While I realize that many of you might be anticipating a full review of Starless given the commentary I’ve given regarding Annie’s critique of the game, I’m still in the Mamiya manor and since I’m playing the game live so to speak, it will be a while before I’ve explored all the endings. I should have all the keys by summer and we’ll cover it then. In fact, there’s a good chance that Closed Game would get a review beforehand as I’ve already completed two routes in it. However, that is why we’re starting with Euphoria. The simple reason for this is because I’ve explored every single nook and cranny of the game, including the Rika scenes which were quite torturous to say the very least. That being said, let us step into the white room of hell that is Euphoria.
Gameplay:
Euphoria is an interactive visual novel, so it plays like a traditional ADV game. There are no special mini-games so to speak of, but there are several choices which can greatly impact the story and cause one of several rather gruesome bad ends. There are even bad-end H-Scenes which can range from the revolting to the downright strange, but we’ll talk more about that in the Hentai/Adult Content section.
Story:
First off, Euphoria is not just an incredibly over the top nukige. There’s an actual plot and storyline here, which I feel is an actual detriment. This even showed in the anime adaptation, which was loose and disjointed simply due to the fact that the writers weren’t sure how much of the nukige to adapt and how much of the plot to adapt. While having sex scenes or even a large amount of sex scenes is not uncommon in this genre, Euphoria’s main issue is that it has a real problem with identity. When you play the first part of the game, you’re thrust into a Saw-like environment where class rep is quickly executed and defecates all over the floor (and they really play that up for some reason) for a refusal to participate in this violent rape game that makes up the core element of Euphoria. After this opening scene, you’re explained the rules of the game which are quite simple: You must choose one of four heroines (the childhood friend is available only after the rest have had their routes completed) and violate them once or several times through the game. Ideally, the game wants you to choose one heroine through these routes, which makes the whole idea of choosing a heroine worthless. If you play the game as a player might want to do so in order to experience sexual situations with all of the heroines, the game simply gives you a throwaway ending that doesn’t reveal much about the big mysteries in the plot. It doesn’t even feature the second chapter of the game, which doesn’t even have any nukige, something I found very peculiar in a game that is supposed to be chock full of it. Again, Euphoria is an example of too many cooks in the kitchen and it suffers greatly for it.
After the main part of the game is completed, we’re suddenly thrown into a post Battle Royale situation in which a character has control of the school and sent the others into the white room, erasing their memories. Then when you get to the core portion of the story, it is found that even this is complete bullshit and the whole thing is actually a simulation. The game takes about five hours to explain what is really going on, which only gets more bizarre and is entirely unnecessary.
Though what’s more, is that one of the characters whom I hate with a passion because she straddles the line between loli and adult by acting and behaving like a spoiled child despite her age, doesn’t even have a major role to play in the story. Yes, despite the fact that she thankfully offs herself during the Rinne path (which doesn’t even matter, because nothing does in this game) and I’d never been more happy with the novel up to this point, (I would have gladly taken the knife from her and done it myself because she’s just so childish, annoying and a hindrance to the plot that would have been rectified if she had been eliminated instead of class rep) the painfully annoying character Rika was literally just another person participating in the virtual reality study. You meet her in the hall and it doesn’t mean anything. She doesn’t appear at any point after that, she was just there as a regular person taking part in a study for this shadow company. So yes, all the bitching, whining and bullshit – not to mention her trying to climb the fucking walls during the violent sex scenes in the game, was all just a silly simulation that she had taken part in. Even the scenario writer admitted he didn’t think he was very good at it, and despite the mind-blowing conspiracy laden crux in the endgame, there are so many frayed ends that don’t even have a purpose after those revelations.
The entire Rinne is a cult leader route is completely vanquished from existence and we meet Robo-Rinne instead, which just sounds like to me the result of an alcohol or drug binge by the developers themselves. I literally think a lot of these guys simply got high, got drunk and threw things together to see if they’d stick. That becomes apparent when you break down the whole plot of Euphoria and dissect it with the true end. Though it is normal for true ends in games like Ever 17 to have mind-blowing revelations and I expected that here as well, the problem with Euphoria is that it just goes off the fucking rails. In the epilogue we learn the our main character has become an assassin and then about how company A moved the research to Company B and then Company C, which of course the Teacher heroine played a large role in (because she’s a super-skilled assassin, don’tcha know?) and none of this starts to matter as the plot finally unravels to the point of absurdity when the romance itself falls apart and the entire motivation for the character gets defecated on like the floor where class rep was executed. How does it unravel? Well, anyone who has played a lot of these visual novels or even JRPG’s knows that there can often be a fight to profess the love for namely, a heroine that the protagonist loves more than all of the others – a true love, if you will. In this, it was Nemu (no, not the sadistic, manipulative one, but the kind and pure one who is setup more like the childhood friend) who somehow had her memories reverted to the age of twelve. So our main character is now this rough and tough adult male and the woman he loved has now reverted to his daughter. That’s the best he can hope for. She might even call him “okasa.” When I read that, it felt like all of the developers took a large collective dump on me all at the same time.
