I'm not a huge VN fan.

Fortunately, VA-11 Hall-A gets away from most of what dislike about VNs.

- Atmosphere is conveyed through the art, not with narration. Text is almost exclusively dialogue, and the exceptions are things like in-setting newpaper articles.
- Story is not driven by romance. It contains some, but is more about characters' relationships with one another than the center of the story.
- Characters are nearly all adults. Not all of them terribly mature.
- Though gameplay mechanics are few, they are well executed. You will not serve the wrong drink because you clicked on the wrong thing, only because you chose to serve the wrong drink.
- You pick the music; it does not pick you.

The cyberpunk bar setting is fun, the characters are unique and colorful, and while the central story is a tad weak and suffers from hit-and-miss writing, the overall effect of the dialogue makes for an enjoyable experience. As a relatively fast reader, it took me about 6 hours to run through the game once, seeing the good ending and most of the optional endings. Could probably 100% it inside two more hours, if that was something I cared about.

A side note: Author has some fairly transparent biases, but does a relatively good job at making them secodary to the story. A very pleasant change from the rather sloppy and overt hackjobs one sees in indie and even AAA games all too often.