ONE ~To the Radiant Season~

[Skyfall]

Seeing as i have been occupying myself with Visual Novels more than usually as of late, i decided to go ahead and check out ONE, the supposed "predecessor" of Key games figuratively speaking. I have finished one path thus far, and while the game isn't as refined as the newer visual novels and has some rather abrupt scene changes and transitions and other things i could nit pick on, it was fairly decent ... if not for one thing.

That thing being - Kouhei irritated me to the very core and by the end i wanted to see nothing short of someone (seriously, i would not have minded a random stranger) come along and thrown an "accidental" punch at his face. As you may have guessed, the path if finished is Nagamori. And after undergoing the joy of having to treat her rather horribly (not like he even normally is nice to her), i am sure of one thing: He did not deserve her ...what he did deserve was a kick across his teeth. It is extremely rare of me to feel this irritated after playing/watching something, but Kouhei managed to get on my nerves at commendable rate with his egoistic, imposing and bratty attitude to being downright mean and a complete prick at times.

And i am facing a dilemma now: should i continue the game ? I am rather interested in several of the girls and see what their path has to offer (especially Misaki), but i am not sure if i want to tolerate seeing more of the asshole that is Kouhei in action. I still have no idea what Nagaromi sees in him ... he never does anything nice for her. Never! ... and he was mistreating her when they were kids as well, and in the absence of any other information i have to wonder why does she harbor any positive feelings for him. He doesn't even have the usual male lead "kindness" going for him. Ye, sure ...they tried showing that he has "improved" by the very end of her route ...though at that point it was far to late for me to care and wish for anything but to see someone deliver a punch to that thick skull of his.

What i want to ask is: does he display at least a reasonable amount of courtesy when we get deeper in some other girl's route ? (though courtesy as a whole doesn't seem to be in his dictionary). From what i have seen of his brief interactions with other girls while playing Nagaromi's route i suppose that he can be reasonably "nice" if he wants to , but if i have to sit through another one of them being treated dirt poor like Nagamori then i rather not; I play the game for fun, and my idea of fun is not ending up completely irritated and annoyed.

Thank you to whomever answers

[kj1980]

oh man, ONE...this game was one my favorites back then. Dayomon seijin!!

I definitely recommend you to play through Misaki-senpai and Akane's route. By playing these two stories, you will find the base of Key.

[rg4619]

What i want to ask is: does he display at least a reasonable amount of courtesy when we get deeper in some other girl's route ? (though courtesy as a whole doesn't seem to be in his dictionary). From what i have seen of his brief interactions with other girls while playing Nagaromi's route i suppose that he can be reasonably "nice" if he wants to , but if i have to sit through another one of them being treated dirt poor like Nagamori then i rather not; I play the game for fun, and my idea of fun is not ending up completely irritated and annoyed.

We see the worst of Kouhei in the Nagamori route. However, his egotistical, self-centered attitude never completely disappears (probably part of that audience identification the writers aimed for). After all, "kindness" can be played quite loosely in these stories.

[p997tt]

Originally Posted by kj1980

I definitely recommend you to play through Misaki-senpai and Akane's route. By playing these two stories, you will find the base of Key.

Misaki's route was by far my favourite route in ONE.

I don't have much memories of the other routes in the game.

[Skyfall]

Well, i completed Misaki's and Akane's routes and indeed - we see the worst of Kouhei in Nagamori's route. He is fairly reasonable in these two. It is kinda interesting to see how the characters have a good deal of resemblance to those found in Kanon

Misaki (absolutely charming by the way ^^ grew on me quickly ever since she was introduced) seems like Nayuki with Shiori's quirkiness, Akane reminds me of Mai with her silent and somewhat stoic demeanor, Nanase reminds me somewhat of Makoto and Mio is a mute version of Ayu ^^

I find the characters rather likable and interesting, but the weakness of the title lies in its drama, which is already becoming somewhat monotone. It is the same issue in all of the paths, so only variation comes from the slightly different reactions from the different girls.

Not only that, i feel the mystery is rather forcibly connected to the plot as a quickfix for some drama and comes about in a rather abrupt way.

Spoiler:

It is never really explained why his existence starts fading ... nor how it is possible in the first place. What makes it happen ? How does it happen ? How does he come back ? Neither is answered and only thing they did was a rather flimsy attempt to connect Kouhei with the "Eternal world" whose scenes we see every now and then, but in the end even that feels like an attempt to introduce some foundation for the upcoming drama not to make it seem it comes completely from the left field rather than a well integrated part of the overall story.

Now, it might be possible something more gets explained if i complete more of the routes, but i doubt it seeing even Nagamori's route didn't really explain much.

