Wrapping up Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] and moving on

I was going to go into a little more detail on the gameplay and mechanics, but I think people are getting antsy for me to move on... :)

Not much more to say.  As a game MQ:P just about holds up, mainly on the strengths of the characters, story and the wide variety of weird, wonderful and mostly sexy monster girl designs.  The JRPG elements are still too grindy IMHO, and not the best fit for the femdom-esque Bad Ends, although the series does have a harem element not present in the original series.  Overall, I think TTR's baby, while still very good, is in danger of being dethroned by other up-and-coming whippersnappers.  Tokinokogiri's Succubus Prison is probably the benchmark for hot succubus/monster girl Bad Ends now and even Dieselmine managed to raise their game with Monmusu Labyrinth.

She really likes to give you a good squeeze (Succubus Prison)

The main thing MQ:P lacks now is animation for the Bad End scenes and I'm not sure how easy that would be to add given that the Monster Girl Quest series' greatest strength has been the sheer number and variety of monster girls.  That's a lot of dicking around with puppeting tools to get all those boobies bouncing around in a pleasing manner.  Used selectively, maybe...  One of MQ:P [part 2]'s biggest weaknesses is that all the monster girl queens fought later in the game are repeat encounters from the original series.  A little bit of sneaky puppeting/animation might have given those old sex scenes a fresh twist.

Boobies bouncing around in a pleasing manner (Monmusu Labyrinth)

Anyway, that's enough on Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] for now.

I suspect you're more interested in the moving on part.

I definitely want to get back to some original fiction.  The odd blip aside, the thrice-weekly posting schedule I used for the MQ:P series worked pretty well for me.  I'd like to apply that same discipline to my original fiction and see where it takes me (ideally the raw material for a new book I can submit to my publisher every 4-6 months).

What is something I haven't yet decided.  I'm still in the middle of some upheaval as I have another trip (this time for work) scheduled to knock out most of next week.  Getting back to and finishing off "The Heart Squad" seems like a decent interim project before I decide whether to launch into Succubus Summoning 301 or something completely different.

If work on "The Heart Squad" starts flowing again, expect that to resume Friday (or Monday).  If it's still stuck, expect a bit of wibbly-wobbly inconsistency while I pick something else to work on.

There is something else I've been tinkering with recently, an old project dragged off hiatus.  That does appear to be going somewhere, but I'll hold off on posting more about it until I have something a little more presentable.

Does this mean you're done with Japanese monster girl games?

I think I'll lay off the extended "Let's Play" series for a while.  It's been too long since I last submitted a book to my publishers and I need to concentrate on my own fiction for a bit.

Ideally, I would like to keep reviewing the good ones as they come out, but there is an issue here unrelated to clashes with my other work.  Windows 10 appears to be in some kind of weird arms race with the tools I use for text-hooking and machine translation.  Every Windows 10 update broke my tools.  I was able to keep going by reverting the Windows updates, but in the end I was in a race against time to actually finish MQ:P before a deadline where I'd have to either accept those updates or leave my machine unsupported.  So, as of now, I'm back to having no means of hooking and auto-translating Japanese games.  This currently makes playing and reviewing them rather difficult.

Assuming I can fix this, I'd have to have a long think before doing another big series on MQ:P [part 3] when it comes out.  It would be nice to do it to complete the series, but I'd have to think carefully about how to do it in a way that doesn't swallow up all of my time.  Running two series alongside each other doesn't work for me (as you may have noticed when my schedule went to hell right after starting posting "The Heart Squad"), so I might look at some kind of one month on, one month off schedule to prevent my blog being completely swamped by MQ:P stuff.

I suspect that will be a long way off though.  I imagine TTR still has plenty to do before unleashing the final chapter of Paradox on the world.

Lest we forget MQ:P also has some very nice succubi (Monmusu Quest: Paradox)

Anyway, I hope those of you that enjoyed the series, enjoyed it, and apologies to those who felt it ran on for way too long.

Friday (or Monday) I think it's time we found out what happened to that software engineer on his very special Valentine's Night...