The major problem with this extensive true end and epilogue (which only contain two – yes, I said two H-scenes after fifteen million in the beginning) is that they over-explain everything beyond the level of a standard info-dump. Prepare to sit and read text for hours and hours because the team were apparently not competent enough to explain this information in any other way. Although it plays with your mind, the game soon begins to wear out it’s welcome at this point and you’re ready for the devs to get to the fucking point and just tell you what’s really going on. Then once again, they shit all over that.
The glaring issues become immediate here as we soon realize that several of these components don’t align well with each other at all:
The game opens with a barrage of over the top sex scenes. These are it’s main draw, but crumble very quickly after the second chapter in the game where the scenes dwindle in number, though are even more over the top.
The second portion of the game involves saving the heroines from traps and features no sex scenes at all in it’s entire length. What’s more, is that there is really no difference in what heroine you chose to enter this with. It feels like an entirely different game altogether and maybe this should have either been how Euphoria started or removed entirely. It serves very little purpose albeit to add more shock and subtle moments of character development. If they were going to do an all-ages version of the game with the entire first chapter removed, this would have sufficed. However, it seems out of place and unnecessary.
The third portion of the game takes place outside the school and happens during the aftermath of the death game tournament. You can either spend your time in caverns while Rinne goes slowly insane and tries to have her father (our main protagonist) impregnate her with the special child after drugging him on the floor, or you can indulge Nemu who has equally lost her fucking mind as she drums up even more horrendous means of torture for several of the characters. There is even an evil path where our protagonist decides to one up Nemu in means of torture and also loses his mind.
The final portion of the game negates every single other phase of the game entirely, rendering 80% of the plot completely useless. Everything we learn about these characters through their connections in H-Scenes and regular interactions are declared null and void. The childhood friend isn’t even who we think she is, as everything gets turned on it’s head. You read that right – NOTHING FOR EIGHTY PERCENT OF THE FUCKING GAME MATTERS.
As a matter of fact, I recommend you play Euphoria like this:
-
If you’re here for the nukige and fapping, then play it for that. Completely ignore everything that is said during those scenes related to the plot because those elements are completely negated. Just play all the routes. Skip the second portion of the game as there is no fap material there. The third portion of the game features the most over the top scenes, so you will definitely want to see them all. The final portion only features two scenes and the final scene in the game here is a romantic one with true Nemu, so if you’re not looking for vanilla, you may want to skip that as well. This would have been a perfectly fine scene in a non-nukige though.
-
If you’re here for the story, check “skip all” through the fap scenes. You can even turn your head away if you want. They completely divert from the multiple route mystery that the game is. However, you do want to pay attention to nearly all of the character interactions outside of the fap scenes because they do help to lay out a good mystery and you might enjoy following the clues. The second part of the game also lays out a perfectly good story and feels more like Saw. Again, an all ages version of the game would have started here. Make sure that you play the Teacher route for fun, but the Rika route is just as useless as the character and aside from unlocking the true end with Nemu’s route, Rinne is just plain horror madness and I think you’ll enjoy that as a standalone. The creepy organ tune also really plays that up, so you don’t want to miss that section. Finally, you’ll want to play through the entire true end so that the secrets will be revealed, turning everything on it’s head. These are fun revelations to have, but they may anger you if you’re the kind of person who skimmed for every minor plot detail during the H-scenes as I did. If I had known that nothing mattered, I would have finished the game far quicker.
Graphics:
Despite all of the negative things I have to say about Euphoria’s plot, the game truly shines in it’s CG department. While these scenes can definitely get rather vile with the amount of scat, (which the developers themselves joke about) it can definitely be inferred that more work was put into these pieces than in the entire plot of the game. There are also several CG’s where non-erotic content take place that have been lovingly rendered. Backgrounds for the first and second part of the game mostly take place in a white room and can get rather blinding after awhile. You’ll get tired of seeing the color white. Then of course we have the murky cave backgrounds, the forest area and the school which is worse for the wear. There’s also the musty sacred temple area where they played up the horror and mysticism. The epilogue backgrounds are all standard fare. I do however like the ending CG for the original Teacher route and consider that the true best ending for the game. Leaving the whole thing behind to sip martinis on an island is the best solution to Euphoria in my mind, until you realize that this too, would have been part of the simulation. Still, in a mostly horrific setting, it’s nice to see something that feels more slice of life.
