Ren'Py - -u4ia- [Season 1] [DriftyGames]

[MINOR SPOILER]

This review is based on my experience before Drifty dropped the final episode for season 1. As of today, I have yet to try the fourth episode.

There are some good and bad things about this AVN. The problem is, the bad kinda outweights the good here. The only good things that I see from this visual novel are the quality of its renders and it’s a choice-based AVN like his previous product, which the thing that I like about my VNs because I’m not really a huge fan of kinetic VNs.

Now here comes the bad. First, I hate the fact that there’s too many love interests in u4ia. Leap of Faith has six love interests in total so it’s no biggie to make them even in equality department. While u4ia has a lot, probably ten or more and that’s a huge problem if can’t make them even. I noticed that some girls don’t get enough screentime or lewds in the first season. Hell, you don’t even know which ones are the main girls or side girls (if there’s any). I was initially pursued Teagan, but the more I keep going, the more I realized that she keeps disappearing from the MC and he doesn’t even try to look for her, even though me as the player have made a lot of choices that favored her. Funny enough, Jackie who’s not in my radar whatsoever always poppin’ up in my crib and she has more scenes than Teagan and she’s not even attractive at all (well, she was before she escaped to The Bahamas).

I also had a complaint about u4ia’s freeroams. They were tedious, way too many, and not time efficient at all. My main complaint is the usage of arrows in huge area such as the hotel and mansion, should’ve used images like what we got in Desert Stalker or Being a DIK. But I heard from people that the newest release removed the timer and other inconvenient things. I have yet to see it so no comment on this one.

Anyway, the story is… okay. It’s not the best and it’s not the worst either. It’s clear that Drifty is not trying to imitate the magic of Leap of Faith in his second VN and that’s fine to me. As for now, the emotional pull isn’t there and the main plot hasn’t been addressed as the main focus (yet). Most of the time it’s just MC having fun with folks he meet along the way. There’s an unseen danger lurking around every corner, but he always brushed them off. We’ll see what he’s gonna do with it in season 2.

Overall, I’ll give this game three stars in its current state. Who knows, maybe in the future it could get four or five stars instead.

Another Drifty games banger, although the story was not as great as it's predecessor, it still kept me engaged through out the first season.
It does take a darker tone compared to LoF, some of it being like a soap opera type drama but the characters are cool regardless.
I am interested on what's to come in second season, which might be some years away.

4 stars because you cannot give 3.5 star, but it deserves better than 3.

Character designs - Good, not the best but good. Decent amount of variation.

Character development - As of season 1, as there is a lot of characters, there was not enough opportunity to go for a lot of them (that is my take).

Lewd Scenes - okay.

Dialogues - Sometimes they are very good, sometimes they are okay and sometimes they are very meh, there is real inconsistency here.

Story - Initially a lot of suspense going. feels like certain cue were given for certain characters felt like spoilers and ruined some suspense imo. Till chapter 3 felt there was a lot of potential (I mean the potential is still there) but after season 1 ending I am not sure if the entire thing took the exact right step. While after season one I am looking forward to season two, but the ending still felt a bit disappointing. Hope a lot of it will be rectified or I will be proved wrong about the story.

The main character is sort of weird, and the LI paths are too easy to go for (they fall for the mc too easily) imo, which is not always a bad thing, but in this game it felt it took away a lot of fun by making things easy.

Story: Honestly, the story could do with some work. It's a bit of a slow burn but is more focused on slice of life with the girls. I don't mind this, but certain girls feel less relevant to the overall story than others. It's prob that every main girl feels like a main girl - but from the developers perspective, they are a side girl. It doesn't come across in the writing. You feel like you're missing scenes with some.

Animations: Best in class. This is a good porn game if you're here for the porn. But there's the path stuff - you won't see it if you won't engage with it. But honestly maximum points if you're attracted to the subject of the scene. The visuals are great.

Overall: Solid 5/5 from me. But I appreciate animated scenes. If your focus is more story and character build up, I'd say 4.5/5. Top tier regardless. Drifty knows what they're doing.

Sandbox: A bunch of people hate on this. I don't really get it. Like - they ask you to choose an arrow based on what area you want to view. It's really UN-intuitive - i get that but it's not like.... other AVN's where you're wondering what's going on. Either something happens or it doesn't. It it a touch clunky - yes. Is it rage quit - no. I don't care for it myself, but it's not a deal breaker.

I couldn't have written it better myself and I completely agree with what Raynare69 (well written ) writes. In some moments it's different from LeapOfFaith, but then you notice parallels again (in a positive way). I can only recommend u4ia (and I don't actually like free roam).

