Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox! part 13

Happiness Village and where have all the harpies gone?

And we’re up to number 13 in the Monmusu Quest: Paradox playthrough.  I posted the first part back here.

Last time the story kicked up a notch as Luka and party went through Tartarus and found themselves in a parallel version of MGQ universe where Luka didn’t challenge Granberia in Iliasburg and they saw the consequences of this as the future world was scoured clean by Ilias’s angels (also be worth remembering that this is information only the player would know – Paradox!Luka also didn’t challenge Granberia in Iliasburg because the White Rabbit was there instead.  We still don’t know what the hell is going to happen in the third, Paradox, universe.)

Back in their timeline and Alice calls a war council to plan what to do next.  Once again you’ll have to forgive my lack of Japanese reading comprehension for not being able to fill in the exact plot.  From machine translation the gist of it is Alice is going to continue to hunt the White Rabbit for answers, but they should also look for Luka’s father, Marcellus, to find out why Luka is able to do things he really shouldn’t be able to do.  In the meantime the plan is to head off to the harpy village to investigate rumours of mysterious disappearances there.

Before we do, there’s another quick job quest to complete.  Before the journey into Tartarus an engineer at the excavation site asks to see an example of the unusual technology that can be found in Tartarus.  We’ve been through Tartarus and picked up some unusual items.  Showing them to him will earn the certificate to unlock the engineer job.

This is where my notes and first impressions from two different start to get jumbled up.  As I talked about back here, Paradox has a main story progression that requires tagging the correct flags in order.  Miss a flag and you can still head off to the different parts of the map, but some dungeons are closed off and the NPCs required to advance the story don’t appear.

This happened to me first time around as I didn’t find Amira and wandered cluelessly through the wilds.  Back then I was using the returning monsters from MGQ as a clue for which area I should be in at any particular time.  So far they've appeared in roughly the same order as they showed up in the original series.

This seemed to hold as bee girls started showing up when I went west.  Luka (obviously) succumbs to their temptation attack and gets licked all over with a long tongue.

This was also one of the spots where I thought the re-use of scenes from the original didn’t quite fit.  During the Bad End the bee girl taunts Luka about him enjoying the taboo act of putting his willy in hot monster girl pussy as this is against Ilias’s decrees.  That held true for the original series, but in Paradox-world Ilias hasn’t been seen for 30 years and humans seem a lot more relaxed about co-existing with monsters.

There are two brand new monster girls in this area – orcs and sparrow daughters.

The sparrow daughters are wearing animal costumes.  That seems so vanilla and unlike MGQ I immediately suspect something must be up.

But no, they are actual harpies.  Losing gives the typical harpy, babies forever ending.

As common for a lot of hentai games, orcs in MGQ-verse world seem to be a type of pigman (or rather pigwoman).  They’re lewd, crude and very much on the voluptuous side.  The first time around they also disabused me of the notion this was the correct place to be as my party got battered by some solid club swings.

They also have curly vaginas that are very good for getting men to come apparently.  Luka at least gets to experience some nice sex before being dragged off into slavery.

A fun thing.  After recruiting an orc girl (Hip) to the party, as long as she isn’t selected for one of the eight party slots, she starts showing up in the towns and villages being orc-y and rowdy (apart from Pornburg – that’s too much even for her and you’ll find her cowering up on the hill).  This can block the gambler off if you manage to recruit an orc before carrying out the ‘look for Amira’ quest in IliasBurg, but is easily fixed by putting her in the party.

Amira also does something similar, but with a sub-quest.  She hides in each of the settlements and finding her rewards the player with stats-boosting items.

The next settlement is Happiness Village and in Paradox everything is flipped from MGQ.  In MGQ the village had a critical shortage of men because the harpies had carried them all off for breeding purposes.  In Paradox it’s the harpies that have buggered off somewhere and it’s all the men that are upset that their harpy wives have all run off.  I don’t think Ilias’s decrees are taken very seriously in this village (and another reason to regret not taking Ilias – her impotent anger at being on the ground and seeing what humans and monster girls are getting up to with each other would probably be very amusing).

