Clannad release imminent - You hyped?

[Toranth]

So I got the Kyou / Ryou bad end first.  I next used a walkthrough to get the Ryou end...but it ended within 5 minutes. What the hell? That's a SHORT ROUTE. I've heard about the after-story, does that continue the routes later on? Because if so, I am let down by Clannad. It was funny with your friend, the romantic moments were so-so. I know this is only one route and that Ryous isn't one you get an orb of light from, but boy that was pathetic.   What do you know about Ryou? You know she likes fortune telling...and you know her last name. Oh she also likes Tanazite. That's it. YOu know nothing more about her.  Your chemistry is even pathetically weak. I mean every route can't be awesome, but what a let down regardless.

I'm not really kidding when I say there isn't a Ryou end, there's just a bad end on the Kyou route.  She actually is a better character in the Kappei route than she is in Kyou's route - which is a little disappointing, because there was certainly potential there.

 

And the Clannad After-Story is one route - the True Route, so to speak.  Don't look for anything else for any of the other girls.

[Mkilbride]

Kyou X Ryou route makes less and less sense to me because of how little we know the characters. With Kyou, there is implied history, they seem to know each other well. Except or the bike & boar.  With Ryou it's nothing. He's barely ever talked to her before the start of her route.  Yet she'd basically sleep with him after dating him for a week / do whatever he wanted.  I know it's a VN, but even that is just to unbelievable. I thought Key was praised for it's romantic stories? This is awful. Just awful. She will completely change her personality, desires, everything to be with this boy she BARELY KNOWS.   There needs to be some setup tot his, but there isn't. He's implied that he just started talking to her, and mostly just a word or two at a time and she is willing to devote herself 100%. Tomoya is not exceptionally handsome, rich, or exceptionally nice and caring. He's average in everything, even being a decent person.  Unlike alot of VN, there's no reason for such a girl to just fall madly in love with him to the point of obsession.  Ryou needs to get checked into a asylum.

 

I am on Kyous now and it focuses 80% of Ryou and how much of a whiny asshole TOmoya is.  I got put into this route for not using a guide...bad choice, I think.

 

 

Aw shit, I just got Kyous ending. That was fucking pathetic. Maybe I was overhyped for Clannad, but this is garbage tier. Maybe it's just that  route for the game, alot of VNS have a bad one, but everything about it past the mid-way point sucked ass. Like...I'd say Do You Like Horny Bunnies had better writing than the second half.

 

Also, none of the negative consequences are dealt with. We HEAR about them for a few hours of reading, then...TOmoya and Kyou kiss and THE END. ALL THAT BUILD UP. FOR NOTHING.   Seriously, Tomoya is going to get so much shit from everyone at school who saw him with Ryou. Kyous friends too. No matter what Ryou says about "They wanted to be together, I was the problem", both Tomoya and Kyou are going to get shit on so hard by their friends, probably only have each other besides blondie...pathetic. I like how they just brush over it with saying she got another boyfriend, like -that' almost no time had passed. She must be easy!

 

These routes are so short you can't even get invested in any of the characters. Shortest routes I've ever seen in a VN, or is it just Kyou & Ryous route that is so short?

Edited December 4, 2015 by Mkilbride

[Ariurotl]

Approximately half of all the endings in the game are like that, half-baked and essentially pointless. I even liked some of them (the old teacher's ending was rather good), but others (Mei/Sunohara, Akio and YUKINE) were very disappointing.

[Fred the Barber]

Kyou's route was actually pretty long, as I recall, it's just that you see a lot of Ryou in it, for obvious reasons; maybe you're just viewing a bunch of the stuff that's part of the route as "common route" or something? At any rate, once the big romance conflict is resolved, telling other stories about the clean-up explanation afterwards would just drag out the ending and make it even less interesting. Kyou's is certainly the weakest of the full-length routes in Clannad, from what I can tell, but I at least don't think it's bad, per se. Calling it "garbage tier", asserting the writing is worse than some random nukige, and using some other hyperbole when calling out the route length, makes it seem like first you over-hyped for it, and now you're just dead set against enjoying it. You'll probably be happier if you just go read something else.

Regarding Yukine's ending: I actually really enjoyed it. Certainly it was extremely short, and it was light on drama and CGs, but I was genuinely moved by the big monologue scene; that was enough for me.

Currently reading Tomoyo's route... man it's long. I'm kind of hoping to get through this quickly and get to After Story, but I still have so much left to go of the first set of routes.

[Turnip Sensei]

I'm now done with all the main routes, only after story awaits.

The feeling I have why people don't seem to like the routes in Clannad is because they don't really work in the way routes usually work in "standard" romance vn. The routes in Clannad don't really revolve around the Tomoya's and someone's relationship, but rather each route has it own theme that is the main focus, the characters and relationships are just one of the tools to represent it. That's why Yukine's route might feel unsatisfying if you just think about it as a romance between Tomoya and Yukine, but I personally found the whole route and the message behind it very heartwarming and satisfying. Sometimes it's better to appreciate things as they are and not get too upset when they don't fit your expectations. 

That said, some of routes definitely drag too long, some are really dependent on whether you happen to like the character or not, i.e. Fuko or Tomoyo, and some are more shallow with their presentation. It's definitely not perfect, but all the routes have their own strong points and I haven't been disappointed in any of them.

Also as a bonus, after you've read Kotomi's route, go and read "The Dandelion Girl";  the short story they keep referencing. Not only is it pretty interesting story on it's own, it also gives some nice perspective on Kotomi's route.

