I found Mad Father to be kinda.... Pretentious? Trying to hard? Dunno the word, but it rubbed me the wrong way and the ending was something I could only describe as boring.
In fact, Mad Father almost turned me off completely from the genre until I played Witch's House, which blew my goddamn mind.
Misao was really good too, but the lesson was kind of batshit. I mean, I already have a hard time forgiving misdeeds, but that was WAY out of the ballpark to forgive for.. Anyone, really.
[spoiler]Also was that just normal bullying they did to Misao? Jesus. The worst I did in highschool was dunk a kid in a trash bin every lunch.[/spoiler]
Ever since I was a kid I liked that junk, but of course this made me hardened and jaded when it comes to horror, meaning it's a lot harder to impress me. Seen one head cracked open like a coconut, seen 'em all.
So what ends up happening is that a lot of the time, my jaded traits just sorta serve as a buffer on these Japanese RPG games, meaning that the horror element unimpressed me and is filtered out, leaving me frustrated, poking holes in the logic of the whole thing, or sometimes just flat out depressed.
That was my biggest bone to pick with Misao. It didn't horrify or scare me, and a lot of the trick options were easy to identify, so I slicked past them with ease. The events, however, were really fucking depressing and the lesson I was supposed to 'learn' from this, again, was just asinine. So here I am, thinking that Misao is probably a really good game, but little more than a pile of flaws to my eyes.
I really liked Ib. Shame it was slightly ruined by someone so obsessed with Ib they talked about it to me for days on end after I finally said I played it. Still good though.