The battle-fuck location is up in the top-right corner of the village.

Hmm, did Luka just pay for a handjob off a boy?  Oh well, I suppose it broadens the mind.

There’s also a useful fairy blacksmith in the village.  She can imbue some armour pieces with wind stones.  This becomes very useful when we come to fight harpies.

According to rumour, the harpies have all flown off and secluded themselves in an ancient tower up in the north.

Guess that’s where we’ll be off to tomorrow then.

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox! part 12

Where the fuck are we now and… STAY. ON. THE. ROAD!

Hello and this is part 12 of my continuing playthrough of Monmusu Quest: Paradox.  The first part is here.  Yesterday Paradox finally took the gloves off and unleashed the crazy fucked-up smut the MGQ series is famed for as we ran into some very odd monster girls in the first Tartarus dungeon.

At the bottom of the dungeon Luka opens the door he shouldn’t be able to open and steps into…

Silent Hill?

It’s a village/town and something is not right.  I imagine if this was any other type of game all that purple stuff covering everything would be pulsing like blood vessels.  Asking the local standing next to the door tells them that this happy place is called Remina.

Uh oh, this is probably bad.

Again it requires knowing a little of the lore of the original MGQ series.  In that, Remina was a settlement thought to be wiped off the map by monster girls (in reality Ilias’s angels) in a mysterious catastrophe 30 years ago (also echoing the history of Paradox).

Talking to another girl causes her voice to degrade into static and she suddenly morphs into another one of the hiding-under-the-dress insect girls and attacks us.

We are definitely not in cute loli beast girl world anymore.

Inside the house is a boss fight against the tentacle/scylla girl that was showcased in some of the promotional artwork.

Her temptation attack is to open up an orifice in the end of one of her tentacles.

Luka, as you do, thinks it might be a good idea to stick his dick in there, much to the displeasure of the rest of the party, and gets sucked all the way into a rather tame (by MGQ standards Bad End).

Tentacle girl can be recruited to the party, but you have to step outside the house and then walk back in and talk to her.  Thank you walkthrough guide from nameless internet person as I’d probably have missed that.  The tentacle girl doesn’t speak.  Her dialogue machine translates to “coming up” or something similar, but I suspect that’s a mistranslation and she’s doing whatever the squid equivalent of nya nya! is.  Sonya calls her Nuruko as she’s slimy.  That’s… uh… nice, Sonya.

At the end of the street things get even weirder.  We walk through the door at the end and…

Okay, so what the fuck is going on here?  This looks like some kind of bridge across a massive gulf.  It also resembles the region Luka ends up in every time he dies.  There’s even a magic circle at the end of the path.

That takes us back to the entrance of the Tartarus pit.  Or does it?  The tents and everyone are gone and the ground looks scorched.

The White Rabbit pops up again.  She’s also surprised to see us here.  It sounds like it might be something to do with Luka, but neither the White Rabbit or machine translation are clear on this.  She vanishes again, briefly, before popping back up and leaving a cryptic warning to stay on the road.

Back on the world map and things have changed.  The elf forest has been burnt down, the bridges smashed and the towns in ruins.  Iliasburg looks like it’s been wiped off the map entirely.

What was that thing about staying on the road?

Oh.

And.

I remember them.  They were the bad angels that showed up in chapter three of MGQ.  Luka kicked their ass.

Ah, but that was a Luka that had found all four elemental spirits, had defeated all four heavenly knights and Alice herself in combat, and unlocked his super-powered angelic side.  This is a Luka just starting out on his adventures.  Our party is a collection of cute-because-they’re-not-all-that-powerful loli bandits, imps, and a monster lord sealed away in a juvenile form.

These fights do not go well.

I did have an imp survive to the third turn, but only because she was exceptionally lucky with her dodge rolls.

Yeah, stay on the road.

At the end of the road Sonya and Luka are traumatized to find Iliasville in ruins.  Skeletons are everywhere.  They can recognise some of them.  The one with the hunched back was probably the village chief.  That one with damaged right arm was Lazarus.  The well is filled with bones.  Unfortunately it’s not really possible to convey horror effectively with RPG-maker graphics.  It’s clear that the story has transitioned to a more serious chapter, though.

