Monday, December 04, 2017

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] - 25: Marching Hills

<- Previous: Great Poison Swamp

After a completely arbitrary detour through the Great Poison Swamp in order to pick up Mephisto, it’s time to continue the journey to Grangold.  There’s the little matter of getting past that golem army.

Yep, I can see how this would be considered an obstacle

This is where Mephisto comes in.  So, what you got?

Mephisto performs some kind of magic ritual and all the golems crumble to dust.

Um, yeah.  That works.  I guess.

(Fuuuuuck)

Then it’s a long and torturous route through the hills.  And I mean long and torturous.  I think it’s around 11 or 12 screens of JRPG maps.  I’m not sure what Toro Toro Resistance was thinking here to be honest.  Did this area really need 11 or 12 separate maps for what is essentially a straight path?

The maps alternate between underground and overground sections.  The underground sections are populated with the same ant girls, automata girls and paizuri dolls that showed up in Gold Fort, albeit in greater numbers.

Hint: you probably want to keep your more flammable waifus at home for this, as squads of four paizuri dolls are quite common and they have pretty nasty flamethrower attacks to go along with their big tits.

(For some reason I have a mental image of a paizuri doll firing out jets of flame from her nipples and it was so awesome I felt I had to share it.  There must be fanart of that somewhere, maybe in one of the 4chan /vg/ threads.  And if not, why not?  Get to it, art peeps.)

The encounters are different for the overground sections.  The one Grangold monster girl we haven’t seen yet, mud golem, finally makes an appearance.

Meme lovers rejoice.  The Maiden of Mud hath returned.

She will also likely be one of the most annoying wandering monsters you’ll have to face.  Best I can tell, she is completely immune to all the turn-one insta-KO strategies.  The Digestion status can’t be put on her, so the blobs can’t Blob Boa her.  She can’t be put in a trance, so the carnivorous plant girls can’t stuff her in their pitchers and be done with her.  I don’t think she can bound either, so lamias can’t use Swallow on her.  This just leaves regular damage and the enemies at this point have grown so damage-spongey, it’s a bit of a hassle.  I think I ended up running from her encounters unless I was trying to recruit her or get all her item drops.

The other two monster girl encounters are brand new harpies.

And something for the harpy fans...

Wing Harpy and Harpy Knight will likely be a welcome relief for those who prefer their monster girls to be of a more vanilla persuasion (especially after Plansect and Mephisto’s School of Nope).

So which one shall we have fun with?  Wing harpy’s wings do look rather soft and fluffy.  Now just to persuade the rest of the party to take a short break…

Her wings are very fluffy and she wraps her legs tightly around our back to hold us in place for the sexy times fucking.  Harpy pussies are tight and hers gets tighter until she’s coaxed us into emptying out a full load.

Do not disturb - Intense baby-making in progress

According to harpy law that now makes us husband and waifu, and she flies Luka back to the Harpy Village for more intensive baby-making.  Together, we have an adorable daughter and raise a happy little family (as well as having wild harpy sex every night).

Wait.  Are we sure this is the Bad End?

Oh well, I guess someone else will have to save the world.

I guess that falls to canon!Luka of this dimensional plane/reality.  Sorry bud, no happy harpy families for you.

At the end of this very long slog through the Marching Hills (that name seems appropriate now), we are faced with one remaining giant golem girl.

Like Mud Golem, but 'ard

She’s been upgraded to a full-fledged boss fight this time around, which makes sense.  It also ends up being a relatively easy boss fight as golem makes the foolish mistake of grabbing Luka early in the fight.  Luka-bait cheese is a decent strategy against most bosses, especially if he’s in a job that gives bonuses to HP.  While the healer concentrates on keeping Luka alive through escalating pleasure attacks the other two members have free rein to hit the boss with everything they got.

(This is another ridiculous one to visualise – a giant golem girl attempting to use Luka as a dildo while being blasted with various magic attacks.  Oh, if only Monster Girl Quest had the budget of a Skyrim or Witcher 3.)

With golem girl’s defeat that means we’re through the Marching Hills.  But before we return to the world map, the action switches to happenings elsewhere.  We’re taken to a cutscene where the forces of the alliance (coalition, or whatever it is) are marching directly on the King of Grangold.

Who are you again?

I feel like the character sprite should be familiar, but I really don’t remember much from this section of the original Monster Girl Quest.  Didn’t the original Arachne Princess try to eat him at some point?

I think she’d struggle this time around.  Something is not right with the king.  He takes a lance right through the heart and doesn’t even flinch.

I don't think he's human anymore...

He responds by obliterating most of the opposing army with lightning.  After that he mumbles something about “the queen is calling” and that he “must get back”.

A future boss fight?

We’ll see when we enter Grangold’s central region and the capital itself.

