My favorite Visual Novel of All Time. A story that's well expressed through its dialogue and choices, both a very humorous and emotional game with a lot of heart and soul poured into it. It has an amazing soundtrack, probably the second best soundtrack I've ever heard in my life, and while a lot of the characters fall into a lot of tropes and cliches, they are still very well realized and fleshed out. Don't judge this game by its cover, and do not let anyone tell you this is not worth it, because it 100% is. Also remember to 100% this game to get the best experience ever.
''the left offers us a society without a family that is to say they would deny us a hierarchical and patriarcal union between a man and a woman , but had they played clannad a strongly conservative game they would have surely turned away from a nihilistic form of satanic worship to a traditional reactionary christian monarchist.''
The anime is better but being the original source of a 10/10 adaptation it's still obviously really fucking good. It helps that it has some content that the anime didn't touch, some of which is pretty good.
Amazing music, the SoL is probably one of my favourites in VNs as a whole and Tomoya is literally peak protagonist. Very well done emotional moments in general.
Obviously though the main highlight is After Story and is the main reason people love this one and well, yeah it is a sight to behold and absolutely deserves its reputation.
Amazing music, the SoL is probably one of my favourites in VNs as a whole and Tomoya is literally peak protagonist. Very well done emotional moments in general.
Obviously though the main highlight is After Story and is the main reason people love this one and well, yeah it is a sight to behold and absolutely deserves its reputation.
Ignore the first reviews on this site which trash on this game, it rocks but it has its issues.
Pacing kinda sucks if you're not ready for a slow story, there's tons of alternate text which makes every route fairly unique with less skippable text than you'd probably expect.
Certain events expect you to have played other routes in order to unlock them. Sometimes they never play again and there's no way to track whether you've seen an event and it sucks replaying a route just to see nothing happen. Following a suggested route order is recommended.
Love this VN so much, but some of the design hasn't aged too well and I'd definitely recommend using a guide for route order and choices.
Pacing kinda sucks if you're not ready for a slow story, there's tons of alternate text which makes every route fairly unique with less skippable text than you'd probably expect.
Certain events expect you to have played other routes in order to unlock them. Sometimes they never play again and there's no way to track whether you've seen an event and it sucks replaying a route just to see nothing happen. Following a suggested route order is recommended.
Love this VN so much, but some of the design hasn't aged too well and I'd definitely recommend using a guide for route order and choices.
Unfortunately, I don't think this VN has aged very gracefully, as a lot of fresh ideas now come off as stale. I think all the main routes are pretty well-written (Kyou best girl) but the side routes range from just okay to outright horrendous (looking at you, Kappei). While I understand the importance of establishing a sense of community, the lack of quality control on these other routes hurt the VN as a whole more than helps since this is already a huge story that bloated to epic proportions because of them.
I also gotta say, this really does feel like a shell of what the anime did. I've always hated Jun Maeda's anime-original works but liked the anime adaptations of his Key stuff, and reading the Clannad VN helped me understand why: the adaptation teams understood the stories better than Maeda ever did. The VN never quite successfully weaves all the routes together in a satisfactory way, and the anime more than makes up for what it loses by trading in the meta components and prose for strong visual direction. It also expands on themes present in the VN but aren't executed terribly well.
I tried not to let my feelings for the anime cloud my feelings too much, and my rating is moreso a reflection of what I think I'd feel if I hadn't seen it first: lukewarm, but still wondering what the big deal was about.
I also gotta say, this really does feel like a shell of what the anime did. I've always hated Jun Maeda's anime-original works but liked the anime adaptations of his Key stuff, and reading the Clannad VN helped me understand why: the adaptation teams understood the stories better than Maeda ever did. The VN never quite successfully weaves all the routes together in a satisfactory way, and the anime more than makes up for what it loses by trading in the meta components and prose for strong visual direction. It also expands on themes present in the VN but aren't executed terribly well.
I tried not to let my feelings for the anime cloud my feelings too much, and my rating is moreso a reflection of what I think I'd feel if I hadn't seen it first: lukewarm, but still wondering what the big deal was about.