Oh well - other than that the game is fairly nice and the voice actors are doing a good job of bringing forth the personalities of the characters they want to portray. The story may not be as refined as the newer titles, but it is a fairly good ride non the less.

[Asceai]

The routes that best explain the Eternal World are probably Akane's and Hikami Shun's, but it's mostly an interpretation thing. Like pretty much all Key games (I consider ONE and MOON. both Key games, even if they weren't actually made by Key =p) it's a somewhat 'magic realist' setting. Spoilers follow:

Spoiler:

Kouhei's loss made him desire an unchanging existence (where the ephemeral joys of childhood would never disappear). The 'pact' with Nagamori was to leave this world and exist only in the Eternal World. This transition seems to be completely impossible to stop. However, if Kouhei made enough of a mark so as to remain in the real world in some form, he would be able to return after a year. That's why the only person who actually remembers Kouhei during this time is the chosen girl (or Hikami Shun in hisending). Of course, after Kouhei's return, everyone else remembers him too.

Because of that, the fact that Akane's childhood friend never returned - despite Akane thinking about him virtually all of the time - seemed a bit odd to me. Perhaps her feelings for that childhood friend weren't strong enough (like what happens to you if you screw up near the end of a girl's route).

As for it not being integrated well into the overall story, the Eternal World IS the overall story, as I see it. I think it was a pretty reasonable 'catalyst' for everything that went on.

For reference, I favour the routes in the following order:

Misaki > Akane > Nagamori > Nanase (Nanase's H scene was the best in the game, though =p) > Mio > Shiina. Not including Hikami's route in that, because I don't think it really counts. =p

[Skyfall]

Originally Posted by Asceai

Spoiler for Akane:

Because of that, the fact that Akane's childhood friend never returned - despite Akane thinking about him virtually all of the time - seemed a bit odd to me. Perhaps her feelings for that childhood friend weren't strong enough (like what happens to you if you screw up near the end of a girl's route).

Spoiler for Akane:

Hm, the way i see it is - its not that Akane didn't think of him enough, its that he didn't think of her (or anyone else) enough. I think Kouhei can come back because he has a strong enough attachment to this world. An anchor of sorts. But that leaves the gapping hole why does he disappear in the first place ... hence my complaints of it not being explained enough.

Originally Posted by Asceai

Spoiler for eternal world:

As for it not being integrated well into the overall story, the Eternal World IS the overall story, as I see it. I think it was a pretty reasonable 'catalyst' for everything that went on.

Spoiler for eternal world:

It is a part of the story, obviously - it takes place during the game after all A sort of side view with Kouhei reflecting on himself in the real world ... but the two didn't feel connected to me. Like two separate worlds with no bound between the two, even though they are supposed to be tied together. Hence my complaint it only seems to be inserted to provide grounds for some drama and not much besides that. At least thats how i felt about it.

Originally Posted by Asceai

For reference, I favour the routes in the following order:

Misaki > Akane > Nagamori > Nanase (Nanase's H scene was the best in the game, though =p) > Mio > Shiina. Not including Hikami's route in that, because I don't think it really counts. =p

Misaki is by far my favorite character indeed, with Akane coming in as second. I didn't care much for Akane at first, but she grew on me rather quickly. I am not all that fond of Nanase though

[luckyovermind]

Originally Posted by Skyfall

Misaki (absolutely charming by the way ^^ grew on me quickly ever since she was introduced) seems like Nayuki with Shiori's quirkiness, Akane reminds me of Mai with her silent and somewhat stoic demeanor, Nanase reminds me somewhat of Makoto and Mio is a mute version of Ayu ^^

You came pretty close there , just for the reference:

Naoki Hisaya is in charge of:

Akane, Mio and Misaki's routes in ONE

and

Ayu, Nayuki and Shiori's routes in KANON

Then he went off doing doujins and did Moon Childe and SOLA later.


Jun Maeda is in charge of:

Nagamori, Nanase and Mayu's routes in ONE

and

Mai, Sayuri and Makoto's routes in KANON

Then he did the Misuzu's dream and air route in AIR, Nagisa/Tomoyo/Fuko's (and some others) routes in CLANNAD, then finally rin's route in little buster.





So you can see it's that Jun Maeda who picked on the girls the most.

Naoki Hisaya on the other hand is a romantic type of guy.



Oh yeah, kj1980 or Asceai, you guys played MOON right? What's it like? I heard it's kinda bloody

[Asceai]

Originally Posted by luckyovermind

So you can see it's that Jun Maeda who picked on the girls the most.

Naoki Hisaya on the other hand is a romantic type of guy.



Oh yeah, kj1980 or Asceai, you guys played MOON right? What's it like? I heard it's kinda bloody

Jun Maeda is, like, my second favourite scenario writer of all time. <33333 maeda.

