Yes, any text heavy games can be seen as such.
It even started back on the SNES with Sound Novels.
That's why I prefer games like Ace Attorney where you have to deliberately chose the right item or right sentence at the right moment with the possibility of having a game over rather than a pure VN with 0 choice nor game over state.
Even Sound Novels from ChunSoft have multiple choices that could lead to a game over (especially when you could try to have the most Bad Ending as some could be humorous) and games like Zero Escape have puzzle sequences.
Being text heavy doesn't mean it cannot be a video game either. They don't quit being VN just because you have gameplay sections either. It's like saying that Zelda stops being an action/adventure game because of the stealth sections.
I really like the question of does this even count as a game if there's no mechanic other than reading and maybe your choices matter like a Choose Your Own Adventure gamebook but that's only because that medium is dead and at best solo TTRPGs fill that niche. Reminds me of Walking Simulators not counting as real games. I think those walking simulators should classify themselves as visual novels since they wanted to implement a different visual aspect than ones the genre is known for like 2D, sprites, using RPGMaker or maybe to them the art itself didn't need an identity and discarded it.
At present Steam tags Persona and Trails in the Sky with the visual novel tag though many would simply call them RPGs. Could be the combat could be the stats and equipment mechanics but if you were to call them just visual novels you'd get very puzzled responses. The Ace Attorney series and spin offs and anything from Spike Chunsoft (We don't talk about Conception) are easily recognized as visual novels they are praised for their gaming aspects of investigating and problem solving than just being novel, almost like they need mechanics to justify their title as a video game.
For me I think it points out a flaw that mechanics need to included for the video game identity and that visual novels don't need mechanics is also a flaw in the genre for growth. Visual novels have the great protentional for edutainment or virtual tour guides with the ability to capture an idea, place, or concept and adding reading or voiceovers would be natural and unintrusive due to it's railroading nature. There's also under developed horror protentional that it's limited player input can really play on the idea of vulnerability because many of these titles don't give any security to the player other than the ability to turn the game off. The Death Mark series and Detention come to mind.
Overall I love and enjoy visual novels but I think the genre hurts itself by not adopting outside it's conventional norms of limited to no mechanics or that it's seen as dating sims for girls and goon machines for guys by the mainstream thought machine when it has so much more protentional and that the idea of expanding that protentional is requires giving up that identity for something "greater".