I would give the game 4.5 out of 5, but unfortunately that's not possible, so “only” 4.

Ugghhh! So. Many. Free. Roams! This VN is so difficult to choose the right rating. It has a good but not great story with some really funny moments. There's a great collection of well rounded characters and beautiful LI's, although it's too easy to miss out on some with an early choice, which is disappointing. Lars is one of the best buddy/friends, I've found in a VN. However there's just a constant, boring mess of free roams that slow down the enjoyment of the story. I'm going for 4 stars as this has the potential to get better as it goes on judging by episode 4 but really its a 3 1/2. If the dev would cut-out (or rewrite it without) the free roams, we might actually find out how good it really is.

u4ia [Season 1]

Pros:
+ Excellent writing quality
+ Story narrative routes can be changed based on choices
+ Choices actually matter for character development and relationship possibilities
+ Overall music choice is quite nice and very fitting for situations
+ Great animations and overall rendering quality

Cons:
- Free roam makes multiple playthroughs a bit tedious
- Requires multiple playthroughs to see everything
- Slow narrative progress hinders emotional pull

It has been a while since I've written any review, but I've really enjoyed the experience so far, so I wanted to write a positive review in hopes that this may convince even one more soul out there to give it a chance. Though this review may be but an insignificant drop of water that produces naught but a tiny ripple in the ocean, I hope that ripple can spread and grow and one day, become a wave as it spreads out to more people.

Like many others who support DriftyGames or enjoyed his previous project, Leap of Faith, I came here with high expectations. While playing through, at first, I felt a little disappointed until I took a step back to think about things. In my own mind, I was already comparing a complete product to one that had just hit the ground running and has barely even taken flight.

After a few playthroughs now, I think the game does a very good job of building up the world and the characters in it, as well as forming and building bonds between the characters with each other and with the MC. Choices also feel quite impactful.

The key here is patience.

It really wasn't until episode 4 that I really began opening up to this game. Without any spoilers, it has taken a long time to get to the point where we finally start finding out what is going on with the overarching plot of the story. A whole season. Someone that's expecting a quick adventure might find it a bit aggravating or wearisome even. But I fully believe in my heart of hearts that it will be worth it in the end. The story is building up for something much larger.

Give this game a chance. A real chance. Be patient with it and at least, give it the time it deserves, because I truly believe it will reward and respect your commitment with a beautiful experience, in time.

Overall Rating: 9.5/10

I have my problems with the game...

Gameplaywise the freeroams are just shitty. There are other games with free roams too, but in the good games those free roams have a good reason and serve a purpose in at least someway, in this game this is not the case, not one bit, and they are made poorly.

The models are overall better than in leap of faith, but not by much, and certainly not all of them, just some.

The strongest part of leap of faith were the emotions and the somewhat relateable characters, and you could easily sense that there is some "real" story behind all this... thats why the game worked so well. Well... for the most part at least.

The emotional part in u4ia is just... non existent. I cant relate to anyone in this game, not the MC, not anyone. Mostly because we dont know shit about them. Its all in the shadows, still is after season 1 is complete now. It stills feel like the introduction episode, and that is just awful.

Drifty tries hard in the early stages to establish some "romance" here and there, but drops the ball with episode 3. At that point every interaction becomes meaningless with any of the girls, which is sad.

At the end of episode 4 the whole game becomes outright pointless and ridiculous. The dating part and such... is just down the drain for the overall "thriller conspiracy story"... and thats the biggest problem of the game. The story... lets face it, if the DEVs of these game would be high class authors, the would write movie sceenplays or books, but they dont. To pull off a good thriller story, you have to be a real good author, and drifty is not.

The whole evil daddy android creater ruler of the world things is just stupid. And of course everyone is tangled up in that because they are somewhat tergeted by said evil daddy... yeah... well... whatever man. I cant get over how ridicullous the conclusion at the end of ep 4 is.

I might play the game agian when its complete, cause at least drifty can deliver a "fun time" here and there... but he shouldnt have tried this thriller-story thing in the first place. Not everyone is a david fincher, stzpehen king, don winslow, dan bron or so, and trying to be one is ending up poorly most of the times. Especially if you are just creating a fun little dating-porn game and try to mix in some over the top thriller story in it... its just... get out of here.

So yeah.

Story bad, graphics not much improved compared to LoF, dialogues are still ag ood thing drifty can pull of, and the funny parts too, but they dont fit the story at all. The characters are just unbelievable in every way, espeically later on in the game... somewhgat believable in the first two episode, they become complete nonsense in episode 3 and 4. Especially the end of episode 3 and episode 4 sink the ship completley. Drifty cant get out of this mess anymore now...

