This review may have spoilers, English mistakes and not very good writing, I apologize for that, English is not my first language.
I have always been fascinated by the grotesque and the beauty of the horrible. “How bad can a human being be?”, “How far would we go just to satisfy ourselves?”. These questions have always intrigued me, especially when taken to the side between paraphilia and fetishes. As a big fan of this type of media, obviously I would become a fan of visual novels. It was only a matter of time before I discovered Euphoria, a game that truly explores how twisted someone's mind can be.
I have completed this game three times, and each time I play it, it fascinates me more and more. Unfortunately (or fortunately for some), it received a Hentai adaptation and became popularized as one of the worst visual novels in existence. Of course, we all know that there are many worse ones, but Euphoria carries that title. The anime brings back more of the sexual and appealing aspects of the thing, which is not exactly the point that I admire the most.
Shown in the animation and in the first part of the game (I mentally divide it into two parts, the part at the beginning and the part where the five games end), I was delighted with the way things were implemented, all around sex, desires that are not necessarily good, the awakening of the worst that we can be. The protagonist, from the beginning, "ignores" his lusts. Seeing the class representative dying painfully, with her body becoming weak to the point of releasing excrement, made him excited. It is at this point that the story begins. Our (not so much dear) Keisuke constantly thinks about raping the girls that are there, and, at several moments, he realizes how disgusting that is, that this was his biggest secret. In the Brute Route, he feels excited with thoughts of Kanae, his childhood best friend, being tortured, opened up, bleeding, being raped.
I used to be a gore addict, addicted to seeing other problematic things too, inappropriate desires. Every addiction can be turned into something sexual. I'm certainly not proud of it, but the initial questions resonate loudly; how bad can we be with our desires? What's the fine line between not doing any of these things? How free can we be with this?
For a long time, I thought Euphoria was really just about this questioning and this desire to explore and delve deeper into the disturbance of the human mind. To my surprise, after part one, the game becomes completely different. Speaking of the main routes, such as: Rinne, Nemu and Kanae (Brute), we discover that Keisuke is actually Rinne's "father", had a strong connection with Nemu before that game and Kanae just made up a lot of things through a virtual reality.
I won't go into too much detail on this part, but I really shed a few tears over it. Keisuke and Nemu had something genuine, without malice. Keisuke, by himself, was a normal boy. It's exactly because of this part that I think it's too unfair to summarize Euphoria as just hentai/sex, rape and scat. It was a very well-crafted story full of details, something that really needs to be read more than once to understand. I believe and know that Euphoria is not just a fetish game to play while masturbating.
During the game, I was reminded of several other visual novels as well, such as Danganronpa and Your Turn to Die (mainly because of the necklaces). Euphoria really caught me by surprise, because I had no idea what to expect when they left the white rooms, much less imagined that Kanae was posing as a childhood friend for evil scientific purposes. It's still hard to swallow that everything in the first part was projected by virtual reality.
With the true ending, saving Nemu, I was moved by the tenderness of their relationship. This game, without a doubt, is incredible and had a big impact on me. I really get upset about the label it falsely carries, but I also understand that it's not something everyone can ingest.
Thank you for reading my review. If you've read Euphoria and didn't like it, please give it a second chance with a different perspective. If you haven't read it and are curious, go ahead! But be careful, it deals with sensitive subjects. Be patient. Sometimes the candy only tastes sweet after the first bite.