The story gets a little weirder as they enter a fully stocked graveyard and Luka finds first Sonya’s grave and then this:

Welcome to alternate universe land.  Luka’s diary next to the gravestone confirms it.  Someone else had written at the end that Luka fell bravely trying to defend the village from the first wave of killer angels.

Reading further back reveals the reasons.  In this universe Luka never challenged Granberia in Iliasburg.  Instead he realised the adventuring life was not for him and returned home.  Consequentially that meant he didn’t go off on his adventures trying to mend divisions across the world and because of that no-one was able to stand up to Ilias when she decided to wipe the world clean.

If that paragraph makes no sense at all because you’re unfamiliar with the original MGQ story, there was a moment in the original series where the player could choose to confront one of the heavenly knights, Granberia, despite clearly being outmatched.  If the player chose the cautious approach it resulted in a Game Over.  This universe played out the consequences of that decision.  Rocks (or rather angels) fell.  Everyone died.

Alice reasons it must be some sort of alternate timeline.  She also realises it’s all connected to Luka.  She demonstrates this with a Harpy Wing.  Normally this item should teleport someone to a place they’ve already visited, but here, in the alternate world, it does nothing for her.  Luka shows he’s the key to these multidimensional shenanigans as when he uses the Harpy Wing it teleports him back to the Iliasville of their time and space.

The plot thickens.

To be continued… tomorrow.

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox! part 11

Descent into Tartarus I

This is a playthrough/guide of Monmusu Quest: Paradox I’ve been running daily for the past week or so.  The first part is back here.

Before we carry on – there is a new translation patch put out by Dargoth and friends.  I tried it out last night and it worked fine.  More of the skills and items have English translations as far as I can see.  So gratz to them for the hard work they’re putting in.

Now so far, anyone unfamiliar with the original series might be wondering where the reputation for crazy fucked-up Bad End scenes came from.  So far, with the exception of returning weirdos earthworm girl and leech girl, the monster girls have all been cute lolis and vanilla (by MGQ standards) beast girls.  That, my friend, is about to change.  We’re heading into Tartarus.

In the back story, the cataclysm that wrecked the world 30 years ago opened up seven pits, or holes, to a weird region they called Tartarus.  There’s a small hole in the south of the Ilias continent where some research-y types are investigating the phenomena.

One of the dudes gives a helpful history of the other Tartarus sites and which ones are currently being investigated.  The soldiers around the excavation site are less enthusiastic – “We’re all going to die.”

Might be a slight morale issue there methinks.

Tartarus is off-limits unless the main quest chain is followed.  We arrive there and look, it’s that damn White Rabbit.

She leaps down into the hole and we head off in pursuit.  Another allusion to Alice in Wonderland – Alice chasing the White Rabbit down a hole.

Oh hello.  Secret research lab type thing underground.  Are we still in JRPG-land or have we shifted into Resident Evil-land.  The floor and walls are all metal.

I think the region of cute monster girls has ended.  Now I suspect we’re going to get chimeras and Xelvy’s mechanical (yet queerly sensual) horrors.

Yep.

And in case you were still unconvinced…

And also…

Now this is the MGQ world we know and love.  Hey, what are you doing hiding behind the sofa.  This is supposed to be sexy.  They just want to give you a hug with their… uh… pincers, and mechanical clamp things, and uh… many spindly leg things.

Yes, we should probably run.

Too late.

The first time I saw them I thought all the monsters were mechanical (or to use the Paradox race – Dolls).  This isn’t correct.  Only Jade, the girl with the cyclops eye and clampy arms, is of the Doll race.  She likes to use those weird limbs to clamp Luka to her and lather gel all over him while her specialized semen-harvesting unit gives his cock a nice suck.

Sully, the weird girl that looks like an upright shrimp or lobster, actually is some kind of shrimp or lobster girl.  Her race is Sea-Dweller.  Her pleasure attacks have a similar pattern to the infamous Crab girl of MGQ’s first series (I imagine she’ll show up later and will likely have plenty of fun dialogue).  She likes to clamp Luka and wash him with foamy bubbles.  I still haven’t seen her Bad End.  I got as far as seeing the temptation attack artwork and Nope!ed the fuck out of there.

