You can include all of the Ace Attorney games in the DS visual novel category, and I can thank them for gatewaying me into visual novels in general. Also throwing in 999 since it wasn't mentioned yet and is great.
I far prefer visual novels to real books. Visual novels allow for more "showing not telling" of an environment and a character's mood, allowing you to sort of "skip" all the stage setting description of an environment, though a developer can totally insert more description if they like, so it lets them control the pacing more tightly.
The controlled "dialogue box by dialogue box" progression of a traditional visual novel also allows for tight control of the reveal of information. I'm sure many people can relate to reading a book, and accidentally reading a section far ahead they didn't intend to while flipping to an incorrect page. This box by box approach allows interesting games like Doki Doki Literature Club to reveal information deliberately and immediately for maximum impact, where a book may reveal a twist if the reader happens to glance further down the page.
I also find having character art/voice acting helps me to remember and separate different characters more easily than just using my own memory and imagination, half a benefit, half a symptom of my smooth brain.
Unless character skin, hair, eye colors etc. are specifically described in a book they tend to just become a homogenized blob of generic person in my head, and I've read books where I formed a mental image of a character, only for a line to be dropped later that causes me to have to change what they looked like in my head. The weight of the imagination on the experience of books can in that way be a blessing and a curse.
There are also lots of visual novels with exceptional soundtracks that heavily aid the atmosphere and emotion in a game, such as Ace Attorney, or Danganronpa. This introduction of other media to the format can also be taken further towards games like the ever cult popular Persona series in which RPG turn based gameplay is fused with time management, choice, and heavy visual novel elements, to varying effect. Though the soundtracks are always bangin'.
As much as visual novels can aid the experience, they can also let it down in more ways than books. A book really just needs to deliver on its premise, and a writing style and story that the reader enjoys. A visual novel must satisfy in story, writing style, music, gameplay (if any), visual style, voice acting (if any), etc.
And, due to their higher degree of complexity, visual novels are often more expensive than books to boot.