euphoria review

 

Title: euphoria

Release date: 2011-06-24

English release date: 2015-11-27

Developer: ClockUp

English publisher: MangaGamer

I don't think there is really a need to introduce "euphoria", a visual novel that acquired quite a chatter even before its translation into English, due to its "extreme" sexual content, and supposedly well crafted plot. But does it really deliver on both of these aspects, and is it worth your time? Well, I don't know, but I'll give you my opinion on it, so make of that what you will.

Our colourful cast.

"euphoria" (yes, with a lowercase "e") starts like many other death game/escape room visual novels. Our protagonist Takatoo Keisuke awakens in an empty white room, without any idea how he got here, and with a strange collar clasped onto his neck. It's quite obvious someone has kidnapped him from his dorm room and brought him here, but it is unclear for what purpose. After leaving the room, he is reunited with his childhood friend Kanae, English teacher Natsuki, an emotional cute underclassman Rika, a cold aloof girl Rinne, class representative Miyako, and Nemu, who is somewhat of an enigma.

A synthesized voice informs the abductees that they are participants in a sick game, where Keisuke will be forced to perform twisted sexual acts on his female companions, where each sexual act will unlock one of the doors in the facility they are locked in, and the way to freedom will become available after all five doors have been opened. Miyako categorically refuses to participate in the game, and is brutally murdered in front of the horrified audience, thus showing that the Game Master is not kidding around.

Poop extraction device.

However, not all of the captives are equally distraught about the predicament they find themselves in. Keisuke has a dark secret, which he has always struggled with - he has strong sadistic tendencies and a desire to violate the woman that he has been suppressing both for himself and for the sake of his friends. Now, the situation allows him to unleash his twisted desires, while at the same time presenting himself as a fellow victim who is simply forced to do despicable things. Should he fully succumb to his beastly desires, or hold himself back, in hopes of one day returning to normal life?

Nemu also seems to be unbothered by the current situation, moreover she seems to immediately peg Keisuke as a sadist and lowkey blackmails him to follow her lead, otherwise she will reveal his secret to his childhood friend Kanae, who is the most important person to him. Luckily Keisuke is smarter and somewhat more wise than a common visual novel protagonist, defying quite a few tropes associated with such a character, so he easily understands that Nemu's blackmail has no real teeth in this situation, and he shouldn't follow her lead lest he falls under her control.

Main room of the facility.

Frankly, his psychological problems and the struggle with inner beast notwithstanding, I quite liked Keisuke as a protagonist. He is fleshed out like a real character, and acts in a manner that is somewhat realistic to the situation he has found himself in. Keisuke displays the full range of the emotional gamma, getting scared, annoyed, determined in different situations, experiencing both twisted pleasure and anxiety attacks as the situation changes. He adapts to the changing situation, and can think on his feet, even though his is no genius. He can put up a fight when the situation demands, but he is no martial arts prodigy and gets beat down when the luck does not favour him.

What's even more important Keisuke is not some useless pervert, who only thinks about sex now that he can satisfy his hidden desires, as I have feared before playing the game. I personally loved the internal struggle Keisuke felt regarding sex, and sympathised with his desire to return to normal life together with his friends. In other words, Keisuke feels like a real human being who somehow ended up in an unenviable situation.

How horrible! Rika had to wear a swimsuit for her scene.

Considering the premise of the game, and the reputation it has garnered online, I expected the sex scenes in the game to be truly extreme in their execution, but let me disabuse you of that notion. The more I played the game, the more I realized that the sex scenes in "euphoria" are strangely 'normal'. Sure, I will admit there are probably like three or four scenes that would fall into the category of being called "extreme", and yes, a few scenes do contain scat and/or piss, but the absolute majority of the H-scenes are simply rough sex with the elements of BDSM.

Sooth be told, I would say that the Game Master seems to lack imagination., because I have lost the count of the number of scenes, where Keisuke was provided a rope or a duct tape, tied up the girl of his choosing and followed his orders to be "rough". It's kind of strange, but after playing through a few routes I started to feel bored by the sex scenes. They should have totally been my jam, but something about the sameness of the scenes and the writing just kept me from totally enjoying them. Actually, it was the most extreme scenes that captivated me, as they showed the imagination that was lacking in the other scenes.

Fortunately, despite some people calling it by that name, "euphoria" is really not a nukige, despite a relatively high sex scene count. The vast majority of the sexual content is confined to the first part of the game, which ends halfway through the route of your choosing with a fake ending, and then you enter the second part of the game which is entirely plot focused, and imho much better for it.

There are five major routes in "euphoria", each focused on one of the girls that remain trapped with you. There is a certain suggested order of routes to go through for the best playing experience: Natsuki/Rika > Rinne > Nemu > Kanae. Technically, only Kanae's route is locked until you finish Nemu's route (and I would suggest going into Kanae's route right after Nemu's), and you can play the other three routes in any order, however Rinne's story is more plot-heavy than the other two remaining paths, so it's best to get those out of the way first. In essence, "euphoria" is a multi route mystery, where more and more details of the overall plot are revealed in each subsequent playthrough, however, that particular aspect of the VN is very badly done, and one of the reasons I didn't enjoy the game as much as I had hoped to.