Closing thoughts on Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] - Plot & Characters

I’m off on other things for about half a week and as I was unable to prepare a week’s worth of new material in time to post here, I thought I’d have a quiet week wrapping up the Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] series with some thoughts on the game.

Yes, I know some of you are probably sick of this by now.  Don’t worry.  It’s done and I’ll be onto new stuff next week (hopefully back to some original fiction).

First up, we might as well take a gander at the story and characters.

Plot and story still seem pretty strong.  You could probably make an anime out of the game plot and it not be terrible.  This has always given the Monster Girl Quest series an edge over similar games featuring hapless (lucky?) heroes and nymphomaniac monster girls.

Part 2 threw up some answers for the weirdness in Luka’s paradox world.

The tartarus regions were caused by an experiment going wrong in Remina.  In the canon world, Ilias blew it up.  In this world their experiment summoned a Black Alice from the future.  This is the Black Alice from the original series right after her defeat at the hands of Luka.  Before that fight she’d devoured Ilias, but been unable to balance the forces of light and dark within her.  The version summoned to Remina does and ascends to godhood.

To be fought in part 3

The reason this is able to happen is because the Ilias of the original series stressed the laws of her universe by constantly rewinding time to pull Luka out of demonic vagina (all those Bad Ends were canon after all).  Then, when she was slain by Luka and friends, this poked holes all over the place and caused a bunch of bunch of alternate realities to bud off the main world, including the one where Black Alice was dragged back through time.

Paradox!Luka’s world was the first to bud off.  Black Alice ascending to godhood blew up Remina and spread the tartarus regions through the world (I think).  She also knocked a chunk of heaven out of the sky, which is how the snow continent came to be.

I think this is the Black Alice we saw in the mysterious tower back in part 1.  I would expect her to be one of the major antagonists if not the overall Big Bad of part 3.

We also got Lilith, Astaroth and Morrigan’s motivations.  Unsurprisingly they are sort of on our side.  Morrigan was recruited at the end of the part 2, and I’m guessing we’ll probably pick up Astaroth and Lilith at some point.  On the Alice route, anyway.  Those on the Ilias route will get their own exclusive angels.

The succubi are representative of a world where the monster girls came out on top.  Of those we’ve only seen an alternate version of Tamamo.  I expect we’ll see the other five legendary ancestors in part 3, as well as the other angel representatives from the world where Ilias reigns unimpeded.  These will likely be side factions we have to deal with about two thirds of the way through the final chapter.  (Not going to lie, looking forward to the monster girl ancestor scenes).

Also to be fought in part 3.  Who are you most looking forward to?

Sonya was revealed to be apoptosis, but is now back to normal (or a copy of normal if on the Ilias route).  I’m still not sure of the overall role of chaos.  They appear to be trying to fix causality by deleting all the deviating worlds.  Adramalech was better fleshed out as a world-ending abomination.  I expect we’ll see her again.  At this point I don’t know whether we’ll end up allying with this faction or fighting it as the over-arching enemy (over even Black Alice).  I could see it going either way.

Also, I’m not totally sure on this (machine translation etc etc), but I think paradox!Ilias might have been the source of the chaotization in paradox world.  There is some sense to this.  Black Alice arrived back in time with Ilias digesting in her stomach, creating a paradox of two Ilias’s being present at the same time in the same reality.  It’s a theory anyway.

Likely not appearing in part 3, this version anyway

That Ilias fell apart at the end of part 2.  We still have loli Ilias running around.  I’m not sure what part she’ll play in part 3 (or Alice if you picked Ilias at the start of the game).  She did sort of vanish from the plot after Grangold.  A more wayward prediction is you have to fight her (or Alice) at the end of part 3.

Nero and Neris’s role is still unclear.  Nero was keen to chase down the white rabbit and they did appear to oppose Tamamo.  I’m guessing most of these various factions will set aside their differences and unite versus either chaos or Black Alice in part 3.

Speaking of the White Rabbit, I wonder if we’ll see her again.  It was a little bit of a letdown that she turned out be nothing more than a creation of Ilias, and with paradox!Ilias gone, I wonder if that’s it for our annoyingly cryptic bunny girl.

