Technically, I reviewed this one a while back. I was in the mood to play a naughty JRPG-type game and remembered the sequel, Domination Quest 2, had come out a month or so ago. Similar to Monmusu Quest, you can port the old save across, but as that save was many years and a few laptops ago, I decided to play through again rather than try to excavate it from a forgotten hard drive.
Turns out I needed to anyway, as it was only on rereading my original review that I remembered I never completed the first game. Despite this, and after completing it this time, I don't think I was too far off with what I originally wrote.
I did reach the final boss this time. |
The major change is that whatever bugs blighted it before, don't appear to be present now. I didn't encounter any crashes during my second playthrough. The other sticking point, and what caused me to abandon my original playthrough in the misty forest area, was the frequency of combat encounters. That felt like it had been dialled back. They're still reasonably frequent, but not so frequent that you can barely move without triggering another combat encounter.
Onto the game itself. Mechanically, it's a turn-based JRPG. It has the look of a RPGMaker game, but reverse-engineered into Unity. While this is a little odd, the game does make use of the 3D environments to do some things you wouldn't see in a regular RPGMaker game.
You play as Kuro, who as a dominator has the ability to shrink monster girls down, gobble them up and then recruit them as allies. Like Pokémon, but weirder and pervier.
Probably best not to ask... |
Kuro doesn't have much in the way of fighting power, so you have to rely on a party of monster girls to do it for you. You have a party of four and a bench of four you can sub in and out. Along with health bars, the monster girls have stamina bars that are constantly decreasing every turn. When they run low, they have to 'snack' on Kuro to get their energy back up or get knocked out. This is where the bulk of the in-combat H-content comes from, as Kuro's allies take a break to blowjob or do some other sex act on him to get their energy levels back up again.
Most of the combat is regular turn-based JRPG, where if you lose you just get a regular GAME OVER scene rather than a sexy Bad End. There are some elites and boss encounters that are an exception to this. At some point they'll try and grab Kuro and drain his energy directly, and you have to rely on your allies to hit the opponent enough times to force them to let him go. As I said in my original review, it's a shame this mechanic isn't used more.
The other areas of H-content are scenes that are unlocked after increasing affection with your allies, and a skinship mechanic where you get carried around by one of your allies in a lewd manner. That's fun, but the animation does block a good portion of the side of the screen, so might get in the way while exploring a new area.
It feels quite pleasant until your feet start to dissolve... |
The story doesn't have too much to it. It's a standard fantasy setting with humans coexisting with horny monster girls. Kuro is just about to start his adventuring career when his powerful succubus (dragon?) partner is mind-controlled and snatched by a nefarious group looking to stoke tensions between humans and monsters. The game is about trying to get her back and breaking the control the enemy demon lord wannabe has over her.
The mechanics are fine. It's JRPG light with lots of vore themes. Kuro can't carry weapons and neither does his monster girls, but there's a crafting system where you combine weapons with crystals to boost your party's abilities. Mostly it's just stat boosts, but some weapons can either defend against or inflict status effects. It's a nice system, but a little limited. Adding a chance of instant death to multi-hit attacks was about the most exciting 'combo' I could find. It would have been nice to have a little more variety here. I like a bit of greed in my RPGs, so I missed having the usual options to manipulate XP gain, Gold gain, item drop frequency, etc.
As for the themes, it's a Kokage no Izumi game. This circle likes giantesses, vore, and crude humour. As I said in the original review, if you like your monster girls on the giant side and with heapings of vore, this is perfect for you. If those elements leave you cold, there is enough 'regular' monster girl content to make it worth a glance, but it is a little deeper into its chosen fetish zone than something like Monmusu Quest.
Giant farting fairies are pretty much a staple of this circle's work. |
In all, it's about 10 hours of reasonable JRPG, with 28 or so sexy(ish) monster girls to have fun with.
As I said in the original review, one of the monster girls (the carnivorous plant girl) gave me inspiration for a short story ("The Banquet of the Queen of the Goblins"), and if I can get a short story out of a hentai game, I consider it a win. Hopefully, I'll find something that gets the creative juices flowing in the sequel.
How come Succubus Prison didn't spawn a short story like the goblin one?
ReplyDeleteThe monster girls in Succubus Prison are regular succubi. The story options there are to use the same characters directly, which would then be fanfiction, which I don't do. Or to write a story about burglars breaking into a succubus house, which is a really good idea for a story I just haven't got around to writing.
DeleteFor weirder monster girls, it's usually some aspect of them that gets the cogs whirring, and then a story develops around them. The monster girl character might share similarities of appearance, but won't be the same character - I provide that. The monster girl in the Goblin Queen story is a carnivorous plant girl with a fleshy digestion sac, but that's the only similarity. The Boobtopus (pile of boobs monster girl in one of Dieselmine's games) also inspired Oppa in another story - where the protagonist fell into a pit of giant boobs. There are a few of my stories like that - I'll take inspiration from a game or even random artwork and put my own spin on it.
The closest from Succubus Prison might be one of the bonus succubi with the tail drain scene. Although I think my spin was to make the succubus either an artificial being for HoHH (which completely morphed and changed into the black latex milkmaid) or some kind of weird capture device for Annette Brite. That idea is still floating around unwritten.
