I was figuring we could save GOG some time & money by finding the worst visual novels and featuring them, that way the ever omnipresent curation team could simply foist them without having to find them first.

Fate/Stay Night
Why it is bad: Imagine overwrought flowery writing involving bastardizations of all your favorite historical figures. Hope you didn't save after making that seemingly unimportant choice, because you've just been railroaded into a death state in 100 screens or so.

Features unnecessary erodge scenes, moon logic, violations of common sense, three routes which all are entirely too long, and spawned a billion dollar franchise that turns Hans Christen Anderson into a little boy.
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Outside the Box
You'd think it'd be hard to screw up Gfur, but here we are.

Why it is bad: Imagine a visual novel where most of the key art looks like concept sketches. The scripting/programming is literally broken in places, and somehow it took multiple years for this thing to come out in a state like this. It's a retelling of a webcomic you can read for free, (this game can be yours for 10$) or your local equivalent. Said webcomic was previously paygated itself, and it isn't like the author has a shortage of cash, given that she's an administrator for a popular furry paysite.
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Growth Academy
Take a bunch of Safe for Deviantart fetishes and put them in Ren'py. But don't give the protag a cool power, give him hair growth.

Why it is bad: Imagine taking the Persona style Day By Day social links, except you're choosing if you spend a day with the haughty gainer girl, the inexplicably pregnant virgin, or the strict ass. Imagine a collaborative writing project as a visual novel, where one or two of the writers have inexplicably vanished! I guess if you wanted that living fetish as your waifu, you'll just have to deal with the 3 ingame days of content.
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Gender Bender DNA Twister Extreme
Transformation Fetish, the VN.

Why it is bad: So you know the best part about the transformation fetish is when characters inexplicably transform, repeatedly, with no explanation whatsoever? Yeah, imagine that as the whole game. The art is about on par with webcomics that stopped updating regularly in the 2000s, (The Wotch) the kind where the guest artist would easily outdo the regular one. The writing handles the subject matter of the ethical implications of these transformations about as carefully as throwing an entire glass tray full of glass lab equipment down a whole flight of stairs.

So that's four VNs off the top of my head that I think would pass the already absurdly low standards that the curation set, what suggestions might you, the forumites, have?

(This thread isn't entirely serious, more grumbling about an abject lack of quality control/quality shareware on GOG.)

Is a visual novel basically just a glorified PowerPoint presentation? I remember playing those on Newgrounds back in the day.

It can be, depending on how much work is put into it. Often it's static images of characters with changes to facial expressions and text for characters talking together. Sometimes there's voice acting.

And while walking simulators you're mostly pressing the W button, in Visual novels you're clicking and getting 2 sentences per click. If you love it great, otherwise i think it quickly becomes a bore (unless there's something else that's a main attraction).

Quite a few Japanese games will have VN elements. Disgaea being a turned based strategy game for example will have portions of the game where it goes visual novel for the story, but doesn't last more than a few minutes. These aren't 'cut-scenes' per~se.

Ar Tonelico does this as well, interrupting points in the game, as well as having the VN sections in the 'diving' system where you enter the inner self of the reyvateil in order to unlock powers, it's a lot of VN interactions in those times.

Every scale, like Celcius or Fahrenheit, should have at least two distinct anchor point. So, let's calibrate. What are the best visual novels in your opinion?

Phoenix Wright's GBA Trilogy. I feel like aside from one case, they're pretty much the peak of performance. The bad ones, yes. Then you have ones where you have choices, interactions, item use, basically a proper adventure game with static locations.

I remember reading some guy's reddit post about "innovation" in their visual novel they were making where the "innovation" was just character customization. They then went on to whine about how expensive it is to add stuff. I've no idea how hard it is to make a game, but my impression is they've basically confined themselves into this small box and that would explain a lot of my observations of particularly obnoxious weebs on the internet.

So...they're hearilding a customizable paperdoll as some kind of standout feature? I realize that art assets are no breeze, but once you have a base model, you can literally make thousands of retextures with ease.

Don't forget the awful dating simlike elements latter day Fire Emblem games had, because just having normal character interactions is far too hard a thing.