Shestra, the girl in the dress with things we’d rather not think about hiding under the dress, is some kind of insect girl.  If you let her have her way with you or just lose, she’ll lift the dress up to reveal a bulbous abdomen with a rather squooshy orifice at the end of it.  During her Bad End she pins Luka to the floor and taunts him with how she’s going to suck him up and make him come with her ‘horrible’ insect orifice.

It’s certainly a novel take on paranormal BDSM.  D’you think it will take off with the Twilight/50 Shades of Grey crowd?

Oi, why are you quivering over in the corner?  This is still the tame stuff.  No-one’s tried to eat us for starters.

The first time I reached this area I found it a notable spike in difficulty.  The first fight alone nearly emptied the MP of both the main and backup priests I had in the party.  This was because I’d screwed around and tried to level up too many of the different monster girls I’d recruited in inefficient ways.  It was easier in the restarted game as I had a better idea of some of the Abilities/Items that speed up levelling.  At this stage I found the two best damage dealers were Barnny with the killer bow found in the tunnels to the Nameless Slums and Rami with the wand found in the iron mines outside Pornburg (both require a Level 6 Thief to unlock the chests).  Rami is probably the best choice here with her Lightning spell.

Navigating this region isn’t too hard.  Follow the White Rabbit through two levels, opening up the chests along the way, and eventually you’ll come to the mysterious door none of the researchers have been able to open.

Luka can, just by touching it.  Which surprises Alice as it’s something a mere human adventurer shouldn’t be able to do.  And on the other side of the door is…

Well, we’ll find that out tomorrow.

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox! part 10

Pornburg and yet more Rabbits

This is a continuation of the walkthrough for Monmusu Quest: Paradox I started back here.  Yep, it’s going to be a long one.

ETA: Dargoth Translations has just put out a new English patch.  I think this is concentrating more on adding more game mechanics translations (so people can actually play the game) rather than H-scenes.  I haven't tried it out yet.  Will probably give it a look tonight.

After carrying out Amira’s mission to the Nameless Slums she’s now prepared to give us information on the White Rabbit Alice is chasing after.  Apparently there’s been a sighting of a rabbit in Pornburg down to the south-east.

Pornburg?  That name’s not suspicious in the slightest.

Pornburg is a colony of sexually-liberated types (translation: perverts).  Everyone is wandering around in their underwear.  The mayor lusts after Alice despite her being sealed in a little-girl form.  One of the houses contains Captain Scatological, who wants you to drink some very suspicious tea and wigs Sonya out so much she won’t let the party go back into the house.  Basically, if you hadn’t already seen the dubious Bad End scenes, five mins of wandering around Pornburg would be enough to let you know this is not a kid’s game.

The main quest component is fairly straightforward.  The rabbit is in the inn and once again it’s the wrong rabbit.  It’s one of the pink-haired rabbit girls that can be found roaming around this area (more on them later).  She says she might have heard of a white rabbit being seen around the excavation of the Tartarus pit, so I guess that’s the next destination.  But first Alice wants to go back to Iliasburg to show Amira her displeasure at giving out wrong information.

But before that there are other things to be done in this area.

A new job can be unlocked here.  Give the fortune teller on the hill overlooking the town a Hard Growth Wrist (not to be confused with Hard Job Wrist) and they will give you the certificate unlocking the Fortune Teller job.  The Hard Growth Wrist is the reward for surviving Stella’s (see Nameless Slums) handjob BF.

There’s another battle-fucker here as well.  One of the bunny girls (conventional rather than actual bunny girl, I think – so many damn rabbits running around this part of the game!) in the downstairs casino will give you a bit of frottage that will likely end up in making her fluffy tail sticky unless Luka is pumped up with HP bonuses.

There’s also a house containing an underwear thief.  From the explanation, if you level the job Unemployed up you’ll eventually learn a skill to steal monster girls’ underwear.  Don’t know much about this as haven’t levelled Unemployed up at all.

