I enjoyed back in the old days games (when the only games to play were the 90s and early 2000s Japanese games) with multiple routes, but I think that approach doesn't work in modern erotic games.
The difference is that back then, every game we play was a completed game from the moment we started, and today, games are released in a periodic format with more content every update in a process that takes years to fully complete.
With that release format, multiple-path routes don't appeal to me. Mostly because in those old games, I played one route from start to beginning, and when I finished, I continue playing another route. And so on. Even in many of those harem games, it was normal to be unable to have sex with more than one girl per playthrough. And if the game had a harem path, it required completing all previous routes before starting it.
But that won't work playing small updates every month or a few months. This will require keeping parallel saves per every route. Sometimes I don't remember what happened in one game after a few months without updating to do the same with multiple paths.
So, for me, it doesn't make sense to play multiple-path games unless the game is already completed.
Can you name a choice in these games that would cause the plot to branch out?
In many of these games actually linear plot, side quests in general do not affect anything globally. The apogee of this was the ending of Mass Effect 3, the mass dissatisfaction of players who were deceived by the promise that every choice is important.
But at the moment we are discussing visual novels. From it I expect first of all an interesting story and characters, you can't surprise me with any sexual scenes.
Some Japanese Visual Novels have choices that branch the plot drastically. And not just for sex scenes. We can talk about plot-heavy Visual Novels with almost no-sexual content, like any Type-Moon VN : Tsukihime or Fate/Stay Night. Particularly the first one has major choices that do not only change the future of the plot; it also changes the past of the plot in the sense that depending on what branch you are playing, there are different explanations about what exactly is the MC's nature up to the point that is incompatible with other branches in the sense that the past changes depending of your choices. And then it is supposed that all branches are canon at the same time because each one takes part in a different parallel universe or something like that. But then I read that the real ending of the game Tsukihime is the one from a branch that was never included in any adaptation. Type-Moon lore is too complicated.
In fact, because of this, Fate/Stay Night has been adapted into Anime multiple times, each one differently because each one of the 3 branches has a totally different plot.
In general, this is true for many hentai games released by Japanese companies (Except the blow-minding plot over complications, which is just Type Moon style).
I remember, for example, Crescendo.
And playing those plot-heavy games with those different branches is great. But it won't work if it wasn't released from the first day as a full game, so you can focus on one branch until you finish.
