[Front Wing] Grisaia no Kajitsu -LE FRUIT DE LA GRISAIA-

I guess the introduction phase is really long? I've logged like 5-6 hours into this game so far and I feel like the story hasn't really started, not that I don't appreciate the characters' shenanigans or anything.

Edit:

Well the plot finally started branching off. Going to do Yumiko's route first since it's supposedly the weakest one.

I haven't started reading it yet, but the character interaction is supposed to be a big part of the enjoyment. If you really aren't enjoying it and are in it only for the larger story, you may want to wait. While Kajitsu is supposed to be pretty much complete on its own, it's the first in a trilogy.

As far as length is concerned, Kajitsu is about half of the overall text (I may be slightly off on that) all on its own. Meikyuu and Rakuen contain more of the larger plot points and twists as they're the second and third acts of the story. The character routes that make up Kajitsu are there in advance so that you learn more about all of the characters in depth, and in advance of moving into the bigger parts of the story. They're pretty much necessary if you want to enjoy it more as a whole; in the same way that you should read Muv-Luv Extra/Unlimited in order to better enjoy Alternative.

tl;dr - I'd imagine that if you really don't like the characters and they're interactions, there isn't really anything there for you.

Well that previous post is pretty irrelevant now, I've finished one of the routes already playing through another one.

It's not like I've suddenly become addicted to visual novels or anything ._.

OP updated with new patch.

"Patch 1.1 released and can be applied over your existing patch. Many small bugs and typos were corrected."

The common route was absurdly long, much eating up atleast 60% of the game, I'm pretty sure the common route is longer than Yumiko and Michiru's route combined. Not to say I didn't enjoy the slice of life comedy and certainly don't mind focus on character development but it definitely felt like overkill because it seemed to me that it only really needed about half as much time to establish the the chemistry between the cast and seeing as most of the slice of life comedy do spill over the character routes after the common route.

Playing through each route it shows that different writers were involved in this game, with each of them varying in quality of writing, some having more ridiculous plot twists than others (Michiru's route especially, they supposedly even retconned aspects of her story in the sequel because of how stupid it was). In terms of the quality I'd say Amane was the objectively the best storywise with her route seemingly the one that had been given the most attention. Makina's route was also interesting but her character was really grating at times and it was kind of hard to see her as a love interst when she talked and looked like a 9 year old even though she's supposedly the same age as the main character. Although, Sachi was still my favourite route, purely for the fact that she was my favourite character in the game.

Though it can drag at times (don't be afraid to fast forward some scenes, especially the H-scenes since 9 times out of 10 they don't really add much to the plot) and some aspects of the game will require a bit of suspension of disbelief, it's filled with a great cast and great banter between them, that it's easy to find your favourite heroine. Overall, It's a solid visual novel though it can get a bit repetitive early on.