Just played through my second ever VN,
Everlasting Summer, which is actually out free via Steam.
It's good.
A bit short in most aspects, (each 'route' took me around 2-3 hours), somewhat convoluted in places, and somewhat amusingly bad 'Runglish' for the Russian to English translation at many points. It's certainly not perfect, with quite a bit of the artwork and character sprites seeming to be somewhat lacking in aspects. (The backgrounds were, for the most part all VERY good, whereas the sprites and CG scenes were... not quite so much) All that being said... there's a reason that quite a few of the top comments are comparing it to a 'Russian Katawa Shoujo', not for the material itself which is
vastly different, but for the quality of the story itself.
Four main 'romantic' routes (each of which with multiple potential endings), one 'failure' route that ends exceptionally strangely however you cut it (two endings), a hidden route that's none-too-good to play at night with the lights out if you're a wuss like me, and two potential 'true' final endings after all of that. Completed everything within twelve or so hours, likely going to find myself going back to it at least once more, especially if/when a more... proper English translation might be in place.
Would definitely encourage anyone mildly interested to give it a go, it's free. It's certainly not bad.
The mind is a terrible thing to waste, but a beautiful thing to lose.