Awesome, thank you for the recommendations. I've 'played' Narcissu and enjoyed it immensely as a kinetic (soundtrack is incredible) and have seen the anime adaptations of Higurashi, Shuffle, Tsukihime, and Fate Stay. My problem approaching a VN is kind of as you mention in the first paragraph, I just no longer have the time to put 40 hours into something so I appreciate the first recommendation a lot.
Looking into Doki Doki more after your post I found this on reddit which is pretty in depth if you haven't seen it. You definitely got me more interested in this than I was before haha. https://www.reddit.com/r/ARG/comments/71z2pt/doki_doki_literature_club_has_more_to_it_than_we/
RE: Everything is not Doki Doki in the Literature Club