Clannad

Genre: Visual Novel

Players: 1

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Review:

Clannad is a Visual Novel released on PC in Japan in 2004, with ports to numerous other platforms, but only releasing outside of Japan in 2018, when the game released worldwide on PlayStation 4, with a port to Nintendo Switch in 2019. The game sold quite well in its Japanese releases, and has a respectable Metacritic score of 83. I don’t usually mention these sorts of things in reviews, but I feel it’s important to put things in context, because I think I hate this game.

Clannad’s story follows Tomoya Okazaki, a habitual delinquent high school student who’s always late to school, sleeps through class, and just generally has a disinterested, depressed attitude toward life. Over the course of the game’s 50 to 60-hour story (seriously? And that’s just for a run through one story path!), Tomoko will gradually befriend and help a small handful of girls in his school, fall in love, and we follow his story into adulthood. Or at least, so I’m told. Yeah, I’m not playing this game for 50 hours just to review it, sorry.

My dislike for Clannad comes from its characters, who don’t talk in a way that seems natural to me, and who I just cannot find compelling. This is especially true for Tomoya, who seems to have no driving motivation, isn’t likable, isn’t relatable, and isn’t particularly interesting in any way I can discern. He doesn’t want to interact with others (apart from his irritating friend Sunohara), doesn’t have an interest in interacting with the world around him, and when you’re given the option to choose story options that make him act nice or at least engage with the world around him, there doesn’t seem to be any in-story reason for him to actually do so except that’s what you chose for him to do.

Now let me just be clear here: you can have an unlikable protagonist that’s still compelling. In the film The Social Network, Mark Zuckerberg is neither likable nor relatable, but it’s nevertheless fascinating to see the way he thinks and how he interacts with other characters. The same goes for Henry Hill in Goodfellas, a real scumbag but who is absolutely compelling because we are invited to see the way he sees the world. Even a sad sack depressed protagonist who is aimless in life like the main character in Fight Club can still be compelling.

But Tomoya doesn’t seem to have any driving force in his life like Zuckerberg’s drive to prove his superiority, Hill’s desire to lead what he sees as an ideal life, or even something as minor as the Fight Club protagonist’s search for something to end his sleeping problem. We’re told early on (told, not shown) that Tomoya’s father used to get drunk and beat him and now no longer does so but acts distant, which Tomoya says is worse, but it’s not really explained why he sees this as worse. He tells us that he hates his town but doesn’t say why. And given how little he cares about school, it’s kinda’ odd that he still goes at all. When I can get two hours into a story and still have no idea what motivates the story’s protagonist, in my mind that is a terrible story.

However, it’s not just the story and characters I dislike here. Clannad’s presentation has some good elements, like its detailed 2D backgrounds, but its anime-style 2D character art style just comes across as repulsive to me, with characters whose eyes are freakishly large even for anime characters, and extreme exaggerated features like Nagisa’s ridiculous “hair antennae”. I know this is purely a stylistic choice and a matter of personal preference, but given how much this game’s story made it difficult for me to connect with the characters, making them look so bizarre and freakish only made it more difficult.

These visuals are backed by a synthesized soundtrack that’s sufficient for the tone of the scenes it accompanies, but isn’t particularly memorable. There’s also Japanese-language voice acting for dialogue (except for the protagonist) that I often found to be grating.

I know Clannad has its fans, and I expect at some point to have someone jump in here and tell me why I’m wrong about this game, or that I just need to stick with the story for another two hours, or that I just “didn’t get it”. Maybe so. But I can only speak to my own experience playing a game in my reviews, and Clannad has to be one of the most miserable experiences I’ve had playing a Visual Novel.

tl;dr – Clannad is a Visual Novel where players take the role of delinquent student Tomoya as he befriends and potentially romances girls in his school. I found this game’s story and characters to lack any compelling qualities, with an unlikeable, unmotivated protagonist, and this is paired with an anime art style that’s bizarre in a way that makes it even more difficult to relate to these characters. I know this game has its fans, but I am not one of them.

Grade: D

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