I like CSGs for the exploring – which might be a bit different from what many people mean by either “playing” (passing stat-based challenges to meet some kind of win condition) or “reading” (appreciating beautiful prose, well-drawn characters, thrilling plots).
To me, the chance of story-exploring is what sets interactive novels apart from regular ones. You have the chance to dig into different corners of the story’s world, or see how events would have played out differently, or how characters develop differently in response to your different actions or traits on the MC’s part.
Choice of Robots immediately established itself as my favorite on its release, because of that last-chapter split where you could end up in totally different worlds (i.e. genres of robot fiction) based on your choices to date. The interesting thing about the Robots stats for me was that they opened up properly different stories to experience and explore, not that they set up challenges with win/fail states. The same is true for more recent CoGs I’ve really enjoyed, like Heroes of Myth.
I don’t object to more “game-y” win/fail stats challenges as a secondary feature of CSGs, opening up minor wins/achievements/dopamine bumps. But they’re always secondary to me. I usually only look at my stats once or twice in a game, early on, to get a sense of the themes; after that I start making choices, see where they take me, and then come back and see how the story would look to a different character making different choices. If the story can’t be experienced to my satisfaction that way – if it has to be played as a game with close attention to stats – I’ll rarely go back to it. Every once in a while a very game-y CoG will grab me – Lucid is particularly good at hooking me into his, for some reason – but for the most part, I’m here for the story.
At the same time, I’m here to explore the story in the way you really only can in a game. The pleasure of exploration is something I prioritize in lots of my favorite games, whether an open-world RPG like Witcher 3 or a 4X like Civ. A well-done CSG lets me do it for a novel, which can be way more story-intensive than just about any other type of game.