Having just finished Tomoya’s arc, not a lot I can say that hasn’t been already said!
The prologue was a terrible way to introduce the story, but I guess I can understand them for wanting to appeal to the hentai crowd and get that stuff out of the way in the beginning. It had its funny moments, but overall very disappointing.
The middle, or the ‘common route’ as people have been calling it was absolutely brilliant. All of the characters shine, there’s lots of genuinely funny and heartwarming moments, and the occasional comment from Kanako that really causes me to think. That girl has a such a negative psychology that comes out at random times. And Takafumi, I love this guy! He’s so chill with everything (that doesn’t involve his past or kissing his sister), and seems like a lot of fun to be around. I guess I’ll have more to say about him later. And Pepe summed up why Tomo is so great. Like others have said, I feel like Tomoyo is way too tsundere, but her good traits (her flaws?) definitely shine through here better than I ever felt they did in CLANNAD. Tomoya is still Tomoya, albeit a little bit more perverted.
The actual Tomoya arc portion was… Very weak for me. Having read everyone’s posts here, I can say I fully understand what they were going through, but for me, it just clashes so much with my own values. This really is a very machismo story, about Tomoya fighting to protect his male pride and gain confidence through that. It’s not exactly bad, but the reckless way he goes about it is too much for me. If the guys he were fighting were just a bit less conveniently forgiving, Tomoya could very well have died or at least ended up disabled from pushing himself so hard. The only reason is paid off was because the world (narrative) decided to be a bit kind to him and hand him that victory. It all feels very cheap to me. I know, it’s about Tomoya gaining that unyielding strength and all the awesome trust dymanics of their family unit developing, but, I can’t agree with the means. It just clashes too much with my personal values.
The music in this game is fucking amazing! Hope might be my favourite Key title screen music, but it’s gonna take time for me to say that with any kind of certainty. Some of the tracks are pretty weak, like Harmony, but overall the quality is very high. Old Summer Days is mah Natsukage of this game, really beautiful composion.
Also, don’t forget guys, Jun Maeda wasn’t the only author of this title. My main man Leo Kashida worked on it as well! Interesting thought that maybe Maeda got in some sort of brawls in his youth, but I have no reason to suspect it true yet.
Overall, 3/5. There’s some really amazing stuff in this game, but the majority of this arc felt disappointing to me. I really hope the following arcs can pick things up, because for the most part, I’m still really enjoying this title. I’m hanging out for Tomo’s arc, the drama surrounding her is really interesting to me. I find myself wondering what I would do if I were in Tomoya’s shoes, suddenly forced to protect a child I’d just met. Though, that bad end seems like it trivialises everything they’ve gone through up to this point. Can we talk about that a bit, or is this not the place?