Lucy- The Eternity She Wished For is a Visual Novel set in the near future of 2050, where androids are becoming the norm and are starting to take human jobs due to their inability to make mistakes as well as not having to pay them. It is an interesting premise but this title doesn’t really focus on any of that, it instead goes for a more personal tale that explores the rights of a machine and whether they have emotions. We play as a protagonist that we must name but is always referred to as “Master” regardless of what you name him. One day he decides to take a shortcut after school and cross the junkyard to reach his house quicker and ends up finding an android that seems to be in relatively good shape.
Most people would have gladly taken the chance of a free android but our protagonist is a hipster with a hatred for technology. In his words he “prefers piano over synthetic, pocket watches over digital and humans over robots.”. He instantly becomes an unlikable person to play as but his reasons are explained later on. Spending too much time lost in thought, another security android spots him and sets off an alarm and in a split second decision decides to escape with the android he originally spotted. Much to his luck the robot is in really bad shape, to the point of being unable to walk and decides to take it to a workshop while he goes to school.
On his way back from school is when the game really starts and we are introduced to Lucy. The android now being fixed is near indistinguishable from a human now and has its own personality. It/she is a pretty clumsy and cheerful android with an unnatural will to help people. Lucy is the only character in the game with a voice actor which is pretty odd but a thing you’ll quickly get used to since most of your interactions are with her. You can change the voice acting from Korean or Japanese in the options menu while all the subtitles are in English and pretty well written. Taking a look at Lucy you may think that this will be a romantic visual novel with fan-service like most other Visual Novels but that is not the case here.
There is none of that here and instead focuses on the protagonist’s slow acceptance of Lucy and eventual dependency. A big portion of the story will be about a simple family life with an abusive father and your choices throughout. There are quite a few meaningless choices but some do affect which of the two endings you receive. This title does a good job balancing between serious and humorous as to not be overbearing with one or the other. It is quite a funny title at times and not afraid to break the fourth wall. There are not many characters to speak of and little time is spent with most of them anyways. The other characters being a mechanic, some nameless dude that shows up from time to time and the protagonist’s best friend Dr.Gears.
One of the most important characters is our protagonist’s father. Unlike most anime where parents are not seen or pretty much background dressing when needed, this game does life at home much more naturally. His dad is not just a villain being a pain for the sake of it and does have his son’s best interests in mind but is just terrible at raising his kid often leading to some really bad situations. He too has a hatred for machines so when his son brought Lucy home things quickly went downhill. It is definitely an interesting set up and one that isn’t outlandish. The art does its job but none of the environments are memorable at all and neither are the characters aside from Lucy herself.
Lucy is a really interesting character and they didn’t make her as to very clearly have human emotions. She can cry, tell jokes and does have emotions yet there is still something off about her and her logic at times. After I completely finished the game I was still unsure about her which is much more interesting than if they had just made her be undeniably human in nature. Regardless she is the most likable and outgoing character while everyone else seem to be rather grim a large portion of the time. After the finishing the story you unlock a few chapters that fill you in on the events that take place nearly 20 years after the main game. All in all it took me around 7 hours to complete the story with one ending and another hour for the extra chapters. Lucy – The Eternity She Wished For may seem just like a simple romantic Visual Novel at a glance but it is much more than that.
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