Looking in doubt for part 3 unless she's something more than Ilias's tool

The one weakness I think the ending of part 2 had in comparison to other MGQ chapter endings is that it left the objectives rather muddy (unless I missed some nuance in translation).  Part 1 had us returning from a dying reality with the knowledge we had to do something awesome to save the universe.  The ending of part 2 feels a little aimless.  We were going to confront Alice 15th to prevent a war, but she’s dead, killed by Marcellus, and we find out the only reason she wanted that war in the first place was to try and save all worlds from being eroded away by chaos.

In the original series, chapter 2 ended with the twist of psycho Ilias and made it clear part 3 would be about stopping her.  As for the end of part 2 of MQ:P, we still appear to be heading to Helgondo, but at this point I don’t see a clear reason why.  Also, I really hope part 3 avoids the mistakes of MGQ and takes us off somewhere new.  I don’t want to be retreading the same path to pick up the elemental spirits again.

Going off in a new direction would also avoid what was the low point of part 2 for me—the repetition from the original series.  The monster girl queens were definitely less interesting because we’d already seen them before, including their Bad End scenes, in the original Monster Girl Quest games.

The high point was probably the tartarus version of Remina castle.  It’s hard to make RPGmaker creepy and skinned-alive people stuck in walls spouting random gibberish was definitely creepy (and again would make great scenes in an anime or more advanced game).

Creepier even than one of Delphinus's angel girls

Of the new characters, I liked Mephisto and Alicetroemeria.  Mephisto taking “to the letter” to extremes in order to aid us against Alice 15th while still being fanatically loyal to Alice 15th was nicely drawn.  Alicetroemeria, the past version of Black Alice, was also amusingly loopy.  She also seemed mischievous rather than malicious and I hope the plot makes use of her as we close in on her alternate reality counterpart.

For sexy smexy—Lilith.

More Lilith boobs for part 3 plz!

Oh yes, Lilith.  Yup.  I’m a sucker for big boobs.  Can’t wait for more Lilith in part 3.

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!

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] - 62: Final Boss

Beginning

<- Previous: Ilias Temple Ruins II

Hmm, probably isn’t going to be much time or space for recaps, so let’s forge on straight from where we left off (I played the game that way anyway, I had to split this section into two posts because there was too much damn exposition).

The bad Black Alice floating around is the bad Black Alice from the original MGQ reality.  She’s also a god.  This could cause problems.

A chaotized Ilias just about manages to tell us about the two worlds where the monster girls and angels won out convincingly when the monster girl delegation of Lilith, Morrigan and Astaroth show up.

Rather conveniently as it happens, as they are able to continue the exposition as this world’s Ilias finally succumbs to chaotization and falls apart.

(Again you’ll have to excuse my clumsy interpretations.  AI machine translation is not ideal for text-heavy games.)

Lilith and friends are from the world where the legendary ancestor monster girls won against Ilias and were not sealed.  It’s a monster girl paradise of complete freedom (where I’m guessing human lives are both awesome and very very short).  Unfortunately, they realised they need to unify the worlds to prevent chaos from destroying them all.  Their plan is to suck the souls of everyone over into their world and unify that way.  Unfortunately (again!), in order to pull the soul across into their world they have to kill the individual in this world.  However, the more a world deviates from the proper history of the original world, the faster it’s destroyed by chaotization.  Which is why they’ve been trying to prod Luka along a similar path to his canon counterpart.

This also explains the war-like behaviour of Alice’s mother.  She knew this plan would require a big slaughter, but she didn’t her daughter to have that blood on her hands, so she usurped the throne to be the bad guy the universe needed.

Then the angel faction from the other world crash the party.  They’re led by another Eden.

She's from an alternate reality.  You can tell because she's wearing clothes.

They come from the world where the angels crushed the forces of darkness and everyone lives happily in constant worship of Ilias.  Their masterplan is not revealed, but I imagine it involves something similar to the heaven version of Esta.

I’m also guessing that the Ilias route has the angels arrive first and explain their plan before Lilith and sisters show up.

