Hate Plus is...
"A dark visual novel about transhumanism, cosplay, cake-baking, and the slow patriarchal erosion of freedoms taken for granted."
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Hate Plus is the direct sequel to Christine Love's 2012 release, Analogue: A Hate Story. Despite it's original billing as DLC for the first game, Hate Plus tells a story all its own but would likely have less impact on a player who skipped the first installment. A save import feature is utilized to bring certain aspects of the players Analogue end game state into Hate Plus, with first time players able to set up the world through a quick dialogue tree.
Hate Plus' narrative focus is set on explaining how the society of the generation ship Mugunghwa dissolved into one that mimicked that of the Korean Joseon dynasty. As is laid out in Analogue, the Joseon Dynasty was notable for it's patriarchal model in which the idea of "Namjon yeobi" (Translated as Men are honoured, women are abased) was held above all else. The nature of prequels as known quantities usually lend themselves to being inherently less surprising, and unfortunately Hate Plus does not deviate from this trend. Fortunately however, it uses Love's unique writing style and ability to build characters with a sense of being to tell an interesting, albeit predictable story.
As the story is the main draw of a visual novel, reviews often need to reference specific narrative threads to stand as a critique, but with Hate Plus there are actually a few mechanics that are worth talking about. Your exploration into the lives of the Mugunghwa's former residents remains relatively the same with the core game play consisting of uncovering ship logs and interacting with an AI partner in service of uncovering a greater truth. There are a few minor changes in the base system, most notably that almost all of the logs are available to read from the outset, and are instead doled out at the player's discretion. The player is given a set amount of logs to choose per day (more on this later) and can read them in any order that they would like. Instead of reading logs and then seeking a reaction from your AI partner, Hate Plus displays your partners thoughts in real time to create a more fluid experience. The visual presentation of the game echoes the excellence of it's predecessor with well realized AI character designs (and of course cosplay outfits). New to Hate Plus is context sensitive passages that allow for a player to more easily keep track of the complex connections between the ships inhabitants.
One of the biggest mechanical changes is the three day period in which the game is intended to be played in. After the completion of the first day and your allotted number of the logs for the day, Hate Plus will prompt you to shut the game down, and will not allow you to continue for at least 12 hours (with this procedure being repeated on the second day). This may seem like a bummer for those that like to marathon games, but I actually think it enabled the creation of some interesting narrative moments. Using this method of delayed gratification allowed Hate to feel like an episodic game in microcosm as it lacked the traditional month long wait between episodes.
The world building of Hate seems to suffer from being a direct sequel to an already established fiction (a first for Love), which in turn places an even greater importance on the new characters that Love tasked herself with creating. To this end, Love was mostly successful, with a single notable exception. As the single most important player in the downfall of the Mugunghwa, the security AI dubbed Old *Mute is written with a tone that does not seem indicative of what the player would expect. It can be enjoyable when a creator toys with players' expectations for a character, but the writing of Old *Mute simply felt inconsistent and lacking the usual narrative voice that Love is known for. In search of complexity something was lost as all that remained by the end was a one dimensional character that lacked tonal consistency.
Hate Plus is an enjoyable experience, especially when played across multiple days as intended by Love. Despite finding Old *Mute's writing lacking, Hate Plus is still an incredibly well written piece of fiction. The mechanics added to Hate Plus make it a much better playing game then Analogue, and could be used as a template to push the genre further into the western mainstream. Hate is easy to recommend to fans of the first game, but newcomers should probably start with Analogue or another of Love's games before diving into this flawed sequel.