Do I need to pay money to start learning Japanese with visual novels?
No. Learning Japanese with visual novels is absolutely free. While many of the most popular titles are paid, there are thousands of free games available for you to get started. Many of these are available on platforms such as Freem. I encourage you to try them out.
How do I know if I'm making progress?
Progress in language learning is not always immediately obvious. You won't wake up one day and suddenly know a new language. Instead, it tends to show up in small moments over an extended period of time: a sentence you understand without needing to look anything up, a word you recognize because you've seen it a few times before, or a scene where you follow the dialogue without losing track of what is being said. These moments become more frequent over time, but they're easy to miss if you're only measuring yourself against how far you still have to go. If you're reading consistently and looking up what you don't know, you are making progress, whether it feels like it or not.
How long will it take me to be able to read X title?
You can technically start reading any title from day 1, but there's no guarantee that it will be a comfortable experience right away. Most people don't have the tolerance for difficulty to push through something like Muramasa from day one, nor is it recommended. People often ask when they'll be ready to take on more difficult titles, but please keep in mind that there is no getting around the fact that to improve at reading, you actually have to engage in the act of reading.
How long it takes to get to any given level is going to vary from person to person, but getting to a point where you can take on most titles with minimal difficulty with the assistance of a dictionary will come fairly early in your learning journey. Just by completing the Kaishi core deck, you'll have a great foundation for reading any title of your choice. Completing Kaishi only takes 1-3 months for most people, and most already start reading and enjoying native content well before finishing. It's recommended that you do the same.
Is there an "optimal" genre or game for making learning gains?
The best thing for you to read is whatever manages to maintain your interest and motivates you to keep going.
Think of it this way: if you started learning to read untranslated sci-fi games, but you switch to nothing but slice-of-life titles because they're "easier" and everyone tells you that's what beginners should read, and it demotivates you to keep going, it's quite likely you won't have the motivation to stick with it. On the other hand, if you start reading nothing but incredibly difficult works from day 1 and your tolerance for difficulty isn't high enough and you find it too much of an unbearable experience, that's also missing the point. What's important is that you genuinely want to spend time with the text you're engaging with.
What often separates people who make it and those who don't is that successful learners simply have a genuinely strong desire to understand the works they are engaging with in the original language. Nothing is stopping you from MTLing any foreign language, but if you're here, I assume you aren't satisfied with doing so and actually want to understand the original text. Keeping in mind that the titles you engage with early on aren't just a stepping stone to get you to "kamige" or whatever titles you really originally had in mind before starting to learn, but something to be enjoyed from day one, is what will carry you far.
What dictionary should I be using?
There is no single best dictionary that works for every person. Japanese dictionaries tend to be high quality, so there truly is no "wrong" choice or any that I would say to totally avoid.
Worrying about which dictionary is optimal for learning probably isn't going to do much for you, especially early on. You need actual experience going through text. You only understand the value of the dictionaries you're using when you find yourself in situations where you actually need them. You can always build on your setup with more dictionaries later, but that's no replacement for actually reading.
When making the transition to monolingual dictionaries, the amount of choice available to you might be overwhelming, but you'll quickly get a feel for which dictionaries "click" with you the most just by going through text and looking up words that need additional clarification. Having a full set of dictionaries will obviously present a lot of information, but you'll find that you're able to find the relevant information quicker in some dictionaries, or reach a more satisfactory level of understanding from certain definitions. Once you get a feel for what you naturally gravitate towards and what you tend to use less frequently, you can adjust the order of your dictionaries accordingly.
None of the dictionaries are going to lie to you or waste your time, but you do have to think critically about how every definition may or may not apply in a given context. A word doesn't mean something simply because a dictionary says it means something. It means something because it is used in a certain way, to convey a certain idea, in a certain context. If you ever feel like a definition doesn't match what you're seeing, investigate it, whether with other dictionaries or a search engine. And if a dictionary isn't working for you, you always have the freedom to disable it.
Is it normal to feel lost or frustrated while reading?
Yes, and you should be bothered if you feel like you aren't getting something. That feeling is normal. The important thing is what you do with it: when you get that feeling, don't ignore it, but at the very least put in some effort into investigating where the point of misunderstanding is before you move on. In other words, don't normalize ignoring it, but also don't let it scare you into never making progress.
You have to find a balance. On one hand, you don't want to move on without seriously attempting to understand the sentence. But at the same time, you don't want to limit your exposure to new material because you refuse to move on. Some people can easily spend 10+ minutes (or much longer) analyzing sentences by choice, simply because they are obsessed with the language itself and enjoy it and absolutely don't want to miss anything. Whether or not that's efficient is up to you to decide, but assuming you aren't that sort of person, the best thing you can do is simply read and have fun.
There is no one correct answer to how to get good. All that matters is just not quitting. Consistency is most important in the end.
Should I try to understand every sentence, or just get the general idea and move on?
You can take as long as you want on any sentence, and should try your absolute best before moving on. Analytical reading will only benefit you if you aim to improve your comprehension. It's just that if you find that sort of reading style prevents you from actually making any progress in the media you're interacting with, you're going to limit your exposure to new things, and that might actually impede your progress. Seeing a certain structure or word enough times might be all it takes for it to click. In other cases it might take additional effort.
In any case, just make sure you don't get into the habit of giving up on trying at all. If something isn't clicking and you can look it up, it's probably best that you do. Things are going to be slow at first, but if you do put in effort into understanding the media you interact with, eventually things will just click the first time you see them, and you'll naturally speed up.
Is it okay if I keep reading translated titles while learning?
We don't recommend it. Doing so will greatly limit the progress you make, as you're cutting into potential immersion time by splitting it between translated and untranslated titles, and you will only make gains from untranslated ones.
Some people try to "ease" into reading untranslated titles by reading them on the side while still continuing translated ones, or they have translated titles in progress that they're set on finishing. There is nothing stopping you from doing so, and it's not like you will make absolutely no progress at all, but generally we see this as a mindset that sets you up for failure or quitting early.
The mindset that gets people far is one where you decide that you no longer need to rely on translations and are freely able to read whatever you want in the original text. A successful learner recognizes that if a work feels too difficult at that point in time, they'll simply leave it for a bit later, but under no circumstances will they give up and retreat to translated titles again, as that defeats the point of starting to learn in the first place.
Some people make the excuse that they have titles they really want to read and can't wait, or that in order to avoid burnout or "still have fun" they can't go all the way. This is still setting yourself up for failure. If you aren't enjoying the process from the beginning, that's the real issue you need to address. If you have the belief in the back of your mind that you have to grind away for hundreds or thousands of hours before it gets "fun", you would need an incredible amount of willpower or a really compelling reason to keep going. Instead, if you simply allow yourself to enjoy the process of gaining language knowledge while enjoying fiction, day by day seeing yourself grow your vocabulary, you won't require any willpower at all, as you're having fun from the very beginning.
Should I use DeepL or machine translation when I don't understand a sentence?
Try to avoid it. If you don't understand a full sentence, look up the individual words in your dictionary and try to figure it out from there rather than translating the whole sentence. Before you know it, reaching for DeepL becomes a habit and you end up giving up on actually trying to understand the original sentence, or worse, you fall into the habit of skipping sentences without actually trying to understand them at all.
Machine translation tools like DeepL aren't going to understand the full context of what you're reading and will often give you inaccurate interpretations. People learned Japanese just fine long before these tools existed. Removing access to translations creates a healthy constraint that forces you to actually engage with the text. If you still want to check how something was being said after you've already made your best attempt, that's one thing, but it should be a last resort, not a first instinct.