-> Next: Grangold

9 comments:

  1. Calling it now - this 'King,' is an 'Ant'-poster.
    ...
    ...
    ...
    Because an 'Imp'-poster would be much tougher to pull off. :snort:

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  2. No, this king is just much more badass compared to VN counterpart...because reasons?

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  3. The campfire scene a few steps away reveals the lore behind Grangold King if you talk to Mephisto.
    It turns out the humans in MGQ are actually Ilias's second attempt.
    The originals had strength equal to monsters, but were highly unstable. Mental issues, inability to control their powers, infertility, etc. Eventually Ilias scrapped them in favor of modern humans, which are mediocre but at least function as a species.

    Except she didn't do away with the old humans entirely. Their blood lives on in the royal families of Sabasa, Grand Noah, and Grangold.
    So what happened is that someone awakened Grangold King's latent potential.

    If you picked Ilias as your companion, during Melphisto's lore dump she admits it's all true.

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    1. Nice. That's the stuff I don't pick up on with machine translation.

      I do need to do that Ilias playthrough at some point! :)

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    2. I hope you do, they have some pretty notable differences in part 2 and way it sounds they will have two different endings and branch into their own paths in part 3

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  4. I have to say, you picked the right harpy to focus on...

    I'm surprised Mud Golem Girl is only just now making an appearance, considering golem girls have been an issue for a little while. Makes sense that she can't be one-hit KO'd, if anything I would imagine she would be the one stuffing your party into herself in a single turn. Unfortunately I doubt they gave her any new art, is her ending or is it still "absorbs Luka and uses him as a permanent battery"?
    That brings up a question I've been wondering about, how do they justify the Bad Ends if Luka is in a party?
    In MGQ parts 1 and 2, it was made clear that Alice simply abandoned him if he got dragged underground by an Earthworm girl or swarmed and dragged away by Frog Girls. And in part 3, I think the creator mentioned that if Luka was defeated(presumably by either angel or monstergirl)then Ilias would use the opportunity to send angels to capture Alice and drag her back to heaven to subdue her with eternal pleasure.
    But here I find it hard to believe that Luka would be up to his neck in Mud Golem Girl breast and sinking while his party just shrugged. Or let's say a Honeypot captures Luka and he is barely clinging to the pot's lip to keep from being pulled in entirely. Honeypot then proceeds to wipe the team, and with no one to help him out happily drags him entirely into her pot for prolonged loving. When the party eventually wakes up, no one tries to drag him out of there?
    (Naturally I know this doesn't work when a succubus kills him, or when things like the Anglerfish girl absorb him as he is physically assimilated into being part of her and can't simply be pulled out)

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    1. If you choose to succumb to a temptation move the party just assumes Luka is an irredeemable pervert and abandons him.

      For party wipes not involving Luka the logic is a little sketchier. I suppose it could be explained by having dead mean dead with no recovery afterwards if the party is beaten. Then you'd have to assume that includes the backup party as well, or they decide the enemy is too strong and make a run for it. None of that is really a good explanation, but games always have to abstract a bunch of that stuff anyway.

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    2. The temptation explanation both makes sense and is amusing so I'm fine with it. I know most of the logic here is abstract but I find it interesting to try to apply logic to game mechanic, especially for such an usual sort of game, lol.
      For some reason I find it hard to believe that most party wipes would result in their death...by some of the bosses maybe(or Xelvy's horrors) sure but even tiny Ilias can be murdered by a basic slime...
      To the more mobile girls the explanation is easy enough: Wing Harpy defeats them, rides Luka to exhaustion, and by the time the party is coming to the harpy is a speck in the sky with Luka wrapped in her thighs. Or for any monstergirl that brings him somewhere to share like the Frog Girls, the party can't realistically fight through that many to rescue him.
      Or the party could be facing monstergirl horny enough to put them all in the same fate. i.e. Everyone is simultaneously grabbed by a different Honeypot before individually being overpowered and sucked in for pickled loving.
      Or it could be as simple as Honeypot/Mimic/Shellfish Girl pulls him in and shuts her lid/chest/shell and none in the party are strong enough to force it open after that point.
      Also what you said about the party being forced to give up could be onto something, especially since Luka's fluids are always highly praised. It could be that the monstergirl who gets the better of him is empowered by this. So in the case of Mud Golem Girl above, she barely manages to wipe party, Luka sinks into her and is trapped. She begins milking him inside herself, making herself stronger (and him weaker, making escape even that much more impossible). The party wakes up and tries to fight her, only to realize that not only is not having Luka making them weaker as a group, but the Mud Golem Girl is far stronger now that she's absorbed him and is using him as a battery. At which point they either get sucked in themselves or just handily defeated, either way the result is Mud Golem Girl being able to bounce and jiggle away with him unopposed.

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    3. *even tiny Ilias can't be murdered

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