Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox! part 19

The Lost Woods/Woods of Perplexity and a Beach

Three weeks in and probably not even halfway through, this is the continuation of the Monmusu Quest: Paradox playthrough I began back here.

After the horrors of Tartarus yesterday it's time to get back to the surface and play with far less frightening fairies and pervy elves.  We should now be high enough level to enter the forbidden/lost woods to the west of Iliasville.

There are three entrances to the woods and it's treated as a dungeon-type location rather than the open-world map.

There are four monster girl types in the woods and nothing new.  The pumpkin fairy comes back in a new location.  Joining her are the succubus flower fairies from MGQ's first chapter.  They're appearing out of sequence as last time they showed up in the same forest as Slyph on the next continent.  The other two monster girls are the dark elf fencer and dark elf summoner that guarded Enrika in the original game.

MGQ-verse elves are elves that given over wholly to their pervy side and fallen to depravity.  They're kind of like how we'd wish other fantasy worlds' Dark Elves would be if all that fetish fuel armour didn't come with a dollop of bloodthirsty sadism.

MGQ-verse's dark elves just wanna fuck.

Unfortunately, because of their fallen-into-depravity natures, fucking them results in either having your soul yanked out or all your juices slurped up by their little tentacled pets.

Ho-hum.

I didn't see anything new here.  Like roper, dark elf summoner's two request scenes back in the castle only vary in that she lets her little pet drain you to death in the 10-happiness scene (remember what I said – always remember to feed your bad girls plenty of meat).

There are two exits from the woods.  The one to the east leads to Enrika.  The one in the south goes to the beach.

Let's go to the beach!

This is a new location that wasn't in the original series and the good thing about locations that weren't present in the original series tend to come with brand new monster girls.  The beach is no exception as new girls mini-crab girl and catfish girl show up.

Mini-crab girl looks and acts like she was raised in a rock pool filled with Red Bull.  Like her bigger sister from the original series, her Bad End involves pinning Luka to the floor and giving his cock a good washing with plenty of foamy bubbles.

Catfish girl wedges Luka's cock between her boobies and gives it a good suck.

At this point Lime has developed to be a little scary.  After she maxed out Slime I switched her to the Carnivorous Slime race.  Now she has the ability to gloop enemies in digestive juices and – once they've been glooped – gulp them down whole.  You might want to cut out those Slime Heaven sessions back in the castle, Luka.  Your bits might melt off.

Oddly, glooping victims in digestive acid counts as a pleasure attack.  Enemies come when defeated.  This sort of makes sense as the MGQ-verse as a whole leans heavily on the vore fetish, but still seems weird.

"I'm covered in acid and my skin is melting off.  I feel so horny!!!"

Nope, don't see it.

Says the person who's written their fair share of vore stories.

Shhh.

The unfortunate mermaid can be recruited here if you have Amira in the party (though it would probably be kinder to toss her back into the sea).

There's also a special healing shell that can be found here.

Or rather it was there.  I picked it up before I remembered to take the screenshot.  The guide I have tells me you're supposed to give it to an elf in Enrika.

Which we'll be taking a look at… tomorrow.

(this and the next few posts will likely be a little short as I'm away for a few days and need to queue up a few posts in advance)

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox! part 18

Descent into Tartarus II

Or we could just call it Monmusu Quest: Paradox goes all Silent Hill.  This is my playthrough of that hentai game, by the way.  You can find the first part back here.

Tartarus II is the big pit in the south of this section.

There are no academics or any kind of organised excavation taking place here as mere normal humans can't get to this part of Ilias continent.  There's just us as we descend the rope ladder (best not to ask how that got here) into the darkness.

Tartarus II.  Silent Hill, JRPG-style.  To be honest, I don't think Silent Hill's moodiness and atmosphere can be emulated with JRPG graphics.  TTR make a good fist of it.  Notice the metal grates on the floor and how they're fallen away in some sections.

Uh oh.  Does that mean we're about to be attacked by Silent Hill-themed monster girls?  The first Tartarus was freaky enough.

And Tartarus II doesn't want to be left out in the freak stakes.

I believe this might be the first Delphinus sighting of Paradox.  Delphinus is the artist infamous for MGQ's more bizarre creations, including the plansect region (dubbed the Forest of Nope by some fans) and the warped angel designs of chapter three.

His monster girl is the machine girl with the purple shit oozing from her lips.  If she gets hold of Luka she 'executes' him by placing him inside her lower half and milking enough semen out of him to fill a big tank underneath her.

And that's fairly mild in comparison to the abomination standing next to her.  Is that a monster girl or a monster eating a girl?

The fact the plant-made-out-of-flesh is called Eater is ominous enough.  Her temptation attack is to send out a big tongue and lick Luka's cock until he comes.

Human being looks tasty – also ominous.

I really wouldn't get too close, Luka.

Ulp, too late.

!!!!

!!!!!!

And…

Okay, let's never lose to Eater again.

We will now resume the grisly horror game Monmusu Quest: Paradox.

Even more horrible is I forgot to use the pocket castle inn before descending into Tartarus and I respawn miles away in the forest next to the harpy tower.  Fortunately Luka has learnt the Merchant skill Wagon and I can use that to teleport back to the ruined village rather than battling back through the tunnels (or I could have used a Harpy Wing).

The third monster girl isn't quite as terrifying.

