Genre hopping reader here! I'm definitely one of the described folks who has sci-fi on their rare read list, and gave this a try despite so.
But I ended up loving this! It does have certain genre conventions that take some getting used to, but the relationships between the main cast more than makes up for it. The ocean deep world building and intrigue is something that I don't find anywhere else in the genres I read, and it's giving me inspiration for my own writing too.
And on prose, as an ESL reader, a few prose flourish sections are challenging, but a welcomed one, and not so dense that's inaccessible. I love it when VN devs break out of the Best-Seller grammar conventions. The opening section is beautiful.