Okay, I know I'm going to get mega flaimed here, but I just finished up a two part mega session of DALO, and I must say, it was a cool little story, but it didn't captivate me emotionally like people have been saying.
 
You are basically the main protaganist in this age old catch-22 of "to save the world, you must sacrifice the person you love", but instead it's "to save this cyber world, you must send off your cyber girlfriend like a kamikaze bomber".
 
Okay, now I know everyones going to hide behing statements like, you don't get it, or you don't understnad, and you know what, I don't understand. I don't understand that just because a program pretends to be some chick who sends you poetry once, and you send about under 50 messages once the credits roll, that you are immediately in love with it, and vice versa.
 
The GUI in this game is really what sets it apart from a text adventure, and you can obviously tell that the developer loves the old Amiga systems, and while I understand that the GUI system is set up it's way for a reason, and goes back to a more Wild West-esqu sense of the web, and that everything was slow as hell back then, the parts where you want to get to, which is story progression through messages, and mini-puzzles, is bogged down by the pacing, almost so extreme to a point at the near end of the game that you wince every time you know you must travel to a new hub.
 
Maybe I didn't get attached to the female (none of the other characters besides her stand out in any way what so ever; the developer also tries to throw in some terminology as to why you're sacrificing this program at the end,  names, and kind of side kick characters to which you gain no interest to and are overall forgettable)
 
I love gameplay, but I've always been a story guy. I love great stories in games, and while this game has some cookie cutter plot development and characters, I never found myself attached ot even close to infatuated to somebody because they can write poetry and accept criticism (which by the way, i never know half the stuff "i" write in responses). The puzzle element is minimal, and the interface can be more of a chore then an engaging symbol of the time.

The story didn't move me much either. It's the gameplay that impressed me.

same thing meh

I'm hoping you could explain the overall story a little more. Similar to others, I downloaded this game after seeing it on Carrie's list and hearing Paul talk about it. I've made it what appears to be half way (I discovered a few dozen messages ago that Emilia is an AI) and I can't bother to go further. I don't know what I'm supposed to do and the price for investigating different hubs is a painfully annoying sound that takes 15 seconds to get past every 30 seconds or so. That might seem like low patience but the ratio of game to load is 1:2, which is enormous. 
 
I wanted to like the game since indie based games like this always fascinate me in design if not on their own merits (The Marriage, Passage, etc.) but this one is just unbearable. They had too much fun with the old dial up sounds and it cost the gameplay and pacing severely. 20 minutes before I stopped I ripped off the headphones to get rid of the sound, and after that I just gave up altogether. 
 
From the sounds of it the story doesn't seem that great. I didn't get attached to Emilia at all since the supposed romance is so contrived I couldn't believe it myself, and I didn't even know what my replies to her said. Maybe i"m supposed to fill those parts in? Either way it seemed absurd. And the attempts at humor in the side messages didn't make me laugh and in general I couldn't convince myself to press forward. 
 
Paul said that his friend cried after playing the game, and that it takes 8 minutes to play. Sorry but that's impossible. Holocaust survivors playing Train didn't get attached to the game enough to cry over it, and that game takes five minutes tops. It's impossible and frankly a load of crap. No one gets attached to anything in eight minutes and I can't imagine this game would've latched to my heart strings either.

Well his friend was right in saying surely it wasn't that good.
 
I'm convinced either him or his friend played a different game, because it takes about 2-3 hours to normally complete, and there's no way to do a real speed run do to artificial loading.
 
I'm also not surprised it was a top 10 on Paul's list, because that was one of the whackiest lists I've ever seen. I know we are all entitled to our own opinion, but Majong(?) ? He also puts Minecraft on the list due to the developer being a swindler, and Cataclysm due to it being in a long development cycle.
 
Now on to Arties's question; the game's story takes a trip for the heroic, when you find out Emillia is a A.I. and that eventually you run into this A.I. "family" that helps you track her down. Eventually you reunite with her and then you find out all her A.I. family and similar programs are going to be destroyed unless you sacrifice her. You go to through these messages that go back and forth between you and her and then eventually you sacrifice her. 
 
