Visual Novels

[Nobody In Particular]

Let me outline the full story of how I interpret Clannad's ending. Up until the day Ushio dies. It takes place, as presented. You go through, you get Naoyuki's Light Orb, and two people make a wish. Tomoya, wishes none of it had happened, and Ushio wishes that her dad could be happy. To resolve this dispute, Tomoya is placed back at the bottom of the hill and given two choices, to reach out to Nagisa, or to stay quiet.

Which is where the illusionary world comes in. The illusionary world is a reflection of the desires of Hikarizaka's residents, this is stated explicitly as "The lights here are a shadow of the feelings of 'that place' and my feelings are reflected by lights in their world". And we see this from Tomoya's perspective. TONS of people Tomoya has never met, seem to know exactly whats going on in his life. We even catch a reversal of this idea when Naoyuki gets arrested and Tomoya gets passed up for the promotion. "Rumours Travel Fast in this small town" in their words. Tomoya spends each and every day, outside, fully visible to everyone. Working his fingers to the bone, to see the people he cares for most find happiness, and people recognize that. That's why he can be trapped in the illusionary world. The small town, like a "Big Family", all want to see him find happiness. Which, in tern, helps him "find strength in the palms of hands that are smaller than his own" as the final ending song states. As he's guided through his other lifetimes by Ushio, to learn and see through his own eyes the faults in his character that keep him from reaching out at the bottom of that hill; and symbolically, accepting the kind wish that Ushio offered.

Obviously I don't have the secred Clannad databooks on hand to fully confirm everything here. I've just followed what's in the story to try and come to a satisfying conclusion about it all. Because I really like Clannad, and I want to see it in the best light possible.

Edit: I should also point out Tomoya isn't the only person who goes through this process. It's more than likely that Akio did as well. We're told the story about how Akio gave up acting and how Nagisa miraculously recovered from a near death experience as a child. Akio's route is about him making friends with a bus jacker, and fundamentally changing that person's life. This is probably where he receives his light orb. We just see his experience the way we do because his journey is already finished from our perspective.

 

[Frederica Bernkastel]

I wanna play BALDR Sky, but I just don't like the combat. I wish you could skip it.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

I wanna play BALDR Sky, but I just don't like the combat. I wish you could skip it.

It starts janky but once you get used to it it's one of the most fun and unique VN experiences. I suggest looking for a guide since which weapons to choose and how to combo well is a lot of trial and error.

 

[Namesarehardtocomeupwith]

I wanna play BALDR Sky, but I just don't like the combat. I wish you could skip it.

If you just want the story then put the game on very easy or watch a playthrough I guess, but your time would be better spent elsewhere. It's a little complicated at first but half the fun of Baldr Sky is the battle imo. Experiment yourself to see what works, don't look for combo vids since most of them are flashy but impractical.
If you're into that sort of thing though, you can do some insane shit with what the game gave you.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

https://noisypixel.net/death-match-love-comedy-western-release-2025/

I'm pleasantly surprised Death Match Love Comedy is being localized, I really liked Raging Loop a ton. This seems like a barely connected, thematically different kinda game, but I'm still very interested anyway.

 

[Maurice Maine]

I did a readup on all of the Clannad arguments here and while perhaps that's fine and dandy for the VN... not so much for the anime as the anime is a linear story with no alternate realities involved. Sounds like heresy but maybe they should have changed it like Dezaki did for the movie?

 

[Nobody In Particular]

I did a readup on all of the Clannad arguments here and while perhaps that's fine and dandy for the VN... not so much for the anime as the anime is a linear story with no alternate realities involved. Sounds like heresy but maybe they should have changed it like Dezaki did for the movie?

Just the limitations of the medium. I have the same complaints about the Little Busters anime, only it's much worse there. The Clannad anime still hits the same high points as the visual novel, but LB can only try because that "oh shit" moment is one of the big moments of refrain.

 

[Kari Kamiya]

not so much for the anime as the anime is a linear story with no alternate realities involved.

