Of course you can play w/o VR. I don't have VR set.
Vam is kind a studio, you can do what do you want. Some creators made great scenes with voice acting, good animations and stories or good interactions, for example SlamThunder (
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. with voice) or PetaZwega (
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. good story,) or
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..
You can create your scene easly with some plugins. But greatest thing in VaM, great customizations, great assets (clothes, environments or miscs) also barely unlimited graphics, you can open it with high resolution and 8k skin textures. But game is kind have optimization problems espiaciall for pysicr or collisons.
It is more complex than HS Studio but more easy to create scene HS Studio, because HS Studio doesn't support chars auto movements as like alive or helpfull tools like SPQR Vam Alive or
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or
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plugins. They help to give alive your model. Also help to interaction with other models or your actions. Auto gaze, expression etc. Also there is completly free animation maker plugins too as like
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but it is kind a advance topic.
Just start with BodyLanguage, take a look at the updates if you want, download a model and some clothes and try to customise it. You will start to learn. Also you can insert your own design model into any ready scene. But you should fix the height of model first. You will see, just try it...