Key's Visual Novel (CLANNAD)

Now, I've played a lot of visual novels - I admit that. But this game has to be among my favourites. While it did take a while to install, it was worth the wait. And fortunately, due to the many people I know, I was able to get it with an almost complete translation. In any case, skipping past the boring introduction of the gamemakers themselves, let me explain how come this is such an awesome game.

First of all, the characters are all voiced! If you have a computer that can handle the game and you yourself understand a good amount of Japanese, you hardly need a translation. The only character not voiced would be you. Now, I'm not entirely sure about this but it would seem that even though you can choose your own name for your character, his name will still be Okazaki Tomoya (岡崎朋や) throughout the game. But why would you want to change his name, anyway...?

Story-wise, I think it's very interesting. While there's no real animation happening throughout the game, something always happens that will make you want to keep on playing even after several hours of clicking through the conversations. Once in a while, you get a few options to choose from; mostly, though, it's whenever an optional scene occurs - meaning, that it's not something you actually have to go through to understand what's going on.

Okazaki Tomoya (the character you play) is a delinquent, so he rarely pays attention in class. Which, in one way or another, probably is a good thing since the game would get boring otherwise. While playing, you learn a lot about his personality and his background, and sooner or later you will start to notice the changes he ends up going through. By interacting with a lot of other people, both at school and outside of school, you learn a thing or two about everyone else. I especially like the scenes with Sunohara. Okazaki seems to enjoy tormenting the poor boy and yet he sees him as a friend. I've had a lot of good laughs because of that.

Like always, Key's character design is awesome and the images used in the game couldn't be richer in detail. I recently discovered that Key already released their sixth game, Little Busters!, which was made for the same audience as CLANNAD. They later released another version with adult content, called Little Busters! Ecstacy.

Although Key's music hasn't scored a first place on my top 10 yet, it's dangerously close, coming in on a clingy second-place just before Kajiura Yuki's huge bg collection. Just like their previous games, the music end up being used for the following anime - a big plus, if you ask me. The music sets the mood and it catches the feelings of the characters pretty well. And let's not forget the wonderful Riya who did the opening song for not only the game, but also the anime. All in all, I'm giving it a 10/10.

You can grab the game as well as the complete OST collection by following the links below. Have fun!

CLANNAD download
CLANNAD translation patch
CLANNAD menu explanation
CLANNAD Original Soundtrack [Megaupload]