I totally understand you. ToN isn't very enjoyable for me either. I don't mind the grind aka treasure hunting or the puzzles, but I'm not a fan of animations. Crazy - right!? Honestly, I prefer renders over animations, because scenes get more depth that way and are "longer". Of course NLT's animations are top-notch I'm not going to deny that, but I personally would prefer less animation and more different renders per scene.
Teens and/or young adult characters are another personal dislike, here I prefer MILFs and mature characters like Mother Superior, Val and Amandea from Lust Epidemic. For example the shop girl and the bar girl are the same model with different hair asset and that one of them has tattoos and wider hips.
Most annoying part about ToN is the writing. Within the first few sex scenes MC becomes a cocky prick and all they do is talk about his cock and how fucking big it is etc (I'm aware about the plot and why they are horny as fuck).
So, yes, ToN isn't a game that suits my personal taste and probably aims for harem loving young men audience. However, the reason why I play it is because of the game mechanic. NLT really knows how to use the RPG mechanic in combination with his visuals by pushing the RPG Maker Engine to its limits.
At the same time ToN is a perfect example how you can create and earn lots of money with a game that use less visual efforts than a classic visual novel Ren'Py game. Preparing the game needs of course a lot of time, but rendering spites goes faster then rendering a 100 images scenes for a visual novel.
I think this should be enough.