The two trios exchange insults before getting ready to kick off an epic battle.

Uber catfight!

Sonya tries to get in the middle of them to play peacekeeper.

No, Sonya love, you don’t want to get involved in this.  You’re outclassed.  This is not the time to...

“Battle acts between people who come form parallel worlds are forbidden.”

Huh, that’s a very stiff way of... Oh.  Fuck.

I mean pint-size Ilias did warn us right at the beginning of MQ:P part 1 – “You should watch her.  I know everything in this world because I created it.  I do not know her.”

The angels and succubi spot something isn’t right as well.

And something isn’t right.  Really not right.

Uh oh

Sonya, Luka’s “childhood friend”, was really an apoptosis secret agent the whole time.

(okay, this is probably as big of a “twist” as Alice being the demon lord in the original series.)

She’s also very high level apoptosis.  She grabs Gnosis’s arm and the angel has to cut it off to escape before Sonya absorbs all her energy.

Yup, we have problems.  Luka tries to get through to her without any success.  Looks like the final boss of part 2 is Sonya.

The endboss is Sonya

She’s referred to as Sonya Mazda, which I think is also Sonya Heaven, although I’m not 100% on this.  In this form she’s absorbed light energy and taken on an angelic aspect.

Should you lose to her, she gives you a suitably angelic send-off.

Prepare to be ridden hard

She rides you to nirvana... literally.  MGQ angels aren’t that dissimilar to succubi.  They can suck the energy out of humans and the way they like to do it usually involves a lot of ejaculations and cum.  For an apoptosis monster girl it’s actually rather vanil—

Yeep!

Pass the vodka, please.

Her first incarnation isn’t all that hard to beat.  First time around I didn’t really pay attention to Alice’s warnings, wandered up with whatever party I had at the time and managed to just about muddle through Sonya’s first stage.

First stage?

Oh yes.  Did you think you were done after that?

Defeating Sonya does not result in the usual pledge of friendship.  Defeating her is only the prelude to worse things as Sonya starts to download Adramalek into this world.

Morrigan tries to stop her only to have half of her energy drained in the process, replenishing everything apoptosis Sonya used up in the fight and giving her snazzy new chaos powers on top of that.  She also doesn’t prevent Sonya from summoning Adramalek, who arrives in a much more buffed up form than the one we last saw.

Adramalek has been working out since we last saw her

This is a much better use of her character.  I always thought Adramalek came out of nowhere and was a weird choice for end boss in the first chapter.  This time around she fits much better.  She comes to worlds.  They die.  You should fucking fear her.

The angels and succubi obviously do.  Her arriving here is enough for them to temporarily set aside their differences and team together to fight her.

That leaves Sonya’s second form, Sonya Chaos, to us.

Okay, this is the real endboss of [part 2]

Should be fine.  Luka is level 60.  Most of my back row can’t fight at all, but my front row is probably still over-levelled.  We should be able to muddle through it like bef—

I'm not sure I want to know what's going on here...

Spoiler.  It was not fine.

Not fine at all.

Nope

Come back Delphinus.  All is forgiven.  I’m not really sure what’s going on in this Bad End.  Sonya sort of brings Luka into her body.  Then has a second body to hug him from behind while something (probably best not to think too hard on what) starts sucking away on the dangly bits.  Finally, it ends with two becoming one... the bad way.

Sonya’s second incarnation is considerably tougher than her first form.  She hits like a truck.  I came back with a proper party of level 60s—in the back line as well—and it was still a pretty tough fight.  As always, Alicetroemeria is handy to have around.

Beating Sonya doesn’t seem to improve things much.  The combined team of succubi and angels are able to take down Adramalek, but as Lilith points out, it doesn’t matter.  They’ve already beaten her twice before.  She just comes back stronger.

It looks like curtains for the world anyway.  The angels, being MGQ angels, decide this is a lost cause and run back to their world.  Lilith says this world is too important and her and the other succubi opt to stay.  To be honest, I think we’re at world past tense at this point.  We appear to be standing in void.

Then Nuruko pops up.  She’s the other “mysterious being”.  What, another hidden apoptosis?

