As my first foray into the VN genre, I was pleasantly surprised by AI: The Somnium Files. It mixes dark humor with quirky characters, and clever writing. Comedy is extremely difficult to write, especially in video games, but AI does a great job inserting these jokes into situations where it is so baffling that you can't help but laugh.

I think the main way I can describe this experience is: "Nah there's no way they're gonna do this....what." Uchikoshi is great at subverting expectations, both in plot twists and simple character dialogue. He constantly has the player on a string throughout the game, and despite this being a branching storylines game with different endings, he always manages to tell the full story to every player.