Clannad 2004

Is it still worth playing?

Key's 2004 visual novel for Windows, in which Tomoya Okazaki, a third year high school student with no plans for the future, meets Nagisa Furukawa, who wants to revive a disbanded drama club. You mostly read narrative and dialogue in a box, with Japanese voice acting for everyone except the protagonist, who is unvoiced. Dialogue choices appear now and then, most of them do not matter, and the few that do decide whether you can complete a path. There are six main plotlines, five open at the start, and a School Life arc with five heroine scenarios. Finishing a heroine's scenario awards a light orb, eight orbs open the After Story arc, and all 13 are needed for the true ending. It runs from about forty to eighty hours, and the way to the After Story is hard to work out without a guide. Routes that unlock one another give a long read a structure that still pulls you forward today.