It's true what they say about the duct tape. It's suitable for anything.

Aoi Natsuki is your English teacher and the only adult in the group. Keisuke has an impression that she is a lazy person, who also wants for everyone to get along, even when some of the people have obviously incompatible personalities and tensions begin to rise. He is completely correct in that matter, and Natsuki occasionally annoyed me when she tried to placate the other abductees, even if it was clear that no one takes her completely seriously, and a stronger word would create more of an impression than a "buddy teacher" tone. In my opinion, Natsuki has the most inoffensive route - it is one of the two completely generic routes that do not delve into any mysteries of the game and we see only small snippets of the true story behind the twisted situation. It is also super short, and exists mainly to be a teaser, and to entice us to play the other routes to find out more. The end of Natsuki's route also contains some events that initially gave me a "WTF" reaction, though those events are later sort of explained in the True Ending.

Bon appetit!

Makiba Rika is the youngest person of the cast and an annoying insufferable twit, who was honestly the only abductee I truly disliked. I wanted to say "hated", but realized it's perhaps too strong of a word. Her being a crybaby is entirely understandable, as this is a terrifying situation everyone got pulled in, and she is so totally 18+ that every creator of the game now has a permanent Pinocchio nose marring their visage. Her being a spoiled brat who always uses her cuteness to try and get her way, even if it hurts other people is despicable. Her having no willpower, thus she always gets herself attached to the strongest personality around, so she can follow their orders and not think for herself, is pathetic. I hoped that her rotten personality would get smoothed over in her own route, but that was a tall order. It's just that in her route Rika attaches herself to Keisuke as the strongest personality, which makes their relationship kinda toxic. If Natsuki was the most inoffensive choice for a heroine, then Rika is the most annoying one. Moreover, her route barely adds anything to the overall mystery, and is just as short as Natsuki's story.

Cum works great as a hair mask.

Byakuya Rinne is a strange emotionless member of the discipline committee, who doesn't display any outward reactions to the situation she finds herself in, and doesn't even appear to be particularly bothered by it. I was initially intrigued by her character and hoped her route would be more interesting then those that preceded it. And boy, did I get my wish, but not in the way I expected or wanted. Rinne's route does a complete 180 degrees bender and goes into an OMG WTF OTL direction I didn't see coming. I must admit, it's a unique direction, but "unique" does not mean "good". Rinne's story went on a wild tangent that seemingly had nothing to do with the main plot pertaining to the death game, but I was optimistic that once I play the last route, all puzzle pieces will go into proper places, and Rinne's storyline will make sense.

However, here is where the whole "multi route mystery" schtick of "euphoria" starts falling apart, because NOPE - Rinne's story has nothing to do with the main story. It's almost completely isolated from everything else and seems to be shocking and absurd simply for the shock value. Moreover, it's a route that truly makes no sense, especially when you sit down and think about it. At one point in the route it introduced a wild concept that seemed to come out of the left field, and appeared to be impossible according to everything we knew so far, thus I chalked it up as a delusion on part of a certain character, and after all was said and done, I was mostly right. WHY was this concept introduced at all, if it simply leaves us scratching our heads and doing mental gymnastics to explain it away, when in the end there was nothing to explain at all? And once again, it had nothing to do with the death game!

And finally, the True Ending of Rinne's route is another headscratcher, though it's at least understandable. I figured out what happened in that ending even before the Real True Ending, which at least partially explained some of the things that happened with Rinne, but I still have no idea why or how it happened. Oh, well, who cares, and I do understand that when you have a "who cares" attitude towards a mystery in a game, there is probably something wrong with the game in question.

The only real reason to read this route, is to get a certain inkling why Keisuke is the way he is, as it seemingly gives us a veiled explanation why he might potentially have these sadistic urges. I said "might", as the situation is left ambiguous, and the whole subplot of our protagonist battling his inner desires is yet another area where the game faceplants. Should I talk about it now? Yes, I think I should. You see, I liked the conflict within our protagonist in the first half of the game, and I was waiting how "euphoria" would address it in later stages, however it was addressed in the laziest way possible - by not getting addressed at all. Once the game hits the halfway mark, his urges suddenly up and disappear, and are barely ever mentioned again (unless you are striving for the Evil Bad End). The VN never provides an explanation and just writes the whole character complexity out just not to get bothered with it during the final stages.

I wonder if she's ticklish...

Anyway, let's stop ranting about Rinne, and let's talk about Manaka Nemu, probably the most mysterious member of the cast. Nemu is a mischievous individual, who seemingly delights in creating strife between the other captives, and causing unrest. If Keisuke selects her as the one to sexually assault, as per the game's requirements, she is seemingly overjoyed and eggs him on, causing conflict withing our protagonist's psyche, as he doesn't want to give in to his inner beast. This is the first route that truly starts to hint at deeper mysteries hidden behind the curtain... before getting cut of just as the things seem like they might start preparing to prepare to become interesting.

