Thousands of the years ago, the generation ship Mugunghwa was sent out to establish a colony. It disappeared, never reaching its destination, its ultimate fate remaining an unsolved mystery... until now. Uncover what happened to the final generation aboard the Mugunghwa by reading through its dead crew's logs, with the help of a spunky AI sidekick! Two pursuable characters. Five endings. A dark visual novel mystery based on Korean history, featuring transhumanism, traditional marriage, loneliness, and cosplay. Welcome to the future.
A natural evolution of Digital: A Love Story, Analogue confirms Christine Love's pure talent in storytelling and amazing backgrounds, further highlighted by beautiful art and music.
Everything Digital does, Analogue does better, with one notable and unfortunate exception: the AI-human relation. While the relation between the player and *Emilia was the main strength of Digital, their relations with *Mute and *Hyun-Ae are probably the weakest link here.
The well-researched background, the overall sadness in both their digital lives may be moving, but it's hard to care for them the way you did with *Emilia. Perhaps because there is no chase apart from that of further message blocks. Perhaps because there is less interaction with them. Perhaps because Digital was you walking in the shoes of someone else, trying to guess what they said and why. Perhaps because *Hyun-Ae is too human and *Mute not enough. Hard to say.
On the other hand, Love's aren't exactly otome games, so it's hard to complain. It's just a pity that everything saw so many improvements and this particular field saw a regression.
Anyway. Gamer or not, otome or not, no one in their right mind should pass up on the chance to try at least Digital: A Love Story. And if you liked it, then you REALLY should buy Analogue.
The latter is brutal, cynical, filled with sadness, reflections on morality, society, transhumanism and love, and the short format means it gives you no time to digest.
It's a kick in the stomach that only lets you recover after everything is said and done, when you have the opportunity to read all the logs again, free from the shackles of the story mode. Until then, you can only sit on the edge of your seat, sucked into the stories and shaking your head in anticipation of what you know is to come, and against which you can do nothing.
Truly, a masterpiece in its own right. I'll be eagerly waiting for whatever comes next from Christine Love.