Games with a canon love interest

[Limabaen]

How do you feel about games where there is a clear main love interest?
I don't mean games where there is only one main romance path with branching "flings", but games where the routes are technically equal yet one guy/girl's route is advertised as the canon one and/or one character receives favouritism from the developers.
Does this annoy you? Or do you like having one love interest as the focus?
Personally, I don't mind as long as the canon character's route is well done. Though it does irritate me when even on common routes, the canon love interest gets romantic scenes and such.

[RotGtIE]

Seems unnecessary to me, unless there are plans to make derivative products such as manga/anime series where there must be a canon.

[Selidor]

I don't like it at all. What's the point of offering a choice if one option is significantly better than all the others? In games with a strong non-romantic plot going on at the same time, the "true" route often features not only a more-developed romance, but also tends to solve the main conflict of the plot in a far more satisfying fashion. If you like the "canon" love interest, then that's great, but if you prefer another character, their route often ends up feeling less important and more shallow by comparison, which isn't much fun.

[Hojita]

I don't know if this annoys me or not, there is always gonna be a character that is a main interest or a representative character for all kind of media (poster, pvs, merch, etc), but, talking about something else I'm tired of doing a route and necessarily end with a romance with the route's character. There are some romances that are pletty cute, nice, natural, but other ones feels sooo forced and kinda ruins the route 'cause that romance doesn't goes well with the atmosphere of the story.

I like canon endings but not necesarily canon romances.

[Mammon]

If the canon route happens to be my favourite girl, then no. I don't have any objections. More often than not though, one girl being the advertised 'most important' girl does result in me disliking her over the others. So in reality, yes it bothers me. Pick a girl or make them all equally satisfying routes.

[Sonomi]

How do you feel about games where there is a clear main love interest?
...
Personally, I don't mind as long as the canon character's route is well done. Though it does irritate me when even on common routes, the canon love interest gets romantic scenes and such.

I agree with this statement. Canon paths do seem to overflow into everything else quite often.

Honestly, when a MC has a lengthy internal monologue about his/her feelings toward the canon person--mind, after the player has already made choices geared toward another character--I sometimes wonder if it is a mistake in the script. Having a clear main love interest is fine so long as every available character is developed with the same attention and depth.

Also, MC should not be romantically involved with the canon outside of his/her route. Friendship is fine, but it is a little jarring when MC is spending all of his/her time with X character, yet romantic scenes with the canon are popping up seemingly out of nowhere.

[gekiganwing]

...games where the routes are technically equal yet one guy/girl's route is advertised as the canon one and/or one character receives favouritism from the developers.

The VNDB has two tags for this: Central Hero and Central Heroine. I haven't read any stories with the former tag, and only a few which have a central heroine.

Why should the reader choose a hero/heroine just because the writer considers them to be the favorite? How can a canon (or focal) love interest be appealing? Let me think about this for a moment...

* The canon love interest, who we'll call Girl A, has a lot of baggage. Perhaps if the protagonist chooses her, he'll have to fight her rival in a duel. Or perhaps if the protagonist chooses Girl A, he will constantly be in danger because she is a superheroine with powerful foes.

* The canon love interest is a major part of the non-romance plot. Maybe it's a murder mystery story, and Girl A is hiding many clues to solving it.

[TheJerminator15]

If there's sequels planned/released which requires a need for a canon? Not in the slightest in all honesty.

If special treatment is given in what is meant to be a one off game? Yeah it can definitely annoy me, eve if the canon one is my preferred character. There's little point in choices if the game is constantly trying to push you to a certain path/heroine. A good example is Princess Evangile. The original game provided 4 different romance options (though the choice system was very lacking) but the common route constantly hammered home how Rise was the main girl. Very little attention was given to the others, and so much focus was on events with Rise and the relationship between the two that it just made me despise that route.

[Ragnos]

Clannad does this, and really the primary thing that most people hate is that the developers really flesh out the story of that interest and kinda just work on the others as a side thing.
With Nagisa they added almost another entire games worth of content, and they also did this for another interest, Tomoyo which got continued in another VN called Tomoyo After (Depression in a hand basket btw.)

But all in all it's a poor decision unless you plan to flesh out the other interests as much as the main one.