Missed opportunity Hydra for the warlocks of the warlock school to create "daemon potions" that allows a human to gain temporary daemon powers and limited shapeshifting. Like say Phil drinks a "Wrath Potion" that will give him a buff bodybuilder physique, the ability to turn his arms into wickedly sharp demon claws, and the angry he gets, the stronger he'll become.
ReplyDeleteBut you won't do that right? You don't want the human warlocks turning into Resident Evil bosses? Because it will move too close to action and less horror right?
No reason why it couldn't happen. Maybe some groups of warlocks would be against it as they believe their daemons do the work and it's unseemly for their 'masters' to get their hands dirty. The magic in that setting stems from the connection to the various Dominions, and there's no reason why that wouldn't include potions. The good warlocks would probably have it on hand anyway, without the need of potions.
DeleteAt the moment we're only seeing things from low-level students' perspectives. More power will be visible when full-fledged warlocks go at each other (and I'll have to work harder to keep everything balanced!).
Ugh, the flower with the mouth is reminding me of that scene in SS 101 where Verde is screwing Phil in her garden and the plants with lips starts kissing them.
ReplyDeleteI also like the fact that in the opening of the anime/TV show, the main characters running is implying that there will be a grand adventure that the main characters will experience. I see that a lot in anime openings.
With Phil running, ehh, I think he is running not towards something, but AWAY from something given at how its a horror story. Or Phil's grand adventure is him jumping from demon pussy to demon pussy while trying not to die XD
It's an odd graphic in the game. There is an option to change it to a silhouette in later versions.
DeleteRunning feet just implies action. You put it at the start to grab an audience's attention. Who is running? Why? Are they after someone or running away from someone? It's a cheap trick to get the audience engaged from the start.
I'd only use it for the opening episode where you have to grab people's attention in the first minute. While Phil's adventure does have a lot of jumping from daemon pussy to daemon pussy, he will get to do more later!
In the Joe Boyega one shot, why did Nicole want to know the real name of the guy that was threatening her with the knife? She seemed sad that she didn't get his real name? Was it because she is trying to see humans as people and not just food.
ReplyDeleteShe was trying to the steer the situation in a direction that wouldn't result in her killing Boyega. He made the bad choice anyway, but was granted a reprieve by her managing to not lose control. Most of my stories are very harsh on characters making bad decisions (or even just mildly naive ones). I felt I probably should have one where the character gets a second chance.
DeleteWhy are the horn designs different? I've noticed Hydra that all the Succubi you created usually have their horns sprouting from their foreheads. Why aren't they like the anime Succubi were their horns are sprouting from the side of their head?
ReplyDeleteI try to vary it. Mostly it's the traditional little devil horns. I like to throw in some more elaborate ones sometimes to vary the character designs. I don't think there are set rules there. The succubi tend to be different, with differing specialities and powers.
DeleteAnd that is why I love your writing Hydra. When characters fucked up, they get no second chance and have to face the music. I am so tired of most stories where the protagonist gets in a terrible and dire situation and they immediately get out of it because of plot.
ReplyDeleteI love Chris Redfield from RE, but he shouldn't have survived getting pummeled by the superhuman Wesker in both RE and Code Veronica. Chris is a normal human with no powers, it doesn't make sense that he didn't die from a punch from Wesker who can easily punch a whole through a human. Who only won against Wesker through plot.
Anyway, I digress and sorry for my little RE Rant....
Nicole's morality is a bit all over the place. She spares the guy trying to "grape" her but kills the meathead from "Summer Dance with a Succubus"? Why? John trying to force himself on her is worse for what Neil did. Hell Neil even apologized for slugging the cancer dude. There was no apology from the desperate "grapist"
I know Hydra that you wanted to showcase a character doing a bad thing and getting saved, but of all characters, did it really have to be the incel grapist? I don't get it.
Nicole's morality is meant to be a little "blue and orange" as she isn't human. I wrote in the notes for the story she could have easily killed him and most people would have felt that was a deserved ending. I think sometimes you have to vary things. In this case it fits within Nicole's slightly different morality. Not killing Boyega when he made the decision to go into unforgivable territory was Nicole proving a point to herself (which Boyega realises at the end - it wasn't about him).
DeleteI think it helps that he's basically a dumb kid about to take the first step to being a horrible kid. In another story he gets turned into jerky and has his soul sucked out. In this one he gets a do-over (and maybe goes from being a dumb kid to a better kid as a result). Either works. This gives me a thread to work with later. (the white fox showing up means someone else has his eyes on him...).
The main difference between him and Neil is Nicole recognising Boyega is about to do his first bad thing, while Neil has led a long life of being an asshole. Even then, she wouldn't have killed him had he not come back later to 'buy' her away from Terry. If I remember right, Neil's assholery never went to outright grape, so his 'punishment' was probably more than he deserved. But again, Nicole is not human, her morality is different.
And that's partly also my aim. I like the stories having a degree of morality - it's satisfying seeing a jerk get their comeuppance - but I don't want morality to dictate every outcome. It would make the stories too predictable. There has to be a little bit of doubt. So, sometimes bad things happen to people who probably didn't deserve it, and likewise, occasionally someone escapes harsher punishment.