Best Visual Novel to start with?

It really depends on what you're looking for. If you want a short story to ease you into the genre, then from least Japanese to most, I would recommend Forgotten, Not Lost, Planetarian (not on your list), or Shan Gui. I tossed Planetarian in there because it's really good.

If you want some hilarious porn or porn-ish writing and lots of girls to date, Divine Slice of Life has a hilariously uninterested protagonist and about half of A Wild Catgirl Appears also goes off the deep end into nonsense.

If you want something longer with actual quality, from your list, Fault - Milestone One is the only one that I can vouch for. There's a better one on Steam, Zero Time Dilemma, but it's also the third game in a series and I would instead recommend waiting for 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors to get released on Steam so you can enjoy the series in order. Jumping straight to Zero Time Dilemma would ruin both of the previous games for you, and I wouldn't recommend even looking at its store page right now,

If you're willing to go off Steam, Ever17 and Fate Stay Night are both excellent. Fate Stay Night has sex scenes, Ever 17 does not.

impulse isn't bad.

it sort of depends on what kind of story you like

• WORLD END ECONOMiCA
• Sonicomi
• Muv-Luv
• NEKOPARA how could you forget this one
• Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
• Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair
• X-note
• HuniePop
• Sunrider Academy
• The Fruit of Grisaia
• The Labyrinth of Grisaia
• Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma
• CLANNAD

whoops, I write too much.

eden*

Steins;Gate

CLANNAD

Those are quality ones.

From your list there's none whose quality match the three I mentioned. Fault Milestone One has huge cliffhanger ending, although you may enjoy it, it will leave empty feelings.

Almost none of these games have nudity in them. Just fyi.

Don't bother with the Sakura games. I got Sakura Spirit in a Humble Bundle a while back and my expectations were pretty low for it and I still ended up disappointed (I expected silly camp and it was just boring). From what I've heard, the other games are more of the same.

fault milestone one is the best of the games on your list that I've played. I've heard good things about the East Tower series, but considering the people I heard the good things from, it probably won't have much appeal to people who aren't interested in otome games. (I own all of them, but haven't had the opportunity to play them yet...) Serafina's Crown is the direct sequel to another VN, so it's probably not a good choice to get into the medium lol.

Also worth considering that haven't been mentioned yet: Analogue: A Hate Story, Cinders

Off your list I can recommend Fault Milestone as an introduction to the genre.

• It's not too long, but not insanely short.
• It's not laden with choice after choice and multiple routes.
• It's not difficult to follow.
• The world isn't anime-crazy mental.
• It has good art.
• It has decent sound.
• It has a good story!

Most importantly it's very accessible to someone who is unsure about VN's, its pretty westernised anime style.

There are a few VN games that are free and get better reviews than all of the above. Maybe give them a chance:

http://store.steampowered.com/search/?sort_by=Reviews_DESC&tags=3799%2C6426

Go for the ones with very good reviews. Many VNs are extremely bad and the numbers reflect it. Others are golden.

Speaking of fault - milestone one, it just got a Simplified Chinese version update! Woo!