ETA (or rather correct): I've been told this is a mistranslation my part.  It's lvl 10 Flirt that learns the Shameful Theft skill.

To the north are some iron mines.  At the bottom of three levels a key item, Chunk of Iron, can be picked up.

There are also plenty of chests containing improved armour and weapons.  Of special note is the wand found in the blue chest.  This gives Magic a big boost and in the hands of a Magician like Rami will likely have her one-shotting any enemy with a weakness to either fire, ice or lightning for the next few sections.

There are three types of monster girl wandering around this region.  Two of them – rabbit girl and sheep girl – are new while the leech girl returns from the first series.

The rabbit girl is my favourite of the new monster girls seen so far.  To be honest the other ones had left me a little cold.  Bernie (or Barnny – although the translated spelling seems a little weird), the rabbit girl, is a lot more sexy than the other beast girl art.  She’s also an extremely useful addition to the party.  As a level four Hunter she has access to the skill Beast Killer.  That combined with the bow found in the chest in the tunnels to Nameless Slums means you have a party member that will likely one-shot most Beasts in the Ilias continent (and most of the monster girls in the starting areas are classed as Beast).

Enough of the boring game stats stuff.  What about the real things that matter?

Her Bad End scene is a footjob.  A little unfortunate as feet don’t hit my spots at all (My level of disinterest is so high it’s one of the few fetishes I don’t think I’ve written a scene for – will have to rectify that at some point).

The main difference between her low-happiness scenes in the castle is whether she’s barefoot or not.

However, get her up to 100 happiness and you can unlock her sex scene.

Being part rabbit, she’s… um… quite pneumatic in the whole up’n’down department.

Hmm, Lime’s 100-happiness scene and now this.  I think I can see what the creators are encouraging players to do.  That level seems to be where the good stuff is at – although how the hell it will work with some of MGQ’s more vore-happy girls I’ll be interested to see.  Maybe they spit you out before the digestive juices get too far.

Right we’re done with the village of perverts.  Back in Iliasburg we can now recruit Amira by talking to her.  It’s no great surprise to see she has no happiness-sex options.  Even MGQ has limits.  Instead she hangs around by the castle entrance and gives tidbits of information on where to go next.  From her I also saw that the Jobs max out at level 10 (assuming they all have the same number of levels) as she joins the party as a maxed-out level 10 Information Dealer (this job is unlocked after speaking to her on returning from the Nameless Slum mission).

Another of the loli bandits can also be recruited at this point.  Give Dragon Puppy the Lump of Iron and she’ll make an Iron Sword then join the party.  She can be found in the Blacksmith’s in Iliasburg.  Like all the loli bandits so far she comes with the Steal skill as standard and keeps it regardless of which job she’s moved to.  She’s also a freakin’ dragon, which means she’ll probably level up into a monstrous machine of mayhem at some point.

So many damn party options…

Tomorrow it’s time to enter the mysterious Tartarus pit in the south of the Ilias continent.

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox! part 9

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Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox! part 8

Unlocking the Merchant Job and Recruiting Half of the Loli Bandits

This is my continuing playthrough/guide to monster girl hentai game Monmusu Quest: Paradox.  The first part of the epic quest can be found back here.

Yesterday Paradox was in remake mode as we repeated the loli bandit storyline from the first series.  The difference this time around is that they’re recruitable.

Goblin girl is the easiest.  Talk to the grandpa in this house.

Then catch Goblin girl while she runs around by the fountain.

The next is the mercantile-obsessed Vanilla, the Vampire Girl.  But before then we need to unlock the Merchant job.  This involves visiting the hill in the desert region to the east of Iliasville.  Chances are most players might have already been there as the wandering monsters surrounding it are low-level slimes.  In my first, doomed, look at the game this region was the second I visited as it looked the second place to go based on the strength of the monsters.  It might be, but I didn’t seem able to unlock the Merchant quest until after visiting Iliasburg. (EDIT - You can and probably should do the merchant quest before fighting the loli bandits)

To unlock the quest you need to speak to the merchant NPC in the item shop in Iliasville.

