Sunday, May 03, 2015

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox! part 40

Grandoll (Moar Succubus!)

This is part 40 of my Monmusu Quest: Paradox playthrough (part 1 here).  Now with 100% more succubus.

Last up we'd just returned from the succubus-induced wreckage of Luddite Village and Queen Sara had stepped down to become Swordmaiden Sara (When what we really want is Succubus Sara).

As an aside I think I'll also echo my disappointment in how Sara is handled in the party.  She's single race Human.  I was expecting her to be dual race Human/Succubus.  None of her request moves utilise her succubus form.  This is odd given that Paradox has been extremely efficient in re-using the art assets from MGQ and Succubized Sara had a ton of CG scenes in MGQ: Chapter 3.  It makes me think those aspects of Sara will be 'unlocked' at a later point in the game.

Back to the story.  A guard bursts in with a message from the Witch Hunt Village.  Its real name is Magian Stare (ok, it probably isn't, but that's what machine translation spits out).   Civil war has broken out with demon fighting demon.

In the original MGQ series Witch Hunt Village was the fiefdom of mad sorceress Lily.  Sounds like she's having a harder time of it in Paradox.

Luka agrees to take the detour to sort it out.  Alice agrees.  It's a fight between opposing demon factions and as she's the demon lord she should get involved.  She also thinks it will be good training before they tackle the 3rd Tartarus pit.

Witch Hunt Village is to the west, but as it involves a substantial detour around the mountains Sara suggests stopping off at Grandoll (my translator says Grand Dole, but the reasoning given behind Grandoll in the comments from a couple of days back sounds better) on the way.

Getting to Grandoll is a little awkward as involves circling around the top to cross the right bridges.


One of Sara's guards meets us at the entrance to the town.  He's having a little difficulty concentrating.  A succubus has taken over the theatre and her presence is distracting everyone.

So what's in Grandoll?

Hmm, I think I found the battle-fucker.


Her name is Melody and dancing is her speciality.


Unfortunately for her, my Luka has done a little too much battling on my mission to find everything and recruit every monster girl.  He's a little over-levelled (I think TTR recommends characters should be around level 24 at the end of Paradox chapter 1.  My Luka is already at 27).  It's not even close.  Luka still has 300 HP left even after Melody has done her sexy dance.  The reward is the Dancing scroll.

At this point I should confess it took me a very long time to figure out what these open scrolls are actually for.  Skills are all grouped under classes (White Magic, Thievery, Mercantile, Dancing).  The different jobs and races all have access to various skills.  If you move a character to a job/race that doesn't have access to the right skill class, they will still know the skill but will be unable to use it.  Equipping them the relevant skill class scroll will enable them to use the skills they've learned even if their current job/race doesn't allow it.  This is very useful if you want to, for example, level Remi up in Magician after maxing out Priest and White Mage and still be able to access her White Magic skills.

Ilias is also in town, still with only an entourage of a slime girl and dog girl.  She and Alice finally find some common ground.  The cookies of Grandoll are delicious.

There's a house where one dude appears to have a harem of around 10 mermaids.  Well, if you've got the dosh…

Grandoll is freakin' huge.  I wonder if TTR got a little carried away when building these settlements.  Talking to the various NPCS unlocks more rumours.  Everyone loves Saki.  The war has shut down the weapons store.  Everyone thinks Grand Noah's ant girl forces are going to batter everyone in the war.  Gnome is to the north and some people are baking bread for Gnome day, whatever that is.

Oh, and there's another mafiosa type running things.  They have a massive mansion in the north of the town.  There's a rumour the Don might have been involved in an attempt on Robo-Pope's life (before he became Robo-Pope).  We're allowed in because of our connections to Erika in Monte Carlo (at the time I wondered what that actually did, now it seems to be a checkpoint on a rather long side quest).

The Don is upstairs.  His name's Merlin.  Hmm, that name seems familiar from somewhere, and not the Arthurian legend.  He gives the standard villain justification speech about controlled evil being better than uncontrolled evil and how the former Sabasa king understood that enough to leave him alone.


After we leave there's a cutscene where a very slick-looking Lazarus crawls out from hiding under the table.  Ah, this Merlin was the same dude that was part of the original adventuring party with Lazarus and Marcellus.  Hmm, shenanigans menanigans.  I'm guessing TTR is seeding stuff here for future chapters.  Unsurprisingly, Lazarus seems just as untrustworthy as his MGQ-series counterpart.


Then it's time to head off to the theatre to deal with the succubus.  The theatre is full of Saki's adoring fans.  She's currently bouncing around on the stage.  We go up and challenge her for good, decency and that sort of thing.



Like a plonker, I do the save-to-reload-later-and-see-Bad-End thing, only to save right over.  Thankfully, TTR added the Hades section for people that wanted to re-fight the one-off fights.  One quick thrown fight later and we see Saki's Bad End.


She drains Luka to death in an after-hours live sex show-cum-execution.  Yeah, she's probably a bad girl.