I would like to note that you can tell this is more of a emotional love story written by a woman's perspective of what "love" is. You can tell the developer really digs the more archaeic viewing of love and acts of love such as Shakespeare and the lot.
 
Another thing I felt odd was that you (the player character) is assumed to be a male (I don't think there's a choose sex option) but the creator of this game is a female. 

" @Izick: Notch is a swindler? How so? "

You don't get it. You don't understand. 2deep4u.

I can understand not getting to attached to the characters much becuase of how quick the story seems to move but I enjoyed every minute of it myself.

The fundamental flaw I found with the story is that I completely lost any and all ability to relate with the main character when you are supposedly falling in love with an AI.  I wanted to love this game, I appreciate it for what it was and how it was executed, however there is no way the story was going to have any great impact when I am supposed to believe that I am falling for a computer program.  Plain and simple.

i couldn't take it. 
receptively opening and closing windows and the awful looking text you had to read. yuck.  
a veritable "click here" jungle.

I thought it was really neat, personally. I miss the old modem sounds from the early nineties, and I felt a connection to the love interest...until it turned out it was just a computer program. Whenever games bring that kind of stuff up (Mass Effect, etc.) I totally side with the opinion of "dude, you're a machine and I don't care." I guess that stems from my beliefs about life and how any digital "reality" is nothing more than imagination.
 
I found it cool in the same way that Phoenix Wright or Hotel Dusk are. Despite the weighed-down gameplay, the presentation and story make it interesting.

I think the best way to play this game is to turn the volume of the dial-up to zero, and stop playing shortly after the BBS crash but before the AI garbage.

That would be a great game, then.

I loved Digital, but I can definitely see how it might not appeal to a broad audience. The presentation is extremely unique and manages to hit a lot of my nostalgia buttons by bringing back some of my earliest memories of computing. I also have to say that I thought the entire plot and the relationship with *Emilia, while they might be somewhat shallow, were quite effective in keeping me engaged in the game. The pacing and interface do eventually start to wear on you, but the game is short enough that I don't think that's a huge issue.
 
Plus, I'm a total sucker for small "art house" indie games like this, Gravity Bone, One Chance, Don't Look Back etc. While most big budget games have to play things relatively safe, it's titles like these that can really expand our definition of the video game medium and what can be accomplished within it.

Fucking long-distance numbers >.<

" Fucking long-distance numbers >.< "

I loved this game, the plot, the setting, you're looking at an old ass monitor and it sucked me in more than something like Fallout or Red Dead, and that's not an overstatement. This is basically how Tron would actually be if it was realistic to technology. Loved every minute of falling into this universe.

I liked the story actually but I think it was too short to get deeply attached to anyone.

I enjoyed the game, as it brought back memories of the late 80's, and watching my older, tech-savvier cousins playing around on BBSs.  Otherwise, the rest was good, but not great.  

Frankly, it felt like a run-of-the-mill cyberpunk romance short story that should have taken 45 minutes to read, but instead took 2.5 hours to get through.  I have to wonder, if I came across this story in Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, would I have read it? 
 
The "gameplay mechanic" was alright for the first 20 minutes, but quickly became a hinderance to reading through the story. 
 
In the end, it's free, and definitely worth a look, but with realistic expectations.

" Okay, I know I'm going to get mega flaimed here... "

For a free game, I found it pretty fun and worth the time.  I sincerely tried to imagine how I would reply to each email, and I think that made the story a lot more interesting.

I think the genius of this game was firstly, the game's ability to evoke emotion from just text - and it isn't even set up with a straight narrative like a book, the pacing is very, very clever. Secondly, it's almost a perfect length. Lastly I thought Emilie was a very well written character, the fact that you couldn't see your reply left a lot open to interpretation.
 
For a free, text-based game - I think the whole thing is an astounding achievement. Also, the use of music was fantastic. I feel bad for anyone who comes out of this game feeling '...meh', because it's one of the best video game experiences I've had in a long time. I feel bad not having paid money for it.

 "to save the world, you must sacrifice the person you love", but instead it's "to save this cyber world, you must send off your cyber girlfriend like a kamikaze bomber".