One of the classics of the VN scenes. I could understand that view that many get from this work. However, it is telling that this is mostly recommended for newcomers trying to get into Visual Novels. The prose is short, simple, and pleasant. Very thematically strong in its themes of coming of age and what it entails. To finding refuge in family, friends, and romantic partners and climbing the hill of life/existence as long as you can. However, it is pretty marred down by overly redundant slice of life scenes, and VERY slow pacing. Ironically, although most of the game is written by Jun Maeda, I like Suzumoto Yuuichi (Kotomi's story) style of writing and pacing better. It isn't to say I don't think this is a classic (because it deserves to be one and packs quite a devastating emotional punch) It's just not my thing. Probably especially since I've played better VNs than what most people would actually find in the western world.
I never once thought too myself that a piece of media would have such a significant impact on me...
Until i played Clannad & Tomoyo After, it has such a beautiful story that teaches the importance of family and it shows & follows it's own philosophy of Hedonism. Clannad teaches us how no matter what hardships an individual is fated to face, life is still worth living despite that. Each route follows the main heroine of that route, you become so engrossed with that character, you'll slowly start learning their past and a deeper insight on who that character truly is from within thier heart. Each story route is so fascinating, the majority of it's characters have their own sets of real life problems and there is always one underlying theme and message that you can take away from each route.
I'm not sure if what i wrote here can justify on how much i love this game, but if you didn't get the memo, i frickin love this game from the bottom of my heart.
Until i played Clannad & Tomoyo After, it has such a beautiful story that teaches the importance of family and it shows & follows it's own philosophy of Hedonism. Clannad teaches us how no matter what hardships an individual is fated to face, life is still worth living despite that. Each route follows the main heroine of that route, you become so engrossed with that character, you'll slowly start learning their past and a deeper insight on who that character truly is from within thier heart. Each story route is so fascinating, the majority of it's characters have their own sets of real life problems and there is always one underlying theme and message that you can take away from each route.
I'm not sure if what i wrote here can justify on how much i love this game, but if you didn't get the memo, i frickin love this game from the bottom of my heart.
This review contains spoilers
Clannad, one of the most important things I've ever seen in my life, if I were to define the word "Clannad", I would say it's something to take in your heart forever.
Everything about this game makes it special, every moment in it was thought of in detail by detail, you'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll remember and you'll use it in your everyday life.
Clannad for me was a teaching of how important your family is, and I had never even thought about this subject, today I have a very good life because of that, I still intend to improve every day.
Everything about this game makes it special, every moment in it was thought of in detail by detail, you'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll remember and you'll use it in your everyday life.
Clannad for me was a teaching of how important your family is, and I had never even thought about this subject, today I have a very good life because of that, I still intend to improve every day.
This review contains spoilers
It's an amazing game, but it isn't 5 stars because of stuff like Misae's light being in Tomoyo's route after doing hers first means have fun doing Tomoyo's again if you did Tomoyo's first. Also some routes just being okay like the counselor to bad like Kappei's. And Sunohara's bad end/Eeek! just leaves a very bad taste in my mouth.
With that out of the way, holy crap this game. Every story beat is powerful, the music selling each pinnacle moment from the joyful comedy to the painful tears. The cast all memorable in their own ways and really feeling like a dango daikozaku by the end. And I haven't even mentioned the After Story yet, which is some of the most emotional game writing out there. "It was the first thing from Papa" still hits hard whenever I think about it.
I would say "play Clannad" but this review uses spoilers, so I'm assuming you already did. If not, what are you doing? Go play Clannad! Even if you did, play it again, you'll never know what scenes you're randomly missing!
With that out of the way, holy crap this game. Every story beat is powerful, the music selling each pinnacle moment from the joyful comedy to the painful tears. The cast all memorable in their own ways and really feeling like a dango daikozaku by the end. And I haven't even mentioned the After Story yet, which is some of the most emotional game writing out there. "It was the first thing from Papa" still hits hard whenever I think about it.
I would say "play Clannad" but this review uses spoilers, so I'm assuming you already did. If not, what are you doing? Go play Clannad! Even if you did, play it again, you'll never know what scenes you're randomly missing!