After being beaten Saki is sad that her show is being shut down.  Then she notices we travel a lot and asks if she can come with us for 'Saki's World Tour'.  Why yes, we'd love to have the gorgeous and sexy pop superstar join our harem… cough… team.

UN_DO's monster girls so far have had multiple scenes with a lot of variety.  So it's a little disappointing that Saki's three request scenes are all variations on the same pose (although each has additional options).

One of them is amusing in that if Luka abstains from masturbating over her sexy new costume, she sprouts some feelers and jerks him off anyway.  Even MGQ's milder-looking succubi have a bit of the Lovecraftian to them.


There are additional scenes with Saki that are similar to her Bad End.  They involve unlocking some additional content by speaking to the stage manager with Saki in the party.

At first the manager is depressed about most of his audience leaving now that Saki has gone.  Nice one breaking it, Luka.  Come back to him with Saki in the party and it unlocks the option to put on various stage shows depending on which monster girls have been recruited.  There are rewards for each show, but mostly they're there to provide laughs as various monster girls try to put on a show but end up trying to eat each other or injuring the audience.  Saki's extra scenes appear at the bottom of the menu – Saki after hours – where she'll put on a sex show involving Luka.  The gold cost for each is waived if Saki's affection is taken up to 100 in the castle.

Right, that's enough fun and games (and the theatre shows are worth checking out even though they don't have CGs).  Tomorrow we continue the journey around the mountains to Witch Hunt Village.

Oh, as we're at 40 posts (and nearly 40K words), I suppose I should put in a plug for my books.  If you like what you've read so far and like to read about sexy (and bad) succubi doing sexy (and bad) things, you might want to check out my ebooks.  They can be bought from Amazon here, or Smashwords here, or directly from my publisher here.  This is the best way to support what I'm doing, and you'll also get plenty of sexy reading material in return ;).

14 comments:

  1. Desert Eagle03/05/2015, 15:53

    I liked Saki but there wasn't enough room in my party for her. And, frankly, I'm reserving spots for other monster girls I suspect to appear in part two.

    ...

    Saki sparkle ~★!

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    1. I hear ya. The choice for who to have is insane. I came up with some plans on how to level up various monster girls based on their traits, but I'll probably wait for the full English translation to take the level-up everyone approach. I won't be able to keep to the daily schedule if I do it now.

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    2. I generally try to stick to "unique" monsters - bosses and such - with preference given to main characters.
      So, Luka, [Alice/Ilias], Sonya, Hild, and Sara are my main team. (Actually, it's generaly Alice AND Ilias. I cheat.)
      I would use Sylph and Gnome, but I dislike using "incomplete sets", so I probably won't use them until I have Undine and Salamander, too.
      Also, I'd use the Four Bandits, but I don't like the Four Bandits. Children are annoying, and they're all far to childish. Same for Mini, the Phoenix.
      Which means I tend to use the rest of the party slots for Eve (ultimate support) and whatever character's side quest I'm currently doing...

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  2. "There's a rumour the Don might have been involved in an attempt on Robo-Pope's life (before he became Robo-Pope)."
    I'm going to point out, again, that the *main* suspect was Lazarus.
    And yah, Merlin, Lazarus and [Sonya's mother] were the companions of Marcellus, Luka's father. In this world, they went on a quest, but came back just fine. Sonya's mother died a few years later in an accident, and Lazarus adopted Sonya.
    Merlin mentiones that he was afraid they (Luka and Sonya) would recognise him, but that luckily, they were only a few years old when they last met.

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  3. The depth of the RPG mechanics in this game is pretty crazy. I think this is the only H-game that I know of that cares this much about its mechanics, it is interesting to see that it has put a lot of effort into it's story, mechanics and H-scenes, and not compromised much on any of those.

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    1. ROBF is similar. It doesn't have the staggering range of monster girls, but the battles have animations and are a little more focused on battle-fucking (more like the original MGQ). Unfortunately the creator has a beef with Western audiences over piracy fears and has made it very difficult for us to get hold of/play their game :(

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    2. Get ahold of legit, sadly his fear of piracy makes it where one can only pirate it easily >.>

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  4. If you go to the pyramid with Sara in your party and talk to the Sphinx around this time, they have a little talk; Sara thanks the Sphinx, the Sphinx mentions how Sara appears to still be in human form, and then Sara talks about how she still feels the influence of the Succubi Sisters' spell in that form.

    The Sphinx confirms their existence, but also confirms that they had definitely died in this universe so something is afoot.

    But yeah, Sara will definitely get her succubus form later, just not now.

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    1. "and then Sara talks about how she still feels the influence of the Succubi Sisters' spell in that form."
      Oh. Yah, that works as explanation. Would've been nice if they hadn't hidden it away like that, though...

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  5. Huh didn't expect Saki to drain you to death, always assumed she kept you around as a side show of sorts. She never seemed to of striked me as the killer type.

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  6. I can assure you, Hydra, you are not the only one whose team is completely overtrained by now. My Luca is Lv. 29 at the moment and the others are 30 because of the bondage ropes, would have been nice to tell the audience where you get those ropes (you get them by stealing from the imps in the cave of trials).

