Kokolei
First of all, if you want make a wood work, dont get a spoon for cut the wood ..... i meant that much of software things, depends in much of what class of "tool or languaje" you use for build it
if you want make a Visual Novel i recommend you for example RAD Studio C++ Builder (and Delphi (turbo pascal))
Rad Studio is a Hibrid languaje IDE + Compiler for develop apps for some systems in both languajes at your disponsal (C/C++ or Pascal)
The thing, is this development tool can build the EXE app for windows systems and have all class of controls and programming features for you can deal with near all you need for develop an app or a 2D Videogame (like a Visual Novel)
The requirement?? you have know something about C or C++ languaje for programming it
Then finally, you can mount with a TImage component the screens for visual novel and if you play with that for example with a FX component you can make some class of effects on image for example for FADE ON and OFF and other kind of image effects...... even you can make more advanced things if you deal with Canvas manipulaton of the TImage for example for make a LOOP in the app that redraws all and draw in the TImage variety of things (example a background decoration, then a character over the background and then with a TIMER's component make the character blinks his eyes randomly)
Also you can add with libraries added, things as Mp3 music, WAV sound effects (with just 1 line short call to windows PlaySound() function) and much more other things, but remember, learn C/C++ gives you hability for make a lot of things with a C++ compiler/IDE like Rad Studio
for example, where you seen a VN able to be played in multiplayer online mode?? yeah, with Rad Studio and MySQL online database you can do it
the only thing is more complex for do with Rad Studio is 3D things cos not so easy like Unity or UE but also capable of that, only you need knowledge of OpenGL or DirectX and mount all from scratch
if you need help with this im here around