Wednesday, October 04, 2017

Stuff I missed the first time around in Monmusu Quest: Paradox and other Tips & Tricks

One of the inevitable things about JRPGs is you miss stuff, especially when you try to play them in the original Japanese.

After opening up Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] and being utterly confused as to where I was and where I was supposed to go next, I decided to play through part 1 again.  This time I had access to Dargoth's translated version.  This meant I could enjoy it more as a typical JRPG with the usual shiny side quests and distractions these games have.  It being in English also meant I could spot the things I missed first time around.

I didn't do too badly on the main plot in my original playthrough.  There were some minor things I mistranslated, but mostly it's all there.

There were a few extras I missed, some of which make the game a lot easier, so I thought I'd run through them here.

Amira gives useful advice

There's a reason that little goober is positioned right near the entrance to the pocket castle.


She's your information source.  Talk to her and she'll tell you what your current objective is as well as reeling off a list of available side quests.  If you ever get lost and don't know what you're supposed to be doing, go up to Amira and select "Ask for Information".

She also helps with:

You can recruit male members

If you played through part 1, you knew this already, as recruiting his Mecha-Popeness, the King of San Ilias, is one of the story events of the main plot.

What I didn't know, and only found out on a second playthrough, is he's not the only male character you can recruit.

The guard that gets trapped in the poison marsh in Iliasville can be recruited.  He can be found in the room with all the other NPCs giving out information on the various jobs.

You can also recruit the captains of the guards in San Ilias (John) and Sabasa (Samson) by talking to them after you've recruited Mecha-Pope and Sara.

Scat Captain can be recruited by going back to his house in Pornof to fulfill Kamuro's side quest (I think Sonya has to not be in the party as she won't let you in his house).

I'm guessing being able to recruit male characters gives people a little more variety for their ecchi.  If someone would rather the action was all monster girl on male, rather than monster girl on monster girl, they can set up their party that way.  You could even build up a reverse harem party with Alice or Sonya surrounded by a bunch of masculine dudes if you were so inclined.  I'm fine with the game having these options.

One of the male characters is actually very useful if you're trying to 100% all the monster item drops in the library.  The bottom class of items you can obtain from each monster girl is panties.  Get a character up to level 10 Gadabout and they learn a special skill "Steal Panties".

As to why you'd want to steal the panties off a monster girl... don't ask.  Compared to the rest of the stuff happening in the game, that's almost a vanilla fetish.

Anyway, Panty Sensei is rather good at this particular task.  He has a chance to steal at the beginning of combat, at the end of every combat round, and also with each normal attack.  This guy really seems to like women's underwear.  (His portrait also changes when he uses the transform skill of Hero of Justice).

If you want to go down the dark road of panty kleptomania, this dude will save you a fair bit of grinding.  You can also find him in Pornof.  Show him enough panties and he'll join the party.



And also on the subject of panties.

Boss panties can be stolen later in Hades

The bosses are one time encounters in the main story.  However, you can refight them later in the Hades room on the second floor of Ilias's temple.  This means, if you're a rabid 100% completionist, you don't have to grab their panties the first time around.  You can go back later with stronger party and steal them later.  It counts.

...assuming you have a pressing need to collect all the panties in the game.

Why am I offering tips on how to steal panties in a computer game?

Why even put this in the game in the first place, Toro Toro Resistance?

Ah, Japan.  Diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks and all that.

(It's still way tamer than most of the other stuff in the game.)

Battle Fuckers can be recruited

This might have been added in a later patch.  The battle fuckers are women scattered across the world map that reward you with items should you have enough hit points to survive their... ahem... techniques.  If you talk to them after winning they will ask to join the party.

Most of them are human, so they're fairly limited in power and how they can be levelled up.  However, a couple have some useful traits if you're looking to 100% your library.

Louise has a +50% to item drop.  You'll want her around if you're grinding through encounters to try and get their rare drop.  She's the battle fucker in Happiness Village.



Bunny-chan has a +50% to recruit rate.  Useful if you're trying to recruit every monster girl to your waifu harem.  You can find her in the casino in Pornof.



New scenes for old monster girls

About half of the monster girls in the game are repeated from the original Monster Girl Quest, right down to their H-scenes.  This has been the source of some criticism of the Paradox series, and fairly so, I think.  Although, I can understand it's a way to throw in a massive amount of encounters while on a limited dev budget.

I knew Lime (the slime girl from the starting area) had a new scene you can request in the pocket castle if you get her happiness high enough.  She's not the only one.

The leech girl has new artwork.



As does the sea cucumber girl.



Pretty nice if you like the idea of being sucked up into a monster girl and wrapped up in her soft flesh.

I don't know how many have new scenes.  I don't think it's many, unfortunately.  You can scan through the art folder in the game directory to check.  That was how I found out these two existed.

Old-school Monster Girl Quest mode

This might also be something that was added in a later patch.  The Hades room has a book shelf where you can replay the normal encounter battles.



This is useful as some of the monster girls have temptation and Bad End scenes that can't be requested in the pocket castle.  It's easier to check them out here rather than chasing through the countryside after them.