    Melody can't do anything, the only hard BF till now was Don Dahlia, did about 404 damage and totally overpowered when you meet her the first time even with an overlevelled team.
    Melody: http://i.imgur.com/06Gk9k0.jpg
    I just kept dawdling around somehow to get all those monster girls, haha.
    Also if you're using V1.2a or something you can exploit the fishie bug from the slime girl at the first "dungeon" where you have to save Hans to get as much fish/money as you want as she always gives you a fish when you talk to her so get 99 fishies and sell them to the any merchant in Iliasville and you get easy money early on with little effort, really helps at the beginning when you normally don't have the money to buy good equip. (You get 10 gold for one fish and can carry a maximum of 99 fishies= 990 Gold per run; just keep holding the key "A" for fast forward chat and hit Enter as fast as you can to get money as fast as possible, haha) (This bug was fixed with V10.1 or so I think).
    I really like that Pokemon style even though I got the same problem as with Pokemon, that I'm so obsessed about getting all available monsters while levelling so that my team is always overpowered :(
    Still can't beat that Sphinx at the moment though, haha.
    She has that nasty party wipe that deals roughly 1000 dmg and always kills my priests/white mages even when buffed with mdef and def XD
    And from then on it's a downhill battle as you have to keep reviving your healers, buffing them and can't deal damage and then she wipes every other character that was left XD
    I got that huge Nanabi at LV 23 though. XD
    Next time I'll definitely play with Ilias, I really liked Alice in the last game, but this time she seems a bit boring, at least till now.

    Kahzel

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    1. lol. a few good tips for sphinx:
      firstly, if you win, she gives you some swweet gear (i wasn't paying enough attention, so i dunno exactly what). then she goes difficulty +1. i haven't managed to beat her a second time yet. a summoner is mandatory for this fight. carbuncle cuts away her strongest AoE, and reflects it back for more damage on her. Lakshimi will give you full hp party wide heals. and phoenix can deal decent damage, and will revive any1 incapacitated on your frontline. you'll prolly do best with a genie or Chrome for your summoner. their passives will let you build them fighter/style and keep the summoner abilities. you don't want a summoner for damage here anyways. a good thing to remember is carbuncle only lasts two rounds. so cast it, have your summoners next move count. because after that you'll need to recast another carbuncle to keep it up. high evasion race/class fighters is a must. carbuncle cuts away her strongest AoE, but she has two others that will destroy anyone on your team w/ less than 700 hp. her direct pleasure attacks are also nasty, dealing 1k+ easily. realistically, every1 on your party needs a bare minimum of 900 hp for safety. and they should truthfully all be over 1350 hp if you can manage that, simply because her highest damage single target attack is still short of that. abuse harem passives like chrome's to get the skills or spells you want on fighter geared job/race combinations. realistically, you don't want casters here. even evasion heavy ones. because if they get hit once, your in trouble. my genie is currently leveling warrior so i can get her a combat capable build. she's my strongest summoner, but 830-odd hp isn't enough. if Sphinx can kill your summoner easily, your whole formation will crumble. its truthfully that mandatory. mass-rez on Phoenix, full hp party-wide healing with Lakishima, and spell immunity due to reflect shields from Carbuncle. it makes the impossible possible. if she kills your summoner, you need it back and stable in literally 1 round. if not, Sphinx is going to start throwing around AoE damage and Direct damage hard and heavy enough you won't make it. carbuncle only lasts 2 rounds, so keep recasting every second round for that overlap. that way, if she kills your summoner, you at least have one magic immune round to try and get her back. that's about all the advice i can give. also, don't use multi-hit builds on her if you can help it. her resistances and nullification are a nightmare. i pumped an overpowering fist job avis race ostrich girl to 188 atk, 202 agi. she only hits for about 400 or so w/ each strike in exploding strikes. a multi hit build is the best for high damage. but the amount of raw stat you need makes it hard. single, heavy strike skills are better if you can't do that. that way you can at least hit for 400-500 damage w/ a throwaway fighter rather than go "noblesse oblige + dancing sabre" "Sphinx took no damage x6"

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  7. "TTR recommends players lvl 24 by the end of chapter 1" Me: "crap, luka's been 30 since before san ilia castle...." Nanabi: "i've been 30 since you won my fight w/ a team of 22-28 lvl nonsense monsters and crammed me into that poke-castle facefirst"

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  8. if you want a pure gold common sense tip: when your running around playing Monster Pimp Quest in under leveled areas - by which i of course mean promoting coexistance between monsters and humanity. gotta start somewhere right? and you do sorta have a big-ass castle, and a whole lotta sausage. anyways, defensive statements aside. grab a bunch of hard job wrists, and put them on your FRONTLINE. if your frontline is level 30, and don't need accessory stats/effects, they lose nothing. and will level jobs AND races twice as fast. in luka's case, that 4x as fast w/ job xp full focus. now, back to trying to get a team full of high undead.

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