I don't even mind the visual novel element, but most of them are just really lazy and linear. It's like you're just reading a book and clicking to get to the next page over and over. When there's actual choices, gameplay, and stats that's when it gets interesting.
It's to the point that alot of people just use the visual novel tag as "this is a book I made now come read it" when it's actually (in my opinion) a tag that means the game uses text and simple backgrounds along with images. Where a straight up novel game would be something like trials in tainted space where most interactions are actually just words and very few pictures and images.