I'm currently playing Clannad and I'm really liking it. This is my first visual novel ever and I'm a little confused.
How long to beat lists this game as 90 hours but others are mentioning it takes around 30 hours to complete. Anyone knows how long this game is? And what exactly are routes in visual novels?
I am also planning to play Clannad in the next weeks after I finish a route in Fire Emblem. I do not know how much itwill take to play, but I can give you general suggestions.
Generally I look at the HLTB (how long to beat) website for visual novels and for me it is pretty accurate. Usually I take 5-10 hours less for long VNs because I read quite fast, so
for 55-60 hours could be a good estimate for Clannad. If you don't read fast, however, there wouldn't be much different. After all, there is no gameplay where you can get lost. But, this is important, at a certain point I always use a guide for VN. For Clannad, also, it will be be essential. To explain why, now I go into the concept of route.
A VN (particularly the traditional ones, like Clannad) has multiple routes, i.e. different stories which sometimes have the same beginning, but then they completely diverge depending on your decisions. For traditional VNs, in fact, the only gameplay is to answer in-game questions. Some decisions could be critical, i.e. they lock you in a route, others instead should be combined to get into a certain route (e.g. Steins;Gate is an example of this, but as far as I understood, also Clannad).
This way, you will play multiple times the story of a VN (or some parts), getting different endings. Then, tipically, a true ending is present (I suppose it is After Story in Clannad). To unlock it, again, there are different requirements: you have to read all the other routes with their endings, or you just have to take the correct decisions etc.
Moreover, each route can have multiple endings, band endings and good ending. Again, the outcome depends on the decisions.
Given this context, for this reason I often use guides, so that I can choose the decisions according to how I want to play the game. For example, there are also suggested route orders in the guides (for Clannad, I will follow the guide which suggests the Baseball Route as first), because in some games it is better to play a route before another because otherwise you would get spoiled about something (an example of this is Fate/Stay Night, that has three routes to be played in a specific order to enjoy the story and the plot twists).
These are my considerations, maybe there are someone who play VNs without guides of course, but for long ones at most after a pair of runs I suggest them.