It also allows you enable what I like to think of as "classic" Monster Girl Quest mode.  One of my original criticisms of MQ:P compared to MGQ was that the traditional JRPG party mechanic lost the focus of all the sexy stuff being aimed solely at Luka that the first game had.  Well, you can emulate that here.  Just remove everyone else from the party, select the monster girl you want, and then enjoy her throwing all her sexy attacks at Luka.

(which she will have no hesitation doing)

It's a pretty nice addition as far as I'm concerned.

There is also the option to go into the Labyrinth of Chaos for players wanting some post-game content.  I'm not there yet, so I haven't had a chance to try it out.

General Hints and Tips  

Monmusu Quest: Paradox does have a bewildering array of jobs, races and skills.  Unless you're playing on the really high difficulties, you probably don't need to worry about it that much as the game is fairly easy as long as you level up enough.  If you're trying to find everything, you'll likely have a bigger problem trying to prevent your main party from over-levelling to the point where they easily curbstomp everything.

As Luka always has to be present in the party, he's the one most likely to get out of hand.  I normally give him the "Job XP Full Focus" ability to stop him hitting level 40 while everyone else is only level 20.

(Assuming you want to try out the various different monster girls.  Keeping the same party of Luka, Alice, Sonya, and A N Other should allow you to breeze through the main story line without too much grinding.)

Skills and Gear

What determines damage varies on the skill.  Swords use Att, Black Magic uses Mag, White Magic uses Will, Unarmed/Rapiers use some combination of Agi and Att, Pleasure attacks use Dex, and so on.  Hats and Armour provide more than a boost to defense.  Your character might be able to equip heavy armour, but if they're mainly using Unarmed skills, you still want to equip them in the best Gi, as that class of Chest clothing boosts Agi, which also boosts the damage of Unarmed skills.  The same is true for Robes for Black Magic uses.

(You succubi will probably want Dresses or Skimpy as their bonus to Dex will make them better able to turn your foes into quivering masses of orgasming jelly.)

Efficient Levelling and 100%ing

There are a lot of monster girls to level up should you so desire.  Some jobs provide abilities that make this a little more efficient.

Gadabout is pretty useless apart from the later jobs it's needed to unlock, but at Level 9 you get the Playfulness ability.  This gives +50% XP at the cost of the character not following orders.  Which won't matter as positions 5-8 in the party still get XP even if they don't participate in the battle.  Bondage ropes are also useful for this reason despite their hefty drawback.

Noble and King jobs can be unlocked by trading in enough medals to the Medal Queen.  Noble has a +50% XP ability and King a +100% XP ability (although you'll need to max out both Warrior and Noble first).  These abilities can still be equipped even after the character has moved onto another job.

Giving them the Job Wrist or Hard Job Wrist accessories will also speed up unlocking those abilities.

If you want to be a greedy mcgreedyson and 100% everything, a few job combinations help.

Thief and Master Thief are self-explanatory.

Fortune Teller and Gambler give +50% and +100% bonus to item drops.  (Getting the rare item drops needs the most annoying grinding in my experience)

Hunter and Monster Tamer are what you need for those +50% and +100% recruitment bonuses.

Steal Ingredient is unlocked by Cook.

Steal Material initially confused me as I thought it might be an Engineer unlock at first.  It's actually a unique skill learnt by the Wing Harpy race (they can also steal food as well).

Harpies make the best thieves if you're really greedy in nabbing resources from enemies (ah, so many hours in the various Final Fantasy games).  Mini, the phoenix in a pot you fight right near the start of the game, is probably your best party thief.  One, she's a harpy and can unlock the Wing Harpy skills.  Two, she's immune to fire and gets a free auto-rez for the first time she's knocked out.  Although, with Monmusu Quest: Paradox, I'm guessing most players have other things in mind when assembling their best waifu party. ;)

Some tip and tricks anyway.  Feel free to post your own in the comments below.  



4 comments:

  1. There's a little shiny poster on the wall directly up from Amira that shows monster sidequests. Most of them involve you taking the monster girl somewhere and her gaining a new ability from it.

    In part 1, Administrator Tower B1 is the best place to grind out job xp because it can have honey pots and mimics spawn as regular enemies.

    Encounter abilities DO stack, so if you want to grind then bring 3-4 characters with Encounter Quintuple.

    Grandeur casino has a prize item called the Demon Ward Bracelet. It makes it so you have no encounters outside of mimics and bosses when equipped. Extremely useful for cutting play time on NG+.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'd be interested in seeing what you'd make of the Ilias route, but I imagine that you won't be doing that for a long time.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I was thinking that take too much time, but to be fair, most of the time I waste is dicking around trying to reruit everyone and find out what their drops are.

      Stripped down to a tight 8-man party it might be possible to blast through with minimum grinding. I might give that a go for a laugh.

      Delete
    2. in chapter two you get upgraded to a 10 man party. I myself often swap out people to see who has story based interactions(you don't have to worry about that as much in chapter two)

      Delete