So does everyone else.
VN's are the lowest bar of game making. I don't even consider tham games in most cases.
I should know, since I tried making various games myself. In fact, I'm making one now. One with more complex AI, customization, tons of moving parts and management, etc.. all the while learning coding, animation, sound design, AI, etc. And depsite having a job, despite spending most of my free time procastrinating and going days without any work on the game, I somehow make more pregress in a month than he does.
VN's are simple. Some images and text. A few branching choices here and there. ToT has a fighting system and that's the most complex part of it. Heck, if you use a character creator/poser for images (which many VN's do and there's plenty of good one to choose from), it's piss easy. And now with AI generating images, even easier.
Tot doesn't use them, so a point to the Dev, and his renders and moders are great... but you cannot even ascribe this to taking time to make models, since all the new scenes added are with already existing character/models.
So your defense argument is not much of an argument and break apart as the slightest scrutiny.