Most of the time I will go with the corruption route.
If there are multiple girls then I will sometimes do one romance with the others being corruption.
If there's multiple paths and outcomes I do them all, nothing better than a 100% gallery. First playthrough is usually a romance route where I either pick one person specifically or I go for a romance Harem run.
Both? Both is good. Depending on how i'm feeling i'll do either the Romance or Corruption route first, then re-do on the other route another time if i enjoyed the game enough. If its more of an action game though, i'll generally go for Romance/Pure first, and corrupt the second time though.
Depends on the characters, if its an interesting, enjoyable character, then romance as the main route, if its an anoying unbearable charcter, then its corruption for sure. But if its a renpy game, I just enable the console open up the code in an editor and play all the paths at the same time (some games need a lot of variable juggling though)
Many novels misinterpret romance and corruption. There’s a lot of bland, soft romance where it seems like you can’t have good, enjoyable sex with the girls. The female characters can’t cum, try new fetishes, show that they’re turned on by the MC or sexually desire him. That’s a limitation of the developer, not of romance itself. Every romance should have a bit of corruption, since the female character will be changing her behavior for the MC — becoming more open to affection and sex. What changes is more the tone of the dialogue than the sex, since the MC can give her a few spanks and still be romantic.
Corruption is a bit complicated because everyone has their own view of it. Making the girl desire sex with the MC even knowing she’ll never have the role of girlfriend or wife is very interesting when done well. I’m not talking about treating her badly, but about training her to be his willing slut who’s eager to please the MC, wanting to be there for him to the point of throwing her dignity aside and accepting situations she wouldn’t accept with any other man. That’s fun
I much prefer romance. One thing I hate about corruption storylines is that they tend to turn everyone into the same broken submissive slave. (Although you could say that romance storylines tend to turn every character into the same lovey-dovey Stepford wife.)