I don't recommend them unless you're like me to be honest. I love to read, I like being able to influence what I read, and I'm a hopeless romantic. If you don't like doing even one of those things, VNs might not be for you. It's rare to find one that has absolutely no romance at all, and a majority of them have romance being the main theme. Even the so-called "legendary" Visual Novels still have major themes of romance, despite what the general consensus says.
Saya no Uta is a horror VN, but one huge arc is your love story with the main heroine.
Fate/Stay Night is an action VN, but one huge arc is falling in love with your chosen partner.

So you pretty much need to be comfortable with three things:

1. Reading, a lot, and keeping all that you've read in your memory to pull up in later situations.

2. Influencing stories. Options will pop up that give you an option to change the story for better or for worse, this is where your reading knowledge comes in. 

3. Romance. If you don't like romance, nor are romantic in the slightest, the vast majority of VNs won't appeal to you at all. I am sadly a huge sucker for romance, so I gravitate to VNs like they're giant planets.

The closest video game series I can say that compares to a VN experience is the Pheonix Wright series, but that's stretching it really, really far. Mostly because it's argued that simply picking dialogue options does not mean "gameplay," and Pheonix Wright does far more than simply picking dialogue options.