The title pretty much states it all.

Ever since visual novels and other Japanese story focused games (let's not debate whether kinetic novels fit the moniker) came to GOG there has been a constant, ideology driven war between people who (for whatsoever reasons) equate these genres with filth and people who vehemently defend each and every example regardless its actual merits.

So what could GOG and we as a community do about this situation to actually get "proper"* reviews?

(*What would I consider such? A succinct, artistically and mechanically critical piece that actually covers the game in question instead ideology driven banter. There is an argument to be made what this entails, but I think we can all agree that a lot of the reviews of visual novels don't fit that bill.)

Have you written any? That'd be a start.

Note that you can filter by "Verified owners", so that might help separate out the stuff you're talking about.

I'd suggest going to a specialized website for this kind of thing. I know they exist, but I wouldn't know where to point you.

Best to find a community that embraces VNs, that is where you would find better opinions. Fuwanovel would probably be a good start.

You're describing them as interactive media, and I think that might be negatively affecting your view on them. Visual novels, as you may know, are not particularly interactive, and should be judged more the way you would judge a book or movie. Kinetic novels are not interactive at all (except things like maybe pressing a button to advance text), and therefore should definitely be judged as one would judge a book or movie. (In particular, if you have a rubric for evaulating them, there shouldn't be a gameplay category.)

Fair enough. I won't go so far as to say "THEY'RE NOT GAMES GET'M OFF MAH GAMING SITE DERP DERP!" but if they show up as an adventure game on a gaming storefront, they will be graded as games. And in my opinion, they're not terribly entertaining. Just not my cuppa. Again. I just "meh" and look for games I do want to buy.

EDIT: I used to wan them offa mah gaming site, but ultimately, I've just grown apathetic to how GOG and Steam do things. I'll buy what I want and not what I don't. Life's too short to be angry about such things.

A sucky review just because one dislikes the genre tells more about reviewer than the reviewed game (no, not nice things).

As has been pointed out gog recently added the "verified owners" tag to reviews. While it also does filter out reviews from owners of that game from other platforms if they bothered to make one here too I'm pretty sure these are far less than troll reviews.

If gog fixed that reviews from owners from before the verified owner tag existed problem.

To be honest, though, they're the next step down from point-and-click, and also usually less clunky. It's made-cheap-sold-cheap media, which is what we get with mobile games, too, but they have things in them to make more money to make more interactive (they tackle the same issue another way). It should be no surprise that a parody game like Huniepop was half match-3 and half visual novel. They're not great, but they're not terrible either, and it's not hard to see that they exist as part of more active media (typical JRPGs use their format).

That said, i'd rather have visual novels than the interactive cutscenes games, like the telltale games or Destroit: Become Human. If i'm going to be lead down a path of mind numbingness, i like the ability to stand up and move around, and not having to go through the exact same sequences again over a missed button press, which might went missing or something. I'd rather have to choose a different option, rather than making an obscure choice in the heat of the moment.

I don't do looking or writing reviews of any any game or paedo mag. They are always going to biased in some way or another, hence why the 0 or 10 result on any site for any media. If you want to look at 12 year old girls in school uniforms getting raped by tentacles then go for it, reviews aren't going to change that.

Probably the simplest solution.

I'm still trying to figure out if you honestly believe that VNs are all loli tentacle porn.

I've only sat through 1, so far, in my life, and there was nothing even remotely dirty about it. It was certainly pushing the boundaries of what was normal, but not in a violent or sexual way. You normally don't end a story with someone walking into the ocean with the intent of seeing how far they can get before they drown. I mean, maybe someone could've envisioned tentacles afterwards, but i don't recall any tentacles, and i can't remember if they even mentioned her age.

I love how people try to shove visual novels into a specific corner, not realizing that they are incredibly diverse. There are tons of them with adult content, there are tons of them without adult content and there are a pretty good amount of them that have gameplay elements to the point where they are just straight up better than a lot of "standard" games. Visual novels have been a thing for around 35 years, so there is a lot of diversity when it comes to them.
It's also funny that people see some Western trash like Huniepop and then judge VNs based on that. No one goes like: "Oh, Snatcher was pretty good, so VNs must be like this."

Anime is the same way. What kills me is the number of people who don't know how Speed Racer fits into this. And even more entertaining is Generation 1 Transformers: only the animation was done in Japan, but the story and everything else was done in the USA. My girlfriend hated anime, too, until she started watching Dragon Ball and Pokemon. Let's face it, making fun of japanese media and going "ew, japan" is about as popular now as making fun of gamers in general was in the 80s and 90s, and pretty much fills the same role. Don't worry: it'll only be a matter of time before VNs and such become mainstream, and we'll have something else to call "ew, weird."

What are you talking about dude?! I looked at Higurashi Ch.1, Starnova and even The Wolf Among Us - all have (relatively) rasonable reviews and a few 0ne-star reviews have nothing to do with the genre.