Not quite.  She appears to still be on our side.  She sucks up all the chaos, reversing the chaotization of the world, and mutates into a much bustier form.

Nuruko?

Then the elemental spirits realise she’s another spirit, just like them.  Of chaos?  I’m not sure.  She dismisses Adramalek from this world and restores Sonya before returning to her original loveable (sort of) Nuruko form.  She’s also managed to revert the chaotization and return the world back to how it was before.

Afterwards the succubi are of a much friendlier disposition.  Morrigan is offered as a new party member.  Luka is hesitant at first, remembering how they slaughtered the Luddite village.  Lilith points out they did it to save the world (and to be honest, those Luddite assholes had it coming anyway).

I suspect this is also route-dependent.  I imagine if you have Ilias it’s the three succubi that run straight after the battle and one of the angelic trio joins the party, although I’d need someone on the Ilias route to confirm that in the comments.

Sonya wakes up with no knowledge she’s really a world-ending apoptosis.  Morrigan is keen to kill her, but Luka refuses to let that happen.

So what do we do now?  Do we continue to the demon castle to stop Alice 15th... who’s only taking on the role of a mass-murdering monster because she feels that’s the only way to save the universe?

Stopping Alice 15th becomes moot anyway.  As soon as Lilith and Astaroth get back to the castle they send a message that Alice 15th is dead—killed by a hero.

History repeats, or rather, snaps back to the initial path

Realities may diverge, but some events are constant.  Remina blows up.  Marcellus kills Alice 15th. Luka slays Ilias?

And that’s the note the game leaves us on.  Not sure where [part 3] is going at this point.  There is a lot going on!

Time to roll credits.

But we’re not quite done yet.  There are some post-credits quests, including the permanent recruitment of Alma Elma, which I’ll cover in the next post.

-> Next: Post-Credits Side Quests (Alma Elma!)

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] - 61: Ilias Temple Ruins II

Beginning

<- Previous: Ilias Temple Ruins I

Hang on to your hats.  Explanations are coming.  Plot twists.  Craziness.

There’s also going to be plenty of me mistranslating things and getting it wrong.  Thankfully, you all out there are great and quick to correct my blunders in the comments.  Please keep doing so.

Right.  We’re on the third floor (in game terms) of the Ilias Temple Ruins and chasing after the cryptic and annoying White Rabbit to try and get some explanation as to what the hell is happening.  Oh, and our world is dying.

We follow her up the steps.  Alice has already dropped strong hints that we’re likely to find a boss battle at the top of them.

We arrive at the top in time to see the White Rabbit get killed in surprisingly gruesome fashion by what appears to be a full-powered Ilias.  Uh oh.

Harsh...

Oh, it’s a chaotized Ilias.

You're not looking too well there, Ilias lass

This is the same Ilias that contacted us at the very beginning of the game.  She’s the one trying to contain the chaotization within the ruins (which also appears to have badly affected her).  She explains what broke the original world, and as White Rabbit hinted at earlier, it’s us.  Or rather, the original canon!Luka.  When he killed Ilias at the original series it destabilised everything, sending ripples back through time and budding off countless parallel universes.

(I think.  You’ll have to excuse my explanations for this last section.  Machine translation of the original Japanese only goes so far.  From what I can gather, the constant time rewinding to save Luka from sexy bad ends opened up various holes in time and space, and then killing Ilias removed the ability to fix things should something go horribly wrong, and something did indeed go horribly horribly wrong.)

This world was the first to spin off, but what was the calamity that caused all the craziness in this world—heaven to fall, the tartarus regions etc.?

It was Remina.  White Rabbit pops back into existence to tell us this.

Or rather show.  Ilias (or White Rabbit II) sends us back in time to see the exact cause.

Unsurprisingly, I’m rather confused at this point.

Remina in the past is quite advanced and we arrive in an experimental lab.  They’re in the middle of some kind of experiment.  It’s either some kind of fusion of magic and holy, or they’re trying to call up the spirit of Heinrich (or both—I’m clearly winging it on iffy translations and educated guesswork at this point).  This is the experiment that went horribly wrong—like skinned-alive people being stuck in walls wrong.