Then it’s over to Talus Hills (which translates to the Hill of Cod through one of my machine translators).  They can be found here:

The guard at the entrance gives the helpful hint that mandragoras are weak to fire.  Mandragora was the first optional encounter in MGQ and had an annoying paralysing scream.  The hills are full of them.  With them are a brand new type of monster girl – a wee little dog girl.

Not my type really, but she might scratch someone’s itchy frontal lobes.

Her temptation attack is a sloppy blowjob with lots of tongue that carries on into the Bad End.  Then I think you end up sort of her involuntary master, or something like that.

One of the disappointing things about the demo was the only new monsters were her and the pink Bunni slime.  It didn’t bother me too much as I knew it was almost certain Toro Toro Resistance had created ridiculous numbers of new monster girls to play with anyway.  I’m not sure it sent out the right signal having so many repeats in the demo though.

Rami, the big-titted imp, is very useful in this area as her fire magic is good for setting mandragoras on fire and the dog girls – as Beasts – are vulnerable to pleasure attacks like the imps’ Melty Kiss.

Somewhere a little north of the entrance the lost merchant can be found flat on his back next to a mandragora.  Bless her, she says her scream 'accidentally' paralysed him and she’s staying with him to make sure no harm comes to him.  Or so she says.  She could have been fucking him senseless a few moments ago for all we know.  Giving the merchant Full Moon Grass (the paralysation cure) gets him back on his feet.

Back in Iliasville and the merchant gives us a nice reward including the certificate required to unlock the Merchant job.

I don’t think it’s a bad idea to change Luka to the Merchant job.  It nerfs his attacking abilities, but most of the time Luka is either using Talk to recruit new party member or flat on his back underneath a horny monster girl (they nearly always target him for the dirty stuff).  Merchant has a boost to HP (good for the battle-fucks) and provides a nice 1.5x modifier to gold picked up after winning battles.

Forget all this violent adventuring malarkey, son.  Trading is where it’s at.

Now it’s time for the loli Vampire Girl.  She’s trying to sell her own wares in the item shop in Iliasburg.  As her wares are commonplace things like acorns, rocks and weeds, she’s not having much success.

It’s freshly-graduated-from-school-of-merchanting Luka to the rescue.  This is another quest.

Speak to the merchant NPC back in Iliasville.  He recommends going back to the Talus Hills and looking for a big beetle because… JRPG.  The big beetle can be found on this big tree in the west part of Talus Hills.

I don’t really know why big beetle, but after we take it back to Vanilla she’s able to sell it to some gullible local lad and this pleases her enough for her to join the party in the hope of finding more lucrative business opportunities.

Recruiting Vanilla also opens up the item shop in the Pocket Castle.  This is to the right of the main entrance.  Either Vanilla will be standing behind the counter or one of her bat minions if she’s currently in the party.

The selection in the shop starts off pitiful, but can be expanded by performing a series of missions for Vanilla.  They all seem to start the same way – have Vanilla in the party and buy something from her shop.  Afterwards she’ll tell you what she’s missing and where to go to find it.

The first expansion is adding Medicinal Herbs to the selection.  That’s done by taking Vanilla to the same NPC merchant from the merchant quest line above.

The second expansion adds abnormal status curing items.  Initially that involves talking to the same merchant, but then he sends us back out to the Talus Hills and the same mandragora as before.  Talk to her and Vanilla will cut a deal.

After that is Phoenix Tail Feather.  But first that involves…  Oh yeah, we’ll get to that tomorrow when we head off to the Nameless Slum in search of Amira’s information.

These missions require Vanilla to be in the party, but to be honest, she’s a surprisingly useful party member anyway.  She starts as Merchant, which gives the 1.5x bonus to gold found.  She also has the Thievery ability to nick stuff off enemies, which means she can fulfil the party thief role.  On top of that she has a number of magic and special attacks such as Lightning, HP Drain and even attacking multiple opponents with a flock of bats.  Coupled with the (presumably) high base stats of the Vampire race and she’s a lot in a single pint-sized package.  Her one weakness is she doesn’t like being set on fire, but that tends to put a crimp on the day for most people.