[Ariurotl]

There was a message in Yukine's route? My bad, I couldn't get past

the cartoonish idealized delinquents who are totally noble dudes who just happen to fight some other dudes somewhere, but are totally not sociopaths like most actual delinquents are.

 Look, Clannad is a decent read, it's not the worst VN ever written or anything. It's just bitterly disappointing and so amateurish at times. I'm all for non-standard storytelling as long as what you're doing instead is... not even necessarily good, but at least interesting. But Maeda is at his worst when he completely removes plot hooks that are worth exploring, instead replacing them with either some random bullshit or just LITERALLY NOTHING. It's mostly the little things, but there's so many of them peppered throughout. Just off the top of my head:

Yoshino's story about him stopping making music. It's pretty interesting, and I can't wait to see what happens to... oh. Turns out, Ibuki and Nagisa talked to him OFF-CAMERA, and now he's making music again. Why? What the actual fuck?

Akio's backstory of giving up acting because Nagisa was sickly, I wonder if that gets explor... NOPE. A weird hostage situation out of the fucking blue, that serves literally no purpose. Gee, Akio is sure a great guy. The end.

But those are just minor annoyances. Nothing comes close to the insult of reader's intelligence that is Tomoyo's route.

[Toranth]

 Look, Clannad is a decent read, it's not the worst VN ever written or anything. It's just bitterly disappointing and so amateurish at times. I'm all for non-standard storytelling as long as what you're doing instead is... not even necessarily good, but at least interesting. But Maeda is at his worst when he completely removes plot hooks that are worth exploring, instead replacing them with either some random bullshit or just LITERALLY NOTHING. It's mostly the little things, but there's so many of them peppered throughout. Just off the top of my head:

I think part of your disappointment is that you aren't expecting what Clannad is about.  See, Clannad isn't a straight up moe- or chara-game.  It isn't about Fuuko, or Kyou, or any of the girls - it's about Tomoya, and it's about family.  All the routes, both the girls' and the others, serve to illustrate certain family relationships - look for that as the plot, not the romantic relationship between Tomoya and girl-of-the-day.

Once you recognize what the point of each route is, and how they all come together, you'll either get more enjoyment out of the story, or understand why you don't like it.

[Ariurotl]

This argument again? There is literally nothing in common between wrong expectations and poor writing that goes nowhere. I haven't even said anything about romance or girls or anything (my examples are from Yoshino and Akio's mini-routes, for fuck's sake), and I still get the same old load of "you don't understand what it's about" and "it's not your usual VN" bollocks.

[Toranth]

This argument again? There is literally nothing in common between wrong expectations and poor writing that goes nowhere. I haven't even said anything about romance or girls or anything (my examples are from Yoshino and Akio's mini-routes, for fuck's sake), and I still get the same old load of "you don't understand what it's about" and "it's not your usual VN" bollocks.

First off, I disagree with 'poor writing', or with your claims of no characterization.  Maeda does trim out the non-essential bits to his stories, which throws off people that expect those bits to be important.  This sort of writing is more common in Japanese, as opposed to the "Must tie off every thread!" philosophy that is popular among English writers.  It's awkward, and as a native English reader, I would prefer more complete stories.  But it just isn't the way things are done, so I've learned not to expect it.

 

However, the point I was attempting to make is that the focus of the game isn't on the romantic relationships, but on the familial ones. 

If you like that, fine - you like Clannad. 

If you don't like that, fine - you don't like Clannad. 

There is no requirement you like Clannad.  But if you dislike it, dislike it because of what it IS, not because it didn't include something you expected but the writers NEVER intended to include.  If someone were to claim Clannad is terrible because the action scenes are bad and the villians had no development, should anyone take that as valid criticism?

[Ariurotl]

Maeda does trim out the non-essential bits to his stories 

 

 I mean... no, you know what, I'm not continuing this argument. You're absolutely right.

[Toranth]

Maeda does trim out the non-essential bits to his stories 

 I mean... no, you know what, I'm not continuing this argument. You're absolutely right.

Indeed I am.

[Mkilbride]

So I got an hour or two into fuukos route, the brunette who wants to start the drama club.

 

I really wanted to finish this...but I think I'm done.  Majikoi stopped me too. I think I can't enjoy Slice of Life VNs anymore. I don't know. I've read to many of the epic VNS, that encase a unique world, characters, sprawling, great stories...that I can't enjoy the whole "Life is hard being a teenager" VNs anymore...sad, I used to like them so much. It happened to me with Harems too. I can't enjoy Harem animes anymore unless it has a REAL twist to it, like something dark or it has great humor.

 

Which sucks because like 95% of VN are slice of life and 50% of Anime are Harems.  It essentially blocks off a large portion of content to me because lazy writers.

[BobJones2]

Just finished Ryou/Kyou's Route. It was more than correct...But,seriously, the drama part was SO long...and a good character like Kyou deserves a crazier route/ending

Unfortunately, Kyou suffers from "best girl and worst route" syndrome. It's even more common (and arguably even more frustrating) than "best girl and no route" syndrome.

Doesn't really matter how Kyou's (or whoever your waifu is) route is changed, Clannd is all about Nagisa and her "After Story" route, that's just how the game was made. Everything else don't really matter all that much. I mean its possible but they would have to make huge additions like they tried to do with "Tomoyo After" but that didn't really work out too well since making a good story is hard. Even if they did do it well, it will still be inevitable compared to and overshadowed by Nagisa's story.

Point is: sorry guys, the moment the game was released, its already too late for your waifus to stand a chance against Nagisa. I much prefer visual novels with a super prominent main heroine like this though, at the cost of guys whining on the behalf of their waifus or about how they hate the main heroine, we tend to get a much better central story.