before AVNs were a thing.
I have played a couple AVNs where the MC gets caught playing AVNs; just to get all meta on you ....
There are many things to dislike about "AI" generated images in AVNs, but the one that seals the deal for me is the way the inconsistency of the images takes me out of the story.
Even with a Honey Select game, there is a consistency to the way the characters and settings appear (even if it is...
No way it collapses society. Even if just one percent of women on the planet had a kid there would still be more than enough people. But its not going to get that low.
And no matter how awesome the sexbots get there are still going to be enough folks who want to make actual babies.
I would...
More than a little embarassing to say the only one I play recently is Hearthstone. Its mild and I wouldnt recommend it to anyone .. but I just dont have the patience for dealing with other players in "more serious" games these days.
If it the game doesnt have much of a story and is mostly about the lewds, then harem for sure.
But if there is actual good writing that gets emotional then I will probably do a first run with one LI focus.
For games with good emotional writing I usually do most of the story paths.
* "Leap of...
Its an obvious choice but .. Midlife Crisis.
* Rework the character models and settings to be higher quality (but dont change the general look of the characters .. I want the same but sharper)
* Rerender with cinematic lighting and framing
* Finish the story .. there are still opportunities for...
Thanks for sharing!
Note for those interested: This is dated .. 2017 .. but the principles will mostly still apply. Just be prepared to see some old school user interfaces 🤓