Spoiler: CLANNAD spoilers to keep my husband from reading it lol

A recap special at the end of After Story heavily implies alternate realities are still a thing because of string theory and not just because of the Illusionary World. Tomoya thinks it's just a bad dream, but he has memories of seeing Nagisa die from childbirth and the sadness is unusually palpable for a supposed dream. Fuko even remembers Ushio's scent despite supposedly having never met her before. While it wasn't mentioned, it's therefore also likely that Tomoya may have memories from the other worlds where he chooses either Kyou or Tomoyo, since those routes were still somewhat-animated and are therefore canon to the anime's story.

KyoAni did the best they could with the narrative to keep it linear. While it's not the only VN adaptation that involves multiple 100% canon-and-tangible timelines (Steins;Gate and Higurashi for example), CLANNAD being a dating sim on top of that made it a bit more difficult for an anime to follow. Kanon's adaptation had to do something similar which even fans still complained about, which is why CLANNAD is pretty special. Still is not without its faults as KyoAni couldn't keep in Kappei and Akio's routes and the key moments of Tomoyo and Kyou's routes had to be separate OVAs, but they made up for it by changing up Yukine's route (which was the weakest in the VN), put in at least one instance of Tomoya being locked in the gym shed with someone and it might as well be Kyou, had Nagisa still go home to her family every night while still a student, made "Dango Daikazoku" a song, and fixed Sanae's approach with Tomoya in the abortion discussion because holy shit was she really uncomfortably pushy in the VN.

You're like the only person I know who actually likes the CLANNAD movie (honestly I liked Sunohara in it, but that's about it). Meanwhile, I'm like the only person I know who likes the AIR movie even though it's not even close to Misuzu's story in the VN lol. Actually I'm shocked that AIR hasn't been considered for an official release, I hear the VN is an actual experience compared to the anime which condensed things so much that it's barely comprehensive. Can anyone confirm this?

 

[Poop A Loop]

I wanna play BALDR Sky, but I just don't like the combat. I wish you could skip it.

If you're going to play it, play it sooner rather than later. I played it last year and ran into a couple of crashes with dependencies and so on that I had no idea how to troubleshoot that would have otherwise ended my playthrough if I hadn't messed around with different graphics settings in the hope that I could get past the issue.

I'm sure the problems will get worse as time goes on since Baldr Sky is so old and the company responsible for maintaining it just gave up the ghost.

 

[Frederica Bernkastel]

If you're going to play it, play it sooner rather than later. I played it last year and ran into a couple of crashes with dependencies and so on that I had no idea how to troubleshoot that would have otherwise ended my playthrough if I hadn't messed around with different graphics settings in the hope that I could get past the issue.

I'm sure the problems will get worse as time goes on since Baldr Sky is so old and the company responsible for maintaining it just gave up the ghost.

I use pure wine-staging to play visual novels, and gamescope to upscale them to get around 800x600 resolution problem a lot of them have. I've been able to fix a lot of the issues I've ran into:
Wonderful Everyday crashing because of X11's touchpad gestures
YU-NO not working becausee it uses an ancient GDI renderer (this was so FUN to fix), and not running or saving because it's not on a C: drive (Fixed this too, but it was so annoying)
Tsui No Sora freezing because of DXVK
Maou No G-string crashing because of it's OP video mpeg codec (was a weird one to trouble shoot because it happens so late into the novel)
Ever17's font problems.
And Fruit of Grisaia not saving because it wasn't on a C: drive
Some of these issues are unique to WINE/LINUX, some of them aren't. Older VNs tend to be the most problematic because of their visual and audo codecs.
Some of the more simplier/kinetic video novels can just be watched on YT funny enough (lmao), but those tend to work without problems regardless.
A lot of this has helped me prepare for issues I might run into.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Finished chapter 4 part 1 in HBR, they should have tweaked it so you could bring everybody to plot battles since it's annoying to invest a lot in a characters only to be blocked from using them. Now I can only bring characters from class A (which at least I have half of those be SS) I am a massive Dum Dum and you can bring "canon breaking" characters into story mode, the warning just alerts you to the plot issues. After taking two hours to beat the final boss, nuked the shit out of it in three hits (even reaching 0.5M damage numbers).

