U4iA - Season 1
Full review with screenshots on website.
Imagine your own family holding you captive. One day, you are released from captivity and end up on the beautiful island of Euphoria, or U4iA for short. What kind of new life will you build for yourself?
Driftygames also developed the acclaimed Leap of Faith, known for its emotional gut punching story. A warning beforehand: U4iA was never meant to be like Leap of Faith. The developer deliberately went in a different route, and requested me to await a review until the story actually took off. With season 1 out now, it's finally time to dive into this highly requested game.
STORY
Aaron is the son of genius scientist Eudorice West and tech tycoon Aiden West. Being mother’s favorite, Aaron fell out with his father after his mother tragically died from a car accident. The family fued that followed led to Aaron running from his father's grasp, with his childhood friend Jack recommending he comes to Euphoria island. And so he does.
U4iA is a sci-fi based novel, focusing on both Aaron’s pursuit of happiness and the continuation of his mother’s legacy. Meanwhile, he encounters rumors of a nasty drug roaming the streets of Euphoria, fabricated on the island itself. As Aaron learns more, he slowly realizes why Jack recommended him to the island.
Drifty’s backstory for U4iA is intriguing and typical for dark sci-fi, but doesn't hold the heavy emotional bearing of Leap of Faith. While the story is extensive, the game often employs a ‘you will find out later’ approach, mostly leaving players in the dark until the end. That doesn’t help the storytelling, as only by piecing together the story shards, you will understand the full timeline. Drifty's choice to have non-linear flashbacks and supposed dream sequences feel cinematic, but also endanger convoluting the storytelling.
The game currently has 19 women for Aaron to flirt with across four chapters, all in varying degrees and backgrounds. Having such a big roster means less detail to interactions, and sadly it shows. Out of the many scenes U4iA presents, about ten of them are actually truly memorable. The range of characters is broad, from introverts like Geneva and Sea to wildcats like Tuesday and Gina. The game could have benefited from a smaller cast, although Drifty skillfully finds a way to connect the women together.
This is most notable in the sometimes unnatural development of some of the characters. At times it feels like we skipped a character development somewhere, even though the overarching story makes sense and responses are well written. U4iA does have a bad habit of signaling upcoming plot twists, spoiling a blindsided surprise. You can sense bad vibes with characters a mile away, probably a side effect of keeping players engaged on a shallow level.
There's also a big focus on side stories, often sidelining the main tech plot. After a full season, we’ve only now started delving into the meat of the sci-fi story. That story often loses its sense of urgency in season one. U4iA quickly jumps from ‘our friend was drugged and abducted’ to ‘let’s play drinking games and fuck around with our drugged friend present’, which is understandable given the format, but harms the urgency and weight of the main story.
With so many characters present, the quality of their backstories varies greatly. Geneva is shoehorned into the story with actual plot usage and gets better over time, while characters like Celeste come in with emotional baggage, but ultimately fall flat personality wise. For storytelling, season two could best focus on deepening emotions with existing important characters instead of adding onto it, much like Leap of Faith’s model. There’s more than enough to work with.
Overall, Drifty did a great job crafting a sci-fi story that can intrigue. We just didn't get to see too much of it yet, because Aaron trips over pussy too often. It is a fun ride that crafts a world for the player to get lost in. The ‘survivor’ stories are interesting and a lot of story progression is on the horizon. Although boasting an interesting story and a lot of bonding between characters, it rarely becomes exceptionally captivating. If I had to guess, the large amount of stories makes it hard to tell rich, deep emotional stories in U4iA.
PRESENTATION
Renders in U4iA look upgraded from Leap of Faith, with better lighting and detail on all of the characters. The island of Euphoria looks believable and locations, like Aaron’s trailer or the Hotel look instantly recognizable over all chapters. The quality Drifty's renders simply look better than they ever did.
There's a large diversity of characters across the game. Hair colors ranging from gingers like Teagan and Roxanne, brunettes like Gina and Pearl to blondes like Geneva and Celeste. Both mature women like Evangeline to young adults like Tuesday. Diversity is U4iA’s strongest suit, as all of these characters have their own lewd scenes. Outfits on all of the characters are pretty varied as well. U4iA has a good, consistent look and many lovely people to look at.
Intimate scenes are different, this time around. Not only did Drifty bring back sexy animations, but he's also found a way to make them cinematic and loop-able. Camera angles now pan across characters with depth of field. The result is truly immersive, and the only downside I could find is that it made doing screenshots harder. The result is absolutely cinematic.
Most of the intimate scenes are fairly straightforward and some at times feel a bit rushed. The dialog within the scenes can be hit or miss and some are even downright forgettable. Everything looks the part in this game, but somehow the scenes just aren't as enchanting as they were in Leap of Faith. If you are a fan of consistent, nice graphics - U4iA is a good game to add to your list. It ticks a lot of the boxes for a modern day VN and makes sure to put extra emphasis on camerawork during intimate cutscenes. This won't be a simple fap simulator, but you should play this if you can enjoy beautiful models.
GAMEPLAY
U4iA is a visual novel with many free roam elements in between. Some fans would say, a little too many free roam elements. Each chapter features an enclosed free roam segment where you have to find out who to talk to, and any extra objectives that pop up. There has been a bit of discussion about these elements and reportedly Drifty is looking into a VN only mode.
The visual novel parts are choice based and you will have to play multiple times in order to see everything. Just know that from the start of the dock, you can enter three paths instead of the obvious two. The third path is not picking a woman to talk to and going into the city by yourself. While choices didn't always seem super clear in their expectation to me, the choice structure works fairly well and often, you know what to expect.
Drifty once again makes use of a phone interface for a lot of miscellaneous things like text messages, gallery, music, social media and cash handling. There are specific text message segments that allow you to select answers and you will have to approve most money transfers for your bank account, while you can always check your CashMe account balance.
One thing to note about the free roam elements is that positions can change during your playtime. A person might be somewhere at one point, and could not be there after you have interacted with someone else. That may confuse players on what to do, but the answer is almost always to go looking for that person.
You will most likely need three playthroughs to see all of the content, and having to go through multiple freeroam elements multiple times that you can't really skip might get to some people. Just be aware you'll have to sink in quite some time if that's something you want to do.
OVERALL
U4iA is a great game that tells a futuristic tale of escapism and capitalism on a beautiful island. The love interests and other characters in the game are often fun, vibrant and while a little shallow at times, fit the tone of the game. As long as you don't mind free roam segments and you don't expect going into Leap of Faith 2, you will probably have a great time on the island of Euphoria.
Developer:
) 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).
