/jp/ - Otaku Culture

I'm currently reading Rewrite, and I'm thoroughly enjoying it so far, though it definitely isn't for everyone.

Its common route feels like a combination of Clannad and Little Busters' common routes; it has a lot of atmosphere like in Clannad, but has a lot of stuff actually happening like in Little Busters. Its atmosphere never reaches Clannad's and its events aren't as interesting as Little Buster's, but I'm still enjoying it as much as LB's common route (which I liked a bit less than Clannad's common route).

So far I've played Chihaya's and Lucia's routes, which are very different and very un-Key-like. I enjoyed both of them (Lucia significantly more than Chihaya's, but Chihaya's also felt great), though likely most people will strongly dislike some aspects I loved about it; Chihaya's route is full of shounen action manga-type bullshit with fighting monsters with superpowers, I MUST PROTECT X AND CANNOT GIVE UP, 'power of determination' asspulls and the like. Lucia has this to a lesser extent and more of an actual plot, but it also has the shounen stuff and the plot itself is also cheesy at times. In general, the story is often unreasonable and full of cliches - but it's done in the kind of way that the people who love that kind of stuff will also love the story ('cheesy in a good way', if I had to put it in one sentence). If you don't, you'll probably hate it. I also want to note that the start of Lucia route (mainly the common route part) was terrible with the excessive melodrama (characters responding in overly hostile ways and the like), and that Ryukishi07 is apparently the kind of writer who completely butchers the personalities of all characters not originally written by him; the quality of the rest of the route makes up for these flaws, though.

My ranking of Key games:

Clannad > [Rewrite (tentative)] > Kanon > Little Busters (its common route was still great despite the rest of the game) > Planetarian