Sound:
This is also where Euphoria shines. There are some semblances of guitar in the game introduction (which Nemu’s voice actress actually sings – and by that, I mean she sings her ass off) which I’m always game for, but a lot of industrial pieces that match the severity of the H-Scenes as well as standard creepiness. However, nothing is again more creepy than the organ piece that plays during the Rinne route. I’d definitely consider that to be a standout track, even though I found most of the music quite fitting and felt that most of the music fit the scenes quite well, even if there’s overuse which is common in visual novels where only about twenty or so pieces are utilized in the whole thing – if even that.
Hentai/Adult Content:
This is what you’re all here for. Euphoria doesn’t exactly go over the top with everything and there are some scenes which I found quite tasteful and romantic. Nearly every scene in the VIP room is a romantic sex scene and a few of the scenes in the rooms literally consist of just lingerie or a swimsuit. Yes, it can get THAT vanilla. However, then you have a shock torture machine, baby and animal play, scat all over the place, ball gags, the human laundromat (which I’m no longer upset over now that I know how evil the childhood friend actually is – she got what she deserved) and other assorted monstrosities like sex while being asphyxiated that you’ll see while entering the white rooms. Don’t forget about Rika being forced to eat the meal in the VIP room after the main character ejaculates all over it, which was probably one of the sickest scenes aside from the laundromat and diarrhea machine. Euphoria is definitely not for the feint of heart and earns it’s reputation for being over the top.
Conclusion:
Euphoria is a disjointed mess that somehow seems to work and still manages to sell several copies every month on MangaGamer. While Clockup have done this a bit less horrific with titles like How To Live A Healthy Hentai Lifestyle and Eroge!, people will never forget the foreboding sensation that they got inside the white room and during those moments of sexual torture. Again, there are some rather useless characters and it does go above and beyond to explain a plot that was badly stitched together with duct tape and not only goes off the rails, but crashes and burns right at the end; but that won’t dissuade you from embarking on this horrific nightmare if you choose to do so. Be advised that there is a scat filter in the game if you don’t want to see that content, so that might be a welcome relief for several interested in the game. However, most people read the plot and are turned off automatically. Euphoria’s introduction scene is very much a dummy filter in order to dissuade those who might have a problem with it’s content from exploring the game further – and that, is a brilliant design decision.
I have often thought about the epilogue however and I’ve considered a few outcomes. First, we have to consider that while our protagonist and Nemu are both at the same level of maturity as far as adulthood goes, I personally feel that he would be tortured by her presence. Again, this is the woman he loved and who loved him, but she has regressed to a state before her age when she had entered the game. Additionally, she may never return to her former mindset and stay in the mind of a twelve-year old forever. Our main character has learned his lesson. He’s controlled his lusts. He’s trained himself to be a disciplined and strong-willed individual. Though one has to wonder, how long can this last? Seeing the woman you love reduced to that of a mentally handicapped child has got to wear down on the soul. Despite all of the things the developers went out of their way to explain, this is the one thing they didn’t – and the question begs, why? There’s so much of an emotional roller coaster that can be explained here and while not the white room of forbidden lust, this is equally as appealing as an utsuge that would have resonated with people who followed the journey up to this point. Would he have kept her in his home as a disabled individual that he has to take care of for the rest of his life? Similar to what Guts did with Caska in Berserk? Would there be that spark that her mind would one day return and she would once again be the woman that he loved? What kind of demons would our protagonist have to fight now that he’s got the woman he loved, but she’s not who he remembers? Maybe it was better to just leave her be the whole time and never search for her at all? Perhaps that’s what Teacher was trying to tell him at the end of the day. These corporations were too powerful to topple and he was warned of that. They may stop at nothing to get her back even then, and in this case it would be a constant relocation for both our main character and Nemu as no doubt other assassins would be on his back trying to get her for themselves. If she was even an item to them anymore. For all we know, Corporation F at this point could have found another suitable girl and doesn’t even want to bother with Nemu anymore. She was getting older and would be of less use to them and their plans. Even so, that still leaves a man who comes home every night to a child he never had and an empty bed where will never lay the woman he loved. That’s the problem I have with Euphoria – all that buildup, just to be torn away and once again, for the last time – defecated on, like the floor where class rep was executed.
Final Rating:
