/jp/ - Otaku Culture

Lack or addition of ero itself doesn't decide whether a VN's plot is good or not, it's just that all-ages releases tend to have more mass appeal due to being publishable on all platforms that don't allow AO releases. Usually.
Besides, there's plenty of really popular games from both eroge and all-ages camp.

I've said this before, but I think more than ero the main problem with many plotge are the enforced heroine focused routes when they're completely unnecessary or done badly. Eroge like YU-NO or Muramasa manage to do them well since each route also drives the main plot forward in some way or have interesting themes, whereas something like Chaos;Child that's an all-ages game goes way off tangent to the fucking moon for no reason in its heroine routes to the point it's clear there's heroine routes only because "we're supposed to have heroine routes", whereas it would've been much more natural to use those to explore the main mystery through different perspectives and plot developments.

This is my personal opinion, but I think that at the very least games where characters having sex actually serves a purpose in plot should definitely have sex scenes. I've played a few all-ages plotge where it does but there's no actual scene, which feels a bit shitty with some later reveal relying on it. At the very least gives us something like Kikokugai remake where the sex scenes are on the level that don't veer into AO territory. And really it doesn't necessarily have to even be plot related if it's otherwise interesting: I laughed so god damn hard in 9sorairo in Sora's H-scene that I genuinely think it would greatly detract from the game if it was removed. Love focused games usually benefit from having sex scenes in my opinion, and it's the one thing I really like about non-nukige eroge over other mediums with love-focused stories, is that the characters actually fucking take it to the next level at some point rather than dilly-dallying around the issue forever.

Of course there's also the problem of pacing ero scenes between normal ones in non-nukige or whether the H-scenes themselves are executed well in the first palce, but I think that's a whole different kind of argument from whether having ero at all adds to or detracts from a game.