Wednesday, December 06, 2017

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] - 26: Grangold

<- Previous: Marching Hills

Bloomin’ Hell, the Marching Hills were aptly named.  That was one hard slog.  But we’re finally through the pass guarded by the golem army and into central Grangold, where the capital lies.

Before we get to Grangold City, there is another one of those camping night scenes where we can go around and talk to all the various storyline characters.  At this point we seem to have accumulated a fair few of them.

These camping sessions are getting crowded

Undine is imitating Lime as a joke.  Leave the poor country slime girl alone.  Eva talks a little bit about the succubus village.  Apparently she’s banned from returning there for some reason.  (The other comedy aspect to Eva’s character is how all the imps are determined to not end up like her.)

Mephisto has perhaps the most interesting snippet.  At first she acts the prim and proper schoolmistress, as if this nothing more than a school camping trip with unruly pupils.  It’s kooky enough to be likable.  Talk to her around the campfire and she gives a little bit more background.  She says she is helping out Luka and company to help out Grand Noah, because the Demon Queen ordered to help out Grand Noah.  Perversely, this help is now going towards stopping what’s happening in Grangold, which is also the cause of the Demon Queen.  Alice asks Mephisto if she’s okay with this obvious contradiction and Mephisto seems fine with it.

My reading comprehension of Japanese is non-existent, and so I’m incapable of picking up crafty nuance, but I wonder if Mephisto is using all this as a loophole to oppose a plan she disagrees with.  We already know the four heavenly knights aren’t happy with the orders they’ve been given and following orders that contradict the main scheme to the exact letter would be one way of rebelling without technically being seen to rebel.  I don’t know how accurate this is, as Mephisto also seems quite fanatical and not bothered by the resulting destruction all-out war would cause, but it would give her character a lot of interesting depth if this was the case.

Moving onto Alice, and she mentions that the cloud of magical “lust” smothering the whole of Grangold is beyond Queen Ant’s abilities.  She suspects the involvement of the Lilith sisters.  Then she teaches Luka an axe skill I suspect I will forget and never use for the rest of the game.

In the city the people are really suffering from the effects of the lust cloud.  Several have collapsed.  The party fools the ant girl patrols wandering around by pretending to also be under the influence of the lust cloud.

As with Goddard, there’s not a lot to be done here as all the NPC have been rendered mindless zombies by the magical influence.  The battle fucker is also locked in her house and refusing to see any visitors.  (This pleases Sonya as she does not approve of Luka frequenting these ladies.)

We need to meet another contact, who can be found in the bar.

As always, the pub is the place to go

In yet another twist, it turns out to be Lazarus.

The real Don Father

Lazarus is the real Don Father.  Merlin, who is also present, was only pretending to be in charge when we bumped into him in Grandeur.  Lazarus’s men have infiltrated the city and planted a bunch of bombs.  These aren’t targeted at civilians as Lazarus says they need to win the support of the populace after overthrowing Queen Ant.  The plan is to use all the explosions as a distraction and then infiltrate the castle through the sewers.

When you’re ready, go up and talk to Lazarus again.  He and Merlin will join the party and begin the quest.  Sonya asks if it’s okay for Lazarus to join in on all the adventure stuff considering his arm is busted.  He tells her he’s a gun specialist now.  As he says, it doesn’t take as much effort to pull a trigger.

NOTE: This is another ‘locked-in’ story quest.  Once you begin it you won’t be able to teleport and do other things until the quest is complete.

Right, now that we’re on that path, it’s time to go to the entrance to the sewers.  They can be found here:

The secret sewer entrance

This is blocked off normally, but as we’re locked into the story quest, it’s open now and Lazarus leads us into the sewers through a secret door while bombs go off around the rest of the city.  The sewers are another dungeon location.  Again we get yet more of the ant and automata girls.  At least there’s one brand new monster – black golem.

A new doll to play with

Her “temptation” move is to open up her body and attempt to swallow Luka into it.

Um, can we stop playing now?

I think that’s less a temptation move than a grab and gulp.  And gulp she does.  Luka vanishes into her black stuff with only a forlorn wave of a hand to remember him by.

I don't like this game

MQ:P doesn’t always do a good transition from Loss by Temptation to Bad End and this is one of the more egregious offenders as Luka somehow ends up back outside black golem’s body for his finale.  I suppose that means she gets to swallow him again.

No, this doesn't make it bett-  Ooh, that feels good.

At least this time she’s nice enough to give us a big sloppy blowjob before absorbing us into her black interior.  No happy Beyond the End this time.  Her interior is her “reactor” and she’s powered by squeezing out the life energy of any man she absorbs.  alt!Luka gets a few euphoric orgasms before becoming a flat battery.

The tech down in the sewers is fairly advanced, but not as advanced as the secret lab.  Promestein speculates that they’ve been doing a fair bit of research into makina as well as magic.

Just as we’re about to leave the sewer, King Grangold puts in an appearance.  Alice notices he seems way too powerful for a mere human.  Merlin and Lazarus move to take him on and he promptly reveals his non-human nature by transforming into some kind of chimera.

A monster... dude?

What?  Monster Girl Quest has monster dudes now?

Lazarus and Merlin stay back to hold him off while we climb a ladder into the castle.  There’s no need to worry if you had them in your party proper as we’re followed up the ladder by one of those NPCs that act as a mobile inn/party change point.

And that’s that for Grangold and its sewers.  Next up we forge our way into the castle proper in an attempt to find out what’s up with the country.

-> Next: Grangold Castle

3 comments:

  1. Mephisto doesn't oppose the plan. She's just that confident in her master, even though she speculates the end-game of all of this is killing everyone (herself included).
    In Ilias' route Mephisto gets called a fanatic on-par with Eden, which also leads to some more dialogue. Ilias starts regretting how abused Eden was, including the tale of how she begged Luka's mom Lucifina to not leave only to get stomped in the face. Actually, there are a few hints throughout Ilias' route that Lucifina was pretty sadistic before settling down and living as a human.

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  2. According to 4Chan, you learn on the Ilias route that "monster dude" isn't correct (despite how it looks) and the actual case is.. something to do with Proto-humans and how Ilias influenced humanity's evolution.

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  3. remember Replicant in chapter 3 her DNA was 100% human it's the same thing here just more retro. XD

    take the following with a grain of salt since it's based on my own translation.
    old humans were powerful but most of them were little better then beast without reason. Ilias' light had a strong impact on the human soul causing a quantitative leap in both mentality and spirituality, but at the cost of their physical and magical prowess with few exceptions where the old blood still runs strong(like various royal families around the world). in the case Sara this is one of the reasons her potential as a monster is so high is because her monster blood is stimulating her proto-human blood and visaversa causing a synergistic effect once one of them was awakened.

    by the by around the quest to unlock Worm Summoner race for human should be available now.

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