That being said, none SS characters are laughably unviable just from having like half the HP, no moves and no damage. At least I'll know this going on.

If you just want the story then put the game on very easy or watch a playthrough I guess, but your time would be better spent elsewhere. It's a little complicated at first but half the fun of Baldr Sky is the battle imo. Experiment yourself to see what works, don't look for combo vids since most of them are flashy but impractical.
If you're into that sort of thing though, you can do some insane shit with what the game gave you.
View attachment 6747221

Tbf, only in the third route the combat starts occurring regularly. First two routes are mainly VN so it's hard to get into the combat by the time it drops in. And even without the combat the story is good, though the combat does make a lot of moments better. Like the final dungeon of the first route.

 

[Nobody In Particular]

I use pure wine-staging to play visual novels, and gamescope to upscale them to get around 800x600 resolution problem a lot of them have. I've been able to fix a lot of the issues I've ran into:
Wonderful Everyday crashing because of X11's touchpad gestures
YU-NO not working becausee it uses an ancient GDI renderer (this was so FUN to fix), and not running or saving because it's not on a C: drive (Fixed this too, but it was so annoying)
Tsui No Sora freezing because of DXVK
Maou No G-string crashing because of it's OP video mpeg codec (was a weird one to trouble shoot because it happens so late into the novel)
Ever17's font problems.
And Fruit of Grisaia not saving because it wasn't on a C: drive
Some of these issues are unique to WINE/LINUX, some of them aren't. Older VNs tend to be the most problematic because of their visual and audo codecs.
Some of the more simplier/kinetic video novels can just be watched on YT funny enough (lmao), but those tend to work without problems regardless.
A lot of this has helped me prepare for issues I might run into.

Playing VNs on Linux sounds like a psychopaths endeavor. My hats off to you.

 

[Frederica Bernkastel]

More bullshit by the way:

Playing VNs on Linux sounds like a psychopaths endeavor. My hats off to you.

Just living up to Lady Erika's name.

 

[Nobody In Particular]

Just living up to Lady Erika's name.

I know Trip (of Tsurezurescans fame) used linux programs when he was working on the translations for Hatsukoi, Tsujidou, and Hoshi Ori. Kinda wonder how that whole process works. I am just a humble tard who ate shit and upgraded to W11 because troubleshooting all the weird JP games I import on Linux scares me.

A future where SteamOS becomes a viable alternative to Windows for freaks like me is my vision of a Utopia.

 

[Waifu Denier]

I use pure wine-staging to play visual novels, and gamescope to upscale them to get around 800x600 resolution problem a lot of them have. I've been able to fix a lot of the issues I've ran into:
Wonderful Everyday crashing because of X11's touchpad gestures
YU-NO not working becausee it uses an ancient GDI renderer (this was so FUN to fix), and not running or saving because it's not on a C: drive (Fixed this too, but it was so annoying)
Tsui No Sora freezing because of DXVK
Maou No G-string crashing because of it's OP video mpeg codec (was a weird one to trouble shoot because it happens so late into the novel)
Ever17's font problems.
And Fruit of Grisaia not saving because it wasn't on a C: drive
Some of these issues are unique to WINE/LINUX, some of them aren't. Older VNs tend to be the most problematic because of their visual and audo codecs.
Some of the more simplier/kinetic video novels can just be watched on YT funny enough (lmao), but those tend to work without problems regardless.
A lot of this has helped me prepare for issues I might run into.

Have you ever considered just running some of them in a Windows XP VM? I usually just use Wine/Lutris for newer VNs which might for some reason require newer libraries or whatever, but given most classic VNs were released quite a while ago, and the japanese propensity for staying on XP for far longer than most other people, they just work on a Windows XP VM, and they dont really stress the system enough for it to be a problem for the VM to manage without GPU passthrough. Plus, it gives a more nostalgic feel running them on XP. (I guess you could also just use a Windows 10 VM)

 

[Nobody In Particular]

the japanese propensity for staying on XP for far longer than most other people

This actually explains a lot of weird questions that have been rolling around in my head. Like why Amakano, a game from 2014, runs at a max resolution of 1024x768. I had just assumed that it was a stylistic choice to emulate the old bishoujo games that were a clear influence on it.