MOON. is great. Not to everyone's taste at all, but I do like the whole exploring-one's-psyche themes.

It's not as good as ONE, but then again, not much is =p

[luckyovermind]

Originally Posted by Asceai

It's not as good as ONE, but then again, not much is =p

And there you went all crazy about it over at visualnews


BTW. who is your first? That guy who wrote the sunflower girl?

[Asceai]

Originally Posted by luckyovermind

And there you went all crazy about it over at visualnews

I obsess over games that I'm playing or replaying. If I was playing Cartagra for the first time you'd hear about it, too. MOON.'s great, but ONE is amazing, and is nowhere near as actively painful to play through.

Lemme give you a bit of an idea. This is a screenshot of one of many locations in MOON.:


You're the red dot, and you have to pick options to move around the map, as well as search for stuff. There's only one map in which you literally have to search every single tile for something, but it's fairly small. That's not the issue here. The issue is that just moving around is painful. The mouse position actually resets after every option you pick, meaning that you have to reposition the mouse each time, even if you're moving several steps in the same direction. It gets tiring because you need to move back and forth between locations as the time of day changes and certain events happen or become unlocked. You are (to an extent) guided through the game, but it's still tiring.

Now, that itself would be semi-okay if they didn't go and abuse it near the end of the game.



This level. You follow an exit down from the upper floor to get to that floor, which has an exit going up (the one you came through) and an exit going down. Go down, and you'll see a level quite similar, but rotated around. Go down further and you'll get different rotations until you're on a floor that looks the same as the one you went down before. And there are 20 levels of this torture. The thing that threatened my resolve to play the game more than anything else. Why does it even EXIST? It's the combination of that inane spiral-staircase-like climbing exercise and the game's painful system of navigating your way around that make this murderous.

MOON. has flaws. Very, very big ones. They can't NOT hurt its standing in my book.

Plus all the rape. I'm not too big on rape.

MOON. is still great, but yeah, there's a lot of better games, and MOON. itself would have been better without some of those things I found distasteful.

Originally Posted by luckyovermind

BTW. who is your first? That guy who wrote the sunflower girl?

I really am that transparent, aren't I? Well..

..you're very close, and might have been right before (apart from Maeda, whom I think is potentially a better scenario writer than るーすぼーい. Scenario writing isn't everything in a game, though). But I've found a new love. He wrote a sunflower story too. ^_^

Himawari is something you tend to pick up on more and more with multiple replays, even re-exploring the same routes. It's quite long, but I don't mind personally =p There's also stuff written on blank-note's website that helps to elucidate confusing aspects of the complex and extremely multifaceted plot. I do want to talk about Himawari, but I think that can be saved for another time.

[Leo_Otaku]

Finally getting to play through this game. Finally got a copy after all these years XD. Back then I had no idea ONE was related to Kanon. I'll give my full impression once I complete the routes.

I noticed the Hamburger Bus in ep 23 of Kanon XD I thought so before but I wasn't sure...but it is definatly it ^-^ I wonder if Kyo ani will consider a ONE remake since the OVA's did a huge mess. With the references it seems it could happen.

[charizardpal]

Spoiler for quote:

Originally Posted by luckyovermind

You came pretty close there , just for the reference:

Naoki Hisaya is in charge of:

Akane, Mio and Misaki's routes in ONE

and

Ayu, Nayuki and Shiori's routes in KANON

Then he went off doing doujins and did Moon Childe and SOLA later.


Jun Maeda is in charge of:

Nagamori, Nanase and Mayu's routes in ONE

and

Mai, Sayuri and Makoto's routes in KANON

Then he did the Misuzu's dream and air route in AIR, Nagisa/Tomoyo/Fuko's (and some others) routes in CLANNAD, then finally rin's route in little buster.





So you can see it's that Jun Maeda who picked on the girls the most.

Naoki Hisaya on the other hand is a romantic type of guy.



Oh yeah, kj1980 or Asceai, you guys played MOON right? What's it like? I heard it's kinda bloody

Well Moon is more of a straight up ero game, with girls suffering for no reason other than showcase a fetish (rape, scat, etc)...it had a disjointed ending also which didn't make a lot of sense. It felt like it was starting to develop some interesting elements, and then it just suddenly ended...I often have wondered who was in charge of the last section of the game, particularly who came up with the Akira-style break the wall idea.

@Asceai yeah you're spot on about that maze. That alone almost completely ruined the game for me, and I can't stand to replay the final phase of the game....well I did it a few times, but only because I had to!

@OP Nagamori's route was the worst of all. I'm tempted to pretend what he did was non-canon written on a bad day, since it doesn't even fit with his personality in any of the other routes. Yeah he acts a jerk sometimes, but he's more a teaser/prankster than a malicious abuser, and he seems to actually care about the girls.