Leap of Faith was just a emotional rollercoaster and worked well as that.

This u4ia wants to be a big thing in every regard and fails in every regard.

Still, compared to most of the games on F95 its still decent, so yeah... 3 stars it is. But i expected something else from drifty, and way less ridiculous.

A free roam fucking NIGHTMARE! I loved LOF! But this is shit! Is the DEV possessed of meaningless and annoying free roam? Its pisses me of! I wanna enjoy a AVN and not game for kids or puzzle.

+Pretty girls
+Story OK

-Lesbian take it or leave LI.
-Free roam!!!
-No big butts
-No Schemales (But its only my taste)

I wish the DEV good luck.

It is not as emotional as Leap of faith but if you know the story behind LOF it cant be and never will be.
But u4ia on itself is in my opinion a 5 star game, nothing less.
Drifty listens to us (lot of changes in past), the game is very wel put together and the story is misterious, you really want to know whats all behind it.
Also the ladies are beautiful, different and they all have a backstory.

Again, you almost can`t compare other VN`s with Leap of Faith because of the backstory of Drifty about where Cece came from.
That said, if you compare u4ia with all other AVN`s it belonges to the top and nowhere else. Do NOT compare it to Leap of Faith (you always loose). Both games are different but both 5 star.

Terrible VN. Non sensical and time waster Free roam that does nothing but frustrate the player. Non sensical story with a door mat MC . Just a terrible time wasting experience the dev could not have made the game more boring if he wanted to.

PROS:
Beautiful models and fluid animations in the sex scenes.
Genuinely funny moments.
So far, the player has always been given the option to reject a romantic interest.

CONS:
Sometimes, there are inconsistencies in the narrative, such as characters referencing events the protagonist hasn't witnessed, people he hasn't met, or dialogues he hasn't had.
The number of lesbians in the game is absurdly disproportionate (seriously, even the one who is supposed to be the protagonist's main romantic interest is ), drastically reducing the number of options for heterosexual players.

Holy shit the amount of Free Roam here is terrible and makes me want to stop playing. I've already tried many times to get into U4IA but its difficult

Likes: Intertwine Crossover

Hate: Free Roam

Plot - eh conspiracy theory for sure but I just can't continue this with its awful free roam. its rare a dev's second AVN is worse than the first but this is one of those cases

I thought this was gonna be a banger but so far its not good. This MC is too much, he invades peoples privacy and wants to be the knight in shining armor to much. He also look like hes 40 but in the game hes a young guy. I cant understand how he is a pussy magnet when his boy Lars look way better. It must be his dick or that they love his amazing personality...
The story so far is this mystery island where MC meets girls and then we are gonna beat some bad people on this island. Thats fine if i liked the characters and MC which i dont, most of them is not attractive and look very "woke", wierd hair and hair color. The graphics honestly is very mid, I thought Drifty would do a jump in gameplay but I would say its worse. Its too grindy and you miss so much.

i have played 3 chapters and im not feeling this one. And im a fan of driftys previous game.

Review of [Ep3.11p]

Like his predecessor: Leap of Faith, the DEV brand is evident.

The DEV puts its stamp on the game and it is very noticeable that it is its own.
This time we embark with a young man who literally abandons his ship and heads to an island to start from ZERO.
There he meets interesting people and many girls, with whom you can have an adventure or even more than that.


And then there's that strange U4IA thing we're all wondering what it is...

PROS

• Excellent Renders with high quality better than his predecesor
• Interesting plot with details and paths
• Good animations with good effect
• Good atmosphere and music
• Quite immersive and with good FREE ROAM

CONS

• There is no audio or moans in the sexual scenes

RATING :

Content: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Sound: ⭐⭐⭐
Renders: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Characters: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Animations: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Final conclusion: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ EXCELLENT GAME Hightly recommend to Play

I’ve held off writing this review for quite a while because, like many others, I love the author’s earlier work and don’t want to dissuade him from making another. However, as good as some elements of the game are, they are gate-kept by some truly rage-inducing free-roam events. Events which would have been unwelcome in a harem game where most of the content can be unlocked in a single playthrough, but are truly unforgivable when there are half a dozen routes to unlock. This, coupled with a slow-to-start main plot and characters who, so far, are attractive but forgettable, it’s difficult to justify cleaning out the garbage in that goddamned trailer for the 3rd, or 4th, or umpteenth time.



