Friday, April 20, 2018

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] - 63: Final Side Quests and Recruiting Alma Elma

Beginning

<- Previous: The Final Boss

Wotcha doing Hydra?  Isn’t the game done?  Haven’t the final credits rolled?

Well yes.  But there are a couple of side quests that open up after the final credits.  Yes, I know side quests aren’t normally that interesting or important, but these add some juicy background info, so I thought I should cover them.

La Croix

La Croix’s circus of zombie monster girl queens has various pictures in the graphics folder, so I knew they’d show up at some point.  As we got further and further into the game I was wondering if they’d be the final boss to mirror alt!La Croix being the last NPC encountered in part 1.  Then with the snow continent and all the angels it became clear that the plot had moved past that point.

La Croix can be found in the mysterious ruins southeast of the Bird God Shrine.

Here, again

The first time we came here, Alice warned us that the monsters were too powerful for our current level and advised leaving well alone.  Return here after the credits and she’s happy for us to explore as we’ve already encountered and defeated plenty of the same chimera monster girls in the Ilias Temple Ruins.

We also now have a way of opening the door to the old research lab.  It uses the same keycard that we picked up while being sent back in time to the catastrophe at Remina.

(I suspect it also opens the locked door in the Remina castle tartarus region as well, but I didn’t get around to trying as I still haven’t levelled up enough to open the tier III chests.)

There are a few chests and plenty of gravestones in the ruins.  La Croix can be found on the top floor.  You walk in on her while she’s in the middle of an argument with the doll master girl from the mysterious tower in part 1.

Professional disagreements

La Croix is trying to persuade the doll master, unsuccessfully, to not follow Black Alice as she intends to destroy everything.  The argument being “you create, why follow someone hellbent on destroying everything?”

The doll master remains unpersuaded and teleports away, leaving us with La Croix.

Who immediately sics her zombie circus on us, despite Chrome’s best efforts to get through to her sister.

First wave of zombie monster girl queens

The circus attacks in two groups of three.

Second wave.  We also have too many Queen Harpy entries in the database.

There is the same group Bad End as the original series.  Each member also has their own separate scene that can be requested after they’re recruited.  I can’t remember if these are new or not.  Also, while checking the graphics folder of one of the more recent patches, I noticed TTR has added artwork of the circus members in their original non-zombified forms.

Former Queen Harpy when she was looking a little... fresher

I’m not sure what they’re doing there, but it’s cool to see the old monster girl queens in their original forms.  Maybe we’ll encounter them in part 3.

After we beat her zombies, La Croix acknowledges Chrome has found some strong companions.  She still possesses the same doomed fatalism her original series version had, but Chrome is able to knock her out of this by telling her about her alternate reality counterpart - the one that held on to document the end of a doomed world in the hope that one day her research could be used by someone wanting to prevent the same thing happening to their world.  The only one that could understand these notes is another La Croix, so this La Croix takes them on and leaves to research their contents.  She bequeaths her circus to us in order to continue the fight.  Six more new recruits to Luka’s harem army.

Another top-level job unlock item can be found on the table to the right.  At this point I think I have them all apart from the one (or more) that need to be won off Lazarus in the pocket castle casino.

Funnily enough, if you talk to Titania (the zombie fairy queen) back in the castle with Alicetroemeria, she’s the only one that recognises and dares to acknowledge Black Alice for who she really is.  She even asks her why she’s disguised herself as a wizard.

“Mischief,” Alicetroemeria replies.

I do like this incarnation of Black Alice.  I’m really curious to see how she features in the plot of part 3.

Overall, I thought the La Croix side quest felt a little tacked on.  As if TTR knew he needed to include it, but couldn’t quite fit it in cleanly.

Morrigan’s Side Quest

Morrigan’s side quest is worth doing as it gives a lot of interesting background info, an extremely powerful new party member, and leaves us with a nice post-credits stinger for the next part.

Her side quest pops up on the main notice board after she joins the party.  She wants to go to the underground research lab in Luddite Village.  Promestein also wants to come along.

The quest objective is again the machinery at the back of the lab where we first picked up Hild.

Back again.  The 3rd time now?

Once you get there Morrigan will go into more detail about the shikibi’s plan, and why they didn’t run when the world looked utterly destroyed.

The simple reason is they couldn’t.  They cannot travel between realities.  Only Luka, Marcellus and gods can do that.  They got here through the same method they’re using to transfer all the souls back to their world.  When the soul is transferred, it merges with its counterpart on the monster girl world and they sort of amalgamate back into a shared personality.  This is what Morrigan and sisters did.  They merged with their counterparts here and broke them out of whatever was sealing them away.

And yes, that does mean what you think it means.  Morrigan confirms it right after.  In order to do this, they had to kill themselves in the other world.  This becomes especially poignant when you realise that even if their plan succeeds, they themselves would be unable to go back.  That is some unexpected insight into their character and motives.

This does leave a slight plot hole around alt!Tamamo’s appearance in Grangold Castle, but the game even thinks of that, although with machine translation I found the explanation a little hard to parse.  I think it’s a projection, or related to how Tamamo can break her seal to manifest in her weaker loli-fox form.

