I think the way the story should be told is dependent, yes you guessed it, on the story that is being told. Some stories are best told as linear, single route tales, or several tales told linearly in succession. Others are best told from different perspectives, with multiple routes. But it also depends on why you’re playing the game. Are you playing for a story that tugs on your heart strings, or are you playing it for the romantic / dating sim element? If the latter, then multiple heroines and paths make a whole lot of sense, because you want a character you really dig (thus multiple heroines to choose from), and you want their romantic arc to be decently fleshed out (thus each heroine has their own path). That’s what separates these games from books and anime–you get to shape the story and decide what path the story ultimately takes. Without the multiple paths, a visual novel loses much of the distinctiveness that sets it apart from other media.
You’d get Utawarerumono or Tears to Tiara 
You can get the same thing from CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE books and those Laserdisc games - and only people utterly unfamiliar with VNs would state that they are equal to either.
It’s not what sets VNs apart. It is one of them, sure, but it’s far from the main thing, and it’s definitely not the most important thing.
The main thing that sets VNs apart is that they are a full multimedia (that is, audial and visual) experience that places an emphasis on text and uses all three equally to provide a story, using visuals for things only visuals can portray, audio for things only audio can portray and writing for things only writing can portray. This essentially means they can take the advantages of multiple mediums at the same time. As such, there’s a lot of stories that cannot be equally told using any other medium- you would always lose information attempting to adapt it to a TV series, movie, novel etc.
Some of the best VNs are single path. Certainly many popular ones are. Muv-Luv Alt, Utawarerumono, Higurashi, Umineko, Cross Channel, Saihate no Ima, ef -the latter tale-, eden*, Aster…
I seriously hated their approach to eroge content. Here’s a game that lost virtually nothing interesting in the all-age version.
Yeah, but you don’t know what a route is going to be like until after you play it. No matter what you think, you don’t KNOW. You never know.
G-Senjou no Maou was an unusual case, but I finished the game fairly sequentially, clearing out each route as I came to it, so by the time I finished Haru’s ending I had cleared the game. Yes, the side routes weren’t all that great, but I had no way of knowing this.
Even unattractive characters can have awesome routes - I don’t like megane (glasses) characters at all, but I still play their routes. What if I played Suigetsu but ignored the megane’s route? Or Tsukihime? In fact, Tsukihime is a great example, because I wasn’t a fan of Ciel at all, yet her route was awesome.
I suppose the main thing is that these games are very expensive (especially when new) and if I don’t enjoy them for a certain amount of time I tend to feel gypped. As such, I save the best for last to keep up my motivation to complete them.
You also kind of get this a bit in Brave Soul. The main (True) Ending is more than likely Alicia’s. Claire, however, being a hidden character, has what I would call the best ending, and arguably a possible true ending as well.
Speaking of Brave Soul, was Alicia the true heroine? I was under impression that Claire was the one. To be honest, I cleared her path second from last, since I lost Alicia during my first three playthru.
Well like I said, it’s a toss up between Claire and Alicia as to who has the “true” ending in Brave Soul. You could argue both Paths could be in the fact that: Alicia’s ending resolves the main plotline at the beginning of the game, namely that Rudy has finally grown up and become a man. He also has the respect of his father. (For the most Part) Claire’s on the other hand is the resolution around the Mystery of who Shell really is, and a resolution of who the moon goddess is. Personal Choice is Claire, because her ending, unlike most of the others has the best “feeling” to it. So really you could argue that they are both the main Heroines in the story. Kind of disappointing that they never made an OVA series of it, because you could get some really good conflict near the end of the series from all 3 characters (Rudy, Alicia & Claire) on how to resolve the situation on who ends up with who.
Oh, okay. On a second thought, Alicia had an important ending too. I just did not like her much.
Other than this Brave Soul matter, I remember not finishing Elise’s path first in Critical Point. This time simply because it was not always clear which way to go where.
Yeah, Critical Point was something of a maze with how much branching it did, and many endings though more than a few were just the PC getting himself killed. Real fun but I definitely needed a walkthrough to complete it, and I’m still to this day missing a couple of graphics.
On the point of heroine’s, I may read about the characters when I’m buying the game or what not, but I will never choose what path to take first until I’m actually playing, and I can see how they really are, plus if a character has an irritating voice I’ll make them go last.