I will give him credit in that I don't think most people have ever tried an actual big creative project before, the sort of thing that (at best case) would take months, rather than a few hours or a weekend. Absolutely fucking suuuuuuuuuuuuucks from the moment you run out of that initial steam and properly self managing is a skill all by itself.
Especially when it's your first big programming project and you fall into every single pitfall everyone else does.
We'd all have been happier if he hadn't made it one gigantic game from the start, did the sort of separate chapter thing some other VNs do, incrementally growing his skills and chopping the thing into more manageable pieces. But of course, you need enough experience to know you need to do that to begin with, which is exactly why there's so few completed quality games on this site made by amateur developers.