This review itself is difficult to write. I’ve deleted several full paragraphs already. I want to go down the typical list, like, “So the animation is well done and the characters are unique and beautiful and rendered well and the environments are interesting and memorable.” I keep deleting them though because the faults in the game’s design overwhelm them completely. I’ve tried and tried to get back into the game. “I’ll start playthrough tomorrow after I finish the update to this other game.”



It just doesn’t happen because I know what I’m in for: The free-roam events from hell. One of the biggest benefits of Ren’py is the ability to fast forward, especially in games that promote multiple playthroughs with only minor variations. We’ve all been there. Burning through the first four chapters of a game, quickly picking the options the mod highlights in green, until you get to the choices that effect that route you haven’t tried yet. We don’t have all the time in the world to click through a tedious, and pointless, free-roam event that would have worked better as a montage than forcing me to click on individual pieces of garbage and furniture before clicking arrow keys to move to a second room to click on other pieces of furniture before clicking several other keys to leave the trailer, go to a second door into the same trailer, click over to three other rooms, and pixel hunt for the garbage in THOSE rooms that need to be cleaned up, without which the girl I’m trying to bang will note the garbage I didn’t clean up and go home early.



From a design standpoint, it makes no sense. Drifty has to have played other games before. Did he ever play one with such events and thought, “Wow, I wish there more of these!”?



Okay, enough about the free roam. A quick bit about the other elements. The update schedule is on the long side, so I honestly can’t remember any of the names of the characters or remember much about the plot, which again is a problem since I need to play the game over again and sonofabitch I’m talking about the free roam events again!



Okay. Last try. Short short version: Characters pretty. Plot mysteries have my attention but need to be shored up faster before I lose interest. Music is great and well thought-out. Adult content is pleasant. Well-written and not same-y at all. MC is a decent bloke. Not ugly but not a super model either. I like him. Stat system and attributes need to be thrown out. No one likes them, and no one wants to be gate-kept from content because their confidence/intelligence/agility/smarminess hadn’t reached lvl 6 before the scene played. Don’t give the mod-makers more to do. They got enough trouble green-lighting all the different path dialogues.



I’m playing another game right now, far superior to this one I’m sad to say, and its main point of superiority is its more annoying content includes a “would you like to skip the annoying shit?” button before it starts. Without that button, the game in question would be a 2. Instead, I gave it a 5. I’ll be doing the same here. I love ya Drifty, but please take these criticisms, echoed by many others, to heart. It’s fine if you enjoy making free-roam events, but shelve the ego and add elements for those who don’t like them to be able to skip them and still enjoy everything else your game has to offer. Maybe code it so that you have to go through them at least once. “Looks like this is your second/third/twelfth playthrough. Would you like to skip the club scene with the best route choices for VeroniFeliciaDesireeebeca?”



I really really want to play your game, but the mere thought of cleaning up that trailer again is preventing me from doing so. You have the programming knowledge. This would be an easy fix. What’s stopping you?

Story 3/5
Its pretty decent and has an ok twist and good backstories, i wont really get into it to much but MC was been experimented on by hes father and was saved by hes old female friend and he then runs off to an island which ofc is full of girls, some has the same background of experiments being done on them and so on.

There are some pretty fun stuff in it to, for some reason i had to laught with the hole viking stuff at the part from the keg to the catapult.
And the dude that catch MC fucking a girl in a bear suit was pretty damn fun as well.

Girls 2/5
Pretty faces but almost no diversity in builds and mainly aim for people with big tit fetish, so i cant say i liked them much.

Animations 4/5
Good animations.

Music 5/5
To me its pretty perfect, lots of music with lyrics and its good stuff.

Choices and freeroam 2/5
While choice matter and you can turn down girls it can be a pain in the ass to figure things out without a walkthrough even more so in freeroam which is the worst ive seen, you would need to constantly tap out in and out of the game or you will miss alot and thats not something i do when i play a game.

There are some 4th wall breaking as well which can be annoying, i dont really want to read about dev in a story, it kills the immersion atleast for me.

Im really sorry to see the dev that made my favorit all time game leap of faith fall to this level of garbage and i do hate to say that i expected alot more, i cant give this more then 2 stars since i had to give up being to annoyed with freeroams, party thing i had no clue what to do tried alot of things but ended up at the docks where i could message no one...every single time and have no clue if its ealiere in game or at the party or where ever things went to shit so yeah its a no thanks on this one.

Overall a very good game!

The renders and animations are good.(not among the best but still way above avarage)
The music/vibe is great, well matched with the scenes.
Top-notch writing , the strongest part of the game. Dialogues are engaging/funny.
The story is interesting so far.
Free roam/sandbox elements are enjoyable and easy to navigate. (at least for the first playthrough, they might get tedious for 2+)
Adult scenes are mostly vanilla but pretty good .