Nemu's route kind of leaves a bad taste in the mouth, as it's an ultimate cocktease, but also because out of all the heroines, Nemu seemes to have the greatest chemistry together with Keisuke. Sadly, the storyline devolves into a sadism-masochism tango between Nemu and Keisuke, and then it just... ends. I understand why the developers did it like that, but I also think it could have done much better, and it kind of becomes obsolete once you read Kanae's route.

Such soft cock pillows.

And so we finally reach the Kanae's route - the true meat of the game. Kanae is Keisuke's precious childhood friend whom he swore to protect, and we cannot even select her for any sexual acts until Nemu's route is complete. Here our protagonist breaks his own principle not to hurt Kanae, and engages in sexual acts with her, however Kanae is willing to suffer for Keisuke and tells him that she will take whatever he would do to her. Unfortunately, Kanae's quiet acceptance spurs on his wicked desires even more than Nemu's teasing in her route, and he truly starts fearing for his own sanity.

Kanae's route is the longest out of all the character paths, and in a strange twist it shares majority of the events together with Nemu's route, which is why I mentioned that route becomes obsolete. And finally FINALLY, we start getting some straight answers to our questions. And miracle of miracles, the game actually becomes... good. I will be truthful that the final few hours of "euphoria" shackled me to the screen, though when all is said and done it was a little too late. Not to mention, that the whole plot is explained to us using the favourite technique of every Japanese hack who fancies himself to be writer - an hour long infodump. Frankly, I should have seen the plot twist coming, after all, I have seen at least a few games that have used a very similar one before, but I admit, while I got some things right (Rinne's route clued me in to at least one major mystery), "euphoria" did manage to surprise me, massive infodump notwithstanding.

euphoria is not impervious to porn talk.

And yet, nothing in this darned visual novel is without a catch, because after playing through Kanae's route and getting the True Ending I realized that no other route matters. That is because there is nothing, and I mean nothing, unique in any other route that we do not get by playing Kanae's story. If "euphoria" was just Kane's route, it would have been a pretty good ten hour long visual novel that would have satisfied me. Now we were forced to play through two very generic and frankly boring routes, followed by a batshit crazy route that should in reality have been its own game, due to its disconnect from the main storyline, followed by a route that shares 99% of the text with Kanae's path anyway, thus we spend a lot of time just skipping read text when we finally reach the end of the game. The hints and foreshadowings in regards to the greater mystery in other routes were so minimal, that they were not even worth the effort.

And finally I have to talk about the ending. "euphoria" would have ended on a very high note after the rollercoaster final scenes if it just ended as the credits rolled, and I would have been perfectly happy with that conclusion. In fact, I was thinking: "I love this ending. It's different, but so fitting for this game" while I was watching the credits, and then we are shown the epilogue... This is the most tacked-on unrealistic epilogue, that I'm at a loss for words. The main villain, who was shown to be smart and resourceful suddenly drops an idiot ball, Keisuke farms XP and reaches level 100, and I have just one exclamation: "WHY? You have ruined it, you bastards!".

I love the taste of mature ass in the mornings.

Oh well, I seem to have a trouble with ClockUp games, as they appear like something I would love, but when I start playing them, I just cannot get into them; after all I had disliked "Eroge" too. Though the word "dislike" is probably a strong one. I was simply cold towards "euphoria". Some parts of the True End were pretty great, even if I have disliked the epilogue, but to reach it I had to play through middling routes with some severe pacing issues. Not all the plot points were neatly tied up and were left up hanging up in the air, or were introduced and then discarded like used condoms. And truth be told, I started getting bored with the H-scenes by the time I have finished two routes. Oh, and did I mention that two of the heroines don't even have a single good ending?

At least on the technical level the VN is great. The graphics look great, but that's no surprise, as I always like looking at the ClockUp art, and at least some of the sex scenes broke the mold and managed to interest me. That said, the main strength of the game is not in the graphics, but in the sound design. The soundtrack is just superb, with beautiful and haunting music creating a very fitting atmosphere for this kind of story. It's no surprise that the physical OST was part of the preorder for the game when it was released in English. The voice acting was also great, with special mention going to the Nemu's VA, who does simply a stellar job.

What a beautiful view...

There is one more element to this game that I just have to praise, and I have never seen something like that in any other visual novel. I decided to call this concept a "Stealth Route". At least one of the routes in the game is for an entirely different character than you might think. You get on a character route, you try to  romance a girl, and you suddenly realize that what should have been a certain character's route is instead a route for an entirely different character. It's kind of genius and I would really love to see something like this in other visual novels.

Anyway, I think this is the place where I will end my review/rant regarding "euphoria". My feelings about the VN are pretty complicated overall. I didn't hate the game, but I didn't like it either. It just felt like the developers had grand ideas, but poorly executed them, resulting in a bit of a mess. If you want to play it, do it; maybe you will like the game more than I did.

Links of Interest

Visual Novel Database

Official Japanese site

Official English site

Purchase the English download edition

Purchase the English physical edition

euphoria walkthrough

Final Verdict: 63%