Man, am I the only one who thinks that a VN is just a worse way of making a game?
Depends on what you see as a game. It is certainly a good way to make a novel.
The thing with those games with "freedom" is, they usually don't have very much freedom, as in, they end up being a lot of small VNs and you can choose the order you progress in them.
Or they lack meaningful interaction.
I think "Harem Hotel" would a good (in the positive sense) example of that, and actually has that interaction - but it's also work.
All those things a player could do are more work for the developer, more potential for bugs, and, unless everyone does the same in a roughly similar order, aka, what you don't want, it slows down development.
Personally, I really like VNs, for the story they often contain as well as the content, and that a lot of content creators are actually... kinda, let's say mediocre, at game design. But when it comes to comparison with what I play in my free time outside of the content on these forums, I usually wouldn't consider them games.
I still enjoy them, I'd just see it as closer to a book.