I thoroughly recommend this AVN.

I remember someone saying on this website that the freeroam elements are for the players to feel that a game is much longer than it really is, and that’s exactly what it feels in U4iA, it’s totally useless and adds nothing to the plot, it’s just a painful navigation cross at the bottom left corner of the screen that makes you wander around aimlessly. It totally breaks the immersion into the story, you are back to playing a 90’s game (ok, ok, the first Doom in 1993 was fun to play) instead of an adult visual novel. Too bad, Leap of Faith is still in my all-time top 5 and had none of this shit, it was indeed super-immersive, breath-taking, very emotional and hilarious at the same time.

Let’s talk about the MC now. He doesn’t have the charisma of the one from LoF and has been seen in too many other AVNs by now to have his own identity. Why choose an average – totally not handsome – guy when you have much better on offer? I mean, this guy is supposed to seduce a dozen attractive girls but has a weird face and tramp clothes all the time. Why is his friend Lars muuuuch better looking than him? Oooooh sorry, the MC has a big fat d*ck, must be the reason why he is so popular, I forgot about it...

Renders are quite good, animations are ok but well, it’s 2024, we’ve seen much better ones by now. Btw, the last scene of Episode 3 with Synne is terrible, like it was not completed before the game had to be released on the market.

The story: It’s quite captivating but I’m afraid it’s going in too many directions, with too many questions and no real answer so far, and I’m afraid Drifty will get lost at some point in the process. Each of the girls has a past, a story to tell, and we’ve barely scratched the surface yet, we know almost nothing about them, we even have a total alien (Nyah) and at least one or two traitors working for someone who governs this island. The story already has too many ramifications, and it’s only the third episode, I can’t even imagine the number of unanswered questions we’ll have at the end of the game. I just hope I’m totally wrong here but even in the movie industry such mistakes happen all the time and they have crews of professionals behind them.

Sorry for the low rating Drifty, but you deserve it for implementing such a totally useless freeroam system. Just imagine your game with simple menus and how much more immersive it would be. I have 4 different playthroughs at the moment and it’s been a pain to do all the freeroam shits 4 times, thank you very much. I would have never thought that you, the creator of the wonderful Leap of Faith, would lower yourself as to copy what everyone else is doing just to fool the players into thinking that their game is 2 times longer than it really is…

Update Season 1 :

Episode 4 is the best episode so far, it’s a mix of emotional and funny moments, Drifty’s specialty. Unfortunately it ends with a 3-phases free-roam. I now have 7 playthroughs, so let’s do the math: 7x3=21. Yes, you saw it right, I had to do 21 free-roams. They’re not long or complicated, you go from one room to the other, but it’s damn annoying after the 10th time…

2,5/5, almost 3, thanks to episode 4. Could be a 4/5 next season if Drifty finally gets rid of the free-roams entirely.

It took me 3 episodes to write this review, as I wanted to be fair, but the latest episode confirms that this game is as forgetable as its name.
Pros:

• a large graphic improvement in compare with LoF, renders do look good
• animations are not great, but they aren't abd either, that's still a lot more than the LoF had to offer in this department
• free roams are enjoyable, interface is quite well thought and intuitive
• Climatic music (although not my cup of tea) is well matched with the scenes
• Some good looking LIs
• phone apps

Cons

• the storyline is all over the place. It has some gaps it scares me that the dev who succesfully created a full AVN (which is rare in this World) didn't think it all through
• Conversations and dialogues are enjoyable, but shallow - they lack this something
• LIs are generic (in terms of personality). Each funny that by chapter 3 each of them had so much screen time and yet I know nothing about any of them
• Dejavu - with the mansion holidays Drifty simply tried recreating the best part of Leap of Faith - it didn't work. The entire scene seems schematic and rushed
• Slut fest - the game is basically a story about a bunch of sluts walking around and thinking how to jump on the MC's d*ick, but the mansion holiday is still taking it too far, it feels like cheap porn
• Romance pace is all f**ked up and doesn't fit the little we know about girls
• empty locations - locations are either empty or filled up with - see next point:
• LIs from another games. When Jaye entered LoF it was fun, when I saw Kindra I thought it's too much, but this game takes it to another level. Knowing straight away that the character you are seeing will not appear again in the game destoys the fun of unpredictability. I was just clicking through all not so random encounters

Well, Drifty tried. He really did, but this game and remembering how average episodes 5-8 of LoF make me thing if he jsut missed the concept or he is just an average dev who had a lot of luck creating great first 4 episodes of LoF