 

[Frederica Bernkastel]

Have you ever considered just running some of them in a Windows XP VM?

I mean, if I was first starting off I would do something like this. But I have so many VNs that mitigating would be hassle. I don't bother with Lutris because it's actually more complicated than what I'm doing. I'm basically using a portable WINE container (something like bottles) that has wine in it, and then I link that wine container to an alias (cd /games/dood/ && conty wine whatever.exe && cd ~/) that runs the .exe directly. It's simpler because I don't need WINE's dependencies on my host machine (or the dependencies of something like Lutris for that matter), and the container can run even on musl (because I use Alpine Linux), and I can easily export environmental variables via my shell .profile text to enable and disable stuff like ESYNC or DXVK.

The script that makes the container can be modified to make your own container. You can even use the container to run Linux stuff or build your own container with it. It's neat. It works all through the terminal, my barebones window manager, and with tmux. I also include winetricks with it to make installing dependencies real easy i.g. winetricks -q dxvk, vkd3d, dotnet48, d3dx9, d3dx11_43) etc.

A future where SteamOS becomes a viable alternative to Windows for freaks like me is my vision of a Utopia.

There was some speculation that Valve is going to release Steam OS as a desktop solution pretty soon.

This actually explains a lot of weird questions that have been rolling around in my head. Like why Amakano, a game from 2014, runs at a max resolution of 1024x768. I had just assumed that it was a stylistic choice to emulate the old bishoujo games that were a clear influence on it.

Japanese hardware and websites love the early 2000s aesthetic. They're still releasing laptops even this year with CD players, and I think 2chan still is using some ancient BBS shit. Actually, BBS is still popular in Japan - in general.

 

[Baraka Obama]

I use pure wine-staging to play visual novels, and gamescope to upscale them to get around 800x600 resolution problem a lot of them have. I've been able to fix a lot of the issues I've ran into:
Wonderful Everyday crashing because of X11's touchpad gestures
YU-NO not working becausee it uses an ancient GDI renderer (this was so FUN to fix), and not running or saving because it's not on a C: drive (Fixed this too, but it was so annoying)
Tsui No Sora freezing because of DXVK
Maou No G-string crashing because of it's OP video mpeg codec (was a weird one to trouble shoot because it happens so late into the novel)
Ever17's font problems.
And Fruit of Grisaia not saving because it wasn't on a C: drive
Some of these issues are unique to WINE/LINUX, some of them aren't. Older VNs tend to be the most problematic because of their visual and audo codecs.
Some of the more simplier/kinetic video novels can just be watched on YT funny enough (lmao), but those tend to work without problems regardless.
A lot of this has helped me prepare for issues I might run into.

I use a Windows XP computer, fixes all the issues.

 

[Frederica Bernkastel]

I use a Windows XP computer, fixes all the issues.

I only have a single laptop, at the moment, and I don't like having too many electronics. Vanitas, Vanitas.
Like I said, if I was starting off again - I'd do that. But, for now, it's fine. I've solved my issues.

 

[Nobody In Particular]

You're like the only person I know who actually likes the CLANNAD movie (honestly I liked Sunohara in it, but that's about it). Meanwhile, I'm like the only person I know who likes the AIR movie even though it's not even close to Misuzu's story in the VN lol. Actually I'm shocked that AIR hasn't been considered for an official release, I hear the VN is an actual experience compared to the anime which condensed things so much that it's barely comprehensive. Can anyone confirm this?

There was a guy in the /vn/ general thread on 4chan like a year ago who was shilling the Clannad movie HARD. His big thing was that it hat "soul" which... you really think so? I think Hinoue's Artwork has soul, in that, it's not always the most 'technically' well put together, but she's got a clear enthusiasm and a desire to convey the story's powerful moments as well as she can visually. I appreciate the movie for sticking closer to her designs. But, what Kyoani did with Clannad just blows the movie out of the water, and I don't think I even need to elaborate as to why, it just speaks for itself.