Lemma Soft Forums

Creator of The Loyal Kinsman

Scriptwriter and director of The Dreaming

Scriptwriter and director of The Thirteenth Year

Scriptwriter and producer of Adrift

"Adrift - Like Ever17, but without the Deus Ex Machina" - HigurashiKira

I've always been tsundere for Clannad. The source material is a great story and has some really promising ideas, but I thought the execution was bungled in After Story. Granted though, After Story had an ambitious goal and it would have taken something really amazing to have fulfilled it in just 24 episodes. I'm one of the few people who think it's been heavily overrated. Still, I'm a loyal Key fan and I think Kyoto Animation is the greatest thing in this world.

My impression was that The Past Path shares many of the same problems as its source material. I think its biggest problem lies in pacing issues cased by surgical storytelling.

By surgical, I mean that the story jumps time frames too frequently. The creator has surgically sliced out pieces of a larger story and is presenting us with only its fragments. I thought that the frequent time skips in the After Story caused loss of immersion because it took the viewer outside of the action and reminded him that he was being told a story by a narrator. I never really felt like I was the main character, but that I was being led through a series of exhibits detailing key moments of the main character's life by him.

I think The Past Path has the same problem. The first half of the story avoids this problem, but the second half is a whirlwind tour of various scenes from Naoyuki's life. It felt like a museum tour where the reader is led by a guide through exhibit A, which shows Naoyuki and Atsuko moving into their house, exhibit B, his job, exhibit C, Atsuko giving birth, etc. It would have been preferable if it felt more as if the reader was the character than if the reader was a spectator who was being led by the creator.

The surgical storytelling presents some pacing problems in the second half of the story. I thought Tomoya's birth was rushed through too quickly. Considering its emotional significance, I thought that scene would have lasted twice as long. Furthermore, there is not enough space between Tomoya's birth and Atsuko's death. Considering how opposite the moods were in those scenes, I thought the story was being rushed. There's not much time in between the scenes for a lot of contemplation.

I also found Atsuko's death scene to be faulted. It just occurs randomly without any significance. There's no greater meaning to her death aside from the factual observation of "she was hit by a car and she died." If I didn't know all along that Atsuko was going to die, I'd have felt betrayed by the author for killing a character for no reason or purpose. In the real world, accidents occur and they're factually meaningless. But humans add meaning to them. "She died because I didn't care enough, or she died because of my sins." It's the job of a writer to add meaning to tragic events. I thought there was no extra meaning to be gleamed from Atsuko's death, aside from that bad luck happens to good people.

The other problem I found was the writing style. It relies heavily on short, to the point sentences. I thought the prose was rather dry and lacking in emotional colour. There's not much descriptive detail. The lack of descriptive detail is problematic because the character sprites also lacked descriptive detail as well. It was difficult to view the girls as breathing, flesh and blood human beings because both the sprites and narrative did not make them very mobile characters.

On the other hand, I found the UI customization to be quite impressive. The dango mouse was pretty nice and the menu design was very clean and elegant. Furthermore, the first half of the story didn't have the pacing problems and was a good read.

Above everything though, I think the fundamental reason why I didn't get as much enjoyment from The Past Path as I would have from a visual novel of equivalent effort was because it was a story that I already knew. I already knew from the beginning what was going to happen to Naoyuki and Atsuko. Maybe if Clannad did not exist, I would have been surprised when they started going out or when Atsuko dies. But since it's all been written already, it was like re-reading a old book.

***As a final note, I think the line "she lives up to her blonde stereotype" near the beginning of the game is a cultural miss. It's doubtful Naoyuki, a Japanese boy, would know the American blonde stereotype.

It was a competent work though. I wish you had made something like Clannad, but still something unique enough to stand on its own. But alas, it's a great expression of your fandom to make an entire fan game for Clannad. I wish I had the time to pay tribute to stories that I've liked by making fan games as well!

I have to say, you did a fairly good job. But there's still a lot of things that could be a lot better, and I don't think this deserves to be called a prequel to the great game CLANNAD is just yet.

-First of all; the grammar errors. Throughout the game, I really got angry at how many times you said 'thankyou' as one word. 'Thank you' is spelled in two words. There were also some other small things like that, so you should really have a native English speaker or just someone who speaks it well enough take a good look at it. Right now, it's just disturbing the atmosphere of the game which is really a shame.

-Second; try using a lot more different words. It really seemed like you were using a set vocabulary and just using the same words over and over, which is not what I think a writer should do. Writing stuff myself, I really think it's important you broaden your horizons as well as your vocabulary to get a more varied, less 'boring' story.

-Third and most importantly; the story itself. While it isn't really bad per say, the story is just a bit too rushed. It makes it feel like it's shallow, and isn't realistic at all. In my opinion, the original handled that aspect a lot better. I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to be blunt here and say it like this; people may say quality goes over quantity, but if the quality itself isn't very good in the first place and the quantity is lacking too, the only place it will end up going is downwards. I've realized that most of the games made here are quite shallow, but that, I think, is even more of a drive for writers to make a better story which is more realistic. Even more so since you're making a most ambitious story, this being a prequel to a great game. Atsuko's story wasn't that bad, but it was just way too short in comparison to any of CLANNAD's routes. It probably wasn't even longer than the main game. I can't say I understand your decision to skip so many days, because it just makes the game look half-assed, which is never a good thing. Haruka's route.. well, I don't agree with the decision of making it that short either.

Putting all that together; it's not a bad game at all, but the grammar errors and small vocabulary really take it down a notch from what it could be.
The story persay isn't bad, and I'm not saying you should completely rewrite it, but you should at least add some more depth to the story by basically lengthening it by a lot. If you do this, even though it might take you another year, I think this could really be a worthy prequel to CLANNAD.

(Note: I haven't played the third path yet, if there is one. I'm sorry if that's the path that turns everything all around, but honestly, I doubt it. Another thing: Please do not think I hated this project. It was really nice, and it gave me some lasting shivers down my spine, but that's all the more reason for me to write this review so passionately so I will be able to enjoy an even better version in a year or 2. I hope you don't hate me or anything for writing like this.)

Yonowaaru

Creator of The Loyal Kinsman

Scriptwriter and director of The Dreaming

Scriptwriter and director of The Thirteenth Year

Scriptwriter and producer of Adrift

"Adrift - Like Ever17, but without the Deus Ex Machina" - HigurashiKira