Remina used to be fairly hi-tech

The White Rabbit tells us she cannot intervene, and neither can we.  What we’re supposed to do is follow the corridor around to a room in the north.  There are a few NPCs.  One drops a keycard that is useful both here and later (or rather I think it’s an automatic trigger before entering the chamber at the end of the corridor).

And now the experiment, which appears to be using Heinrich’s sword as a catalyst to call up his spirit (or some energy his spirit contains, not entirely sure on this).  Seems harmless enough.

You probably don't want to do this... 

Except they get Black Alice instead.

Yup, did warn you.  Now you've gone and yanked Black Alice out of her time and space.

There are traces of Black Alice’s blood on the sword and it causes some kind of resonance that calls up her instead of Heinrich(‘s spirit?).  She looks the worst for wear, saying she’d just been defeated by a brave hero.  The experiment must have picked her up from the moment right after she was defeated by Heinr—

Oh wait.  This isn’t the Black Alice from the past.  This is the Black Alice from the future.

The Black Alice who was defeated by canon!Luka at the end of the original series.

The Black Alice who had just devoured Ilias.

The Black Alice who had devoured and taken on the powers of a god...

We are all fucked

In the original series Black Alice was unable to successfully balance the forces of dark and holy within her body before being defeated by Luka.  Here she has more time and...

Oh fuck

We are so fucked.

By successfully balancing the opposing forces within her body, Black Alice awakens to godhood.  This rips a hole in the space-time continuum and triggers the catastrophe of Remina.  I suspect this is what blasts a chunk of heaven out of the heavens and creates the various tartarus regions.

Beyond oh fuck

Rather interestingly, the game refers to Black Alice as the 3rd god to be created.  I thought Ilias was the only god.  My MGQ lore is rusty.  The only other god I can think of is the original monster lord and progenitor of Alice’s line.

God Alice ascends and looks around at her new playground.  Because of these events, all kinds of parallel worlds have bubbled off.  She (and we) see an alternate reality where the monster girls were not sealed and rule unopposed.  In another, the angels destroyed the monsters utterly and rule a world devoted solely to the worship of Ilias.

Our playmates for [part 3]

She also notices we’re here and observing her... which comes as a rather unpleasant shock to White Rabbit.  She nopes out of there and takes us with her back to Ilias...

...who promptly nukes her with lightning again, in case we’d forgotten she’s a complete psychopath.

Given that White Rabbit II is now a chunk of smouldering charcoal (alas poor Rabbit), it falls to Ilias to continue the explanations.  Out of all the parallel worlds she mentions there are two unique worlds where history diverged a lot and one side completely crushed the other.  It’s the representatives of these worlds that are running around trying to influence things on this world.

And speak of the devil, here are the shikibus sisters.

Speaking of the devil does indeed make them appear

Now what are they doing here?

-> Next: A final boss fight?

Here's what I hope is a more condensed explanation.  It's quite likely wrong, so please feel free to correct if you have better (i.e any) Japanese reading comprehension.

There is the canon!world of the original MGQ series.  In that canon!Luka did experience all the lovely sexy (and not so sexy) Bad Ends we chucked him into, but was saved by Ilias rewinding time.  This weakened the fabric of space/time, which was finally pushed over the edge by Luka and friends killing Ilias.  This opened up holes and created the potential for parallel universes to bud off.

(So Luka killing Ilias is the initial "catastrophe" event.)

Now to paradox!world.  Because of all the damage to the space/time continuum, an experiment caused the Black Alice fought at the end of MGQ to be pulled back in time to Remina.  There she was able to successfully absorb the powers of the Ilias she'd consumed to ascend to godhood, causing the catastrophe in paradox!world.

Other worlds were also budding off and multiplying all over the place.  In one, the monster girls beat Ilias and her angels.  In another, the angels eradicated the monster girls.  It's representatives of these worlds that have been running amok on paradox!world.

Right, so that's where we're at.  More to come (plus the inevitable final boss) next post.

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] - 60: Ilias Temple Ruins I

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