You should totally play VLR!! It's mind blowing, the whole game kept me at the edge of my seat for hours and hours, it's a great experience to go thru, even better than 999. I really want to replay 999 and VLR (cuz I still haven't done so ) but I got the final game Zero Time Dilemma left so I should go with that one before replaying the other two.
And yeah, I understand what you say about the time while playing games, it's hard keeping up with something if you still haven't got to a point in the game where to hang from (even if you are interested in the game ), but then when you do get to that point and you get to finish the game and you love it, you start feeling like you regret taking so long to play it all hahaha, it all feels like a curse sometime, but if you look at it from the bright side you get to maximize that play time and so can enjoy (or suffer(?) depends on the game you're playing I guess lol ) that game even more. ^^