Oh, and that new recruit?  She comes along right after.

There's our gal

This answers something I was wondering about.  I’d heard Alma Elma could be recruited post-credits, but didn’t know how.

Unsurprisingly, she’s not going to let us do this without a fight.  She feels Morrigan is owed a good kicking and will not be persuaded otherwise.  Yes, she is technically on our side, but she’s also the Queen Succubus and feels strongly that she should not allow other succubi to behave with such brutality.  Morrigan tries to explain they had “reasons” (and fuck those assholes in the Luddite Village anyway), but Alma Elma is not going to be swayed.  So, fight.

This is a proper fight as well.  Alma Elma isn’t going to hold anything back, so you’re probably going to need the same party you fought Sonya Chaos with, otherwise Alma Elma will seduce everyone and trigger a mass orgy pile-on for lucky poor Luka.

After you beat her, Alma Elma will join the party for good.

There is also a nice stinger to prep us for part 2.  Promestein copies the files and as she does so she mentions they're called the “the Laplace Protocols.”  Interesting...

And that seems an appropriate place to leave it.

I hope you've enjoyed this series.  It took quite a bit longer and was a lot more work than I anticipated, but was still fun to do.  I don’t use a Patreon or anything like that to fund this, but I do have various books available on Amazon (and other online bookstores - I write under the name M.E. Hydra).  If you’ve enjoyed this series and would like to show your appreciation, please feel free to pick up one (or more!) of my books.  They are also packed full of sexy Bad Ends given out by delectable succubi and other monster girls.  If you like the MGQ series, you’ll also enjoy my books.

Next week I’ll tag on a few lightweight posts with my overall thoughts on the series while I work out what to move onto next (I'm fully aware I've been neglecting my own fiction of late and want to take steps to correct this).

Before I go, the Alma Elma fight did finally answer one question I'd had since looking up her Bad End scene artwork in the graphics folder.  There was one picture that wasn't used in her request scenes and I did wonder whether it had been scratched out for being a little bit too far.

Nope, it's used here.

The nicest of gals... the worst of fates...

Yep, Luka buddy.  I’d highly recommend not losing this particular fight.

And that seems a perfect footnote to end things on.  Thanks for reading!

10 comments:

  1. To be honest whe i played it, i had old version with no side quests.
    But i can say that with Ilias you have a tiny additional scene with La Croix. Sonya saying to Chrome that she has a good sister and Sonya somewaht jealous because she never had one.
    At this moment Luka again having flashback with Chaos Sonya and Adramelek.
    Hmm, they do have same hair color. To be honest i was sure, Sonya would be Adramelek in part 2. Seems its something diffrent.

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    1. Some speculate that Adramelek is actually the apoptosis version of Sonya's mom.

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    2. I heard that too, but why? I don't see logic here. SDony is person who never existed in the original world and close to Luka. So its logical for her to be Apoptosis.
      But Karen is dead in both worlds.

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  2. There are a few more side quests I've heard about in the updated versions but haven't gotten around to touching yet.
    One involves Promestein making contact with some kind of multiversal organization, and being told to come back once her own studies can contribute something.
    The other involves some of Black Alice's ancient monsters bailing when they realize they're not guests at the tea party, but decorations on the table.

    The living versions of Cirque Du Croix appear in the Labyrinth of Chaos 2.0 as bosses I think. TRTR has said the living versions will appear for real at some point, presumably in that monster dominated world.
    Speaking of the labyrinth, the entrance has a spear wielding adult version of that little dragon girl Papi. Will adult versions of the four bandits also appear in part 3?
    The circus and a grown up girl aren't the only part 3 secrets the labyrinth holds.
    Did you know that the original labyrinth in part 1 spoiled Sonya's first two forms?

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    1. Wello, i also saw 2 new Apoptosis (i think) on youtube as final bosses at Labyrinth. But i would not spoil them.

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  3. Not going to do any Ilias Route stuff? A shame, but I appreciate you want to be able to get back to doing your own writing.

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    1. I need to get back to my own writing at this point. I'll probably run through it in private once Dargoth finishes the English translation. A windows 10 update managed to break ITH again. :(

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  4. Right, so this is just me and my weird opinions, but... wasn't one of those Luddite assholes... a kid? And there was a merchant there, who only pretended that nothing was wrong so that he could supply the people there with food and medicine.
    While I can agree that whatever assholish thing they did, they probably deserved it, but I don't think everyone who died deserved to. To me, it's more of a grey area than a true black-and-white situation.

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    1. Plus it sounds like the Shiki sisters see it as saving those people more than killing them. They seem surprisingly self-sacrificing for succubi what with this sidequest revealing they were willing to doom themselves to try to save the monsters and humans in the Paradox world.

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    2. The MGQ series has always been a little loose on the morality. It does require not looking too deeply into what the monster girls/succubi get up to. I treat the Luddite thing as a running joke in the same way. Obviously not everyone in the village deserved to be snu-snued to death, but you generally have to not think about that too much.

      I'm tempted to write a similar setting that does ask those questions. I think it might be hard to do so while still making the story fun to read and not destroying people's fantasies.

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