I think she belongs to the Beast race as Barnny's Beast Killer attack is quite effective against her, as is Remi's Imp Titjob pleasure attack.

Something has clearly gone wrong in this part of Tartarus.  Spliced into the research lab surroundings are other bits of terrain – a wood, part of a cavern.  Someone was playing with toys they shouldn't have.

Through the door and it's back to that town with the purple shit all over it.  Is it Remina again?  I don't know.  A figure with glasses ducks into the house opposite.

Promestein?

Yep, it's Promestein or rather alt!Promestein.  This is a younger version, before she became one of Ilias's chief henchwomen and one of the main antagonists of the original series.  She tells them she's a low-ranking angel working in a library position.  In keeping with her mad scientist persona, she's investigating the weird time and dimensional distortions associated with Tartarus.  She doesn't think her previous work could have caused this as those were small scale experiments.

I'm curious how this scene would play out with Ilias given she already knows who Promestein is and what she'll become.

Young Promestein is still a bit mad.  When she finds out about Luka's ability to open the doors at the bottom of Tartarus she asks if he can dissect his frontal lobe to work out why.

Luka declines for some reason.

You can recruit Promestein here.  She joins the party as an excuse to investigate Luka further.

The word apoptosis crops up again (it was ominous graffiti on the wall in Remina) in Promestein's notes.  In biology terminology that means programmed cell death.  Given that we're dealing with parallel universes here I wonder if that means someone is going around destroying certain timelines/universes to protect reality overall.

Then it's across another Hades bridge and back to the entrance of the Tartarus pit.

Only now the pit is surrounded by forest.  It looks like we're back in the past.

Walking north reveals the village is back to its previously prosperous state (this is the only possible way to go – the tunnels are blocked with fallen rubble).

When they enter everyone in the village mistakes Luka for his dad, Marcellus.  It gets really spooky when they talk to the village chief and he hands them a letter addressed specifically to Luka.  Spooky because they're about 25 years in the past and Luka hasn't even been born yet.

The letter is from Marcellus.  But – as Alice points out – which one?  This reality's Marcellus wouldn't even know he was going to have a son called Luka at this point.  The letter must have been left by the Marcellus from their reality, able to travel between parallel worlds in the same way his son can.

This is starting to feel like Primer.  I think I strained something in my brain watching that film.

The letter also reveals the next location.  We're to look for Micaela, who's hiding out in the red light district of Enrika – the elf village in the big forest to the west of Iliasville.  (Elves?  Red light district?  Oh right.  Elves are supposed to be giant pervs in the MGQ-verse)

Time to get some payback on those damn fairies that beat me up the first time I left the first village.

Before then there's another job that can be unlocked here.  The legendary cook Alfonso is alive and well in this reality.  He whips up a salad Alice finds delicious and tells the party his one regret was not finding a suitable student.  He buried all his knowledge under the tree outside.

I didn't find a specific trigger to move back into the main timeline.  I think at this point the game just assumes you know to use a Harpy Wing to teleport back.  Back at the ruined village the certificate for unlocking the Cook job can be found in front of the dead tree outside the ruins of the cook's house.

That's all for today.  Come back tomorrow when we find out just how pervy the elves of Ilias continent are.

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox! part 17

The Gold Mines and Tunnels to Tartarus II

This is part 17 of my playthrough of Monmusu Quest: Paradox.  The first part of this lunacy began back here.

It turns out I was right to do the slug tower before the gold mines.  For the purposes of this blog anyway.  The gold mines are too short for a single post, but overlap nicely with tunnels to the next location.  They share most of the same monsters anyway.

The gold mines can be found north of Midas Village here:

As with the other dungeons so far there are three types of the monster girl.  Two are the returning Roper and Meda (I have no idea what she is – she seems to be a monster-girl-arized version of Dragon Quest’s Lunatick).

I was certain the roper girl would eat you in the castle regardless of happiness.  And that’s true of the 10-happiness scene.  She leads Luka off to a quiet part of the castle where she knows she won’t be disturbed and then wraps him up in tentacles and dissolves him into delicious meaty mush.

You really should know better than running off with the predatory girls, Luka.

The 100-happiness scene looks like it’s going to go exactly the same way.  Except at the end the roper girl does spit him out (metaphorically) telling him she doesn’t eat her friends.

Remember, always use safe sex, Luka.  Feed your monster girl plenty of meat beforehand.

The third monster girl in the gold mines is a ragamuffin girl wearing a pumpkin for a helmet.  Not my type.  She looks more waif than waifu.  She’s a wizard and an extremely squishy one.  She can occasionally use Silence on the whole party, not that it helps when Barnny is using her SP attacks to turn her into a pincushion.

The lump of gold is found at the bottom of the mine.  Walk into this passageway.

And it’s at the end of the tunnel.

Take the gold back to the dude in the weapon shop and boy does his selection improve.  Gold everything.  I’m guessing gold has different properties in MGQ-verse that make it have better stats than steel.  His new selection also simplifies a lot of the equipping.  If a party member can equip it then buy it as the gold stuff is better than everything available so far.  The only exceptions to that being the bow and wand found in blue chests.

Now, fully geared up in gold, it’s time to brave the dangerous path to the second Tartarus location.

At the time I was thinking I might have to switch the party around as abusing the XP gain of the Bondage Rope item combined with my tendency to keep grinding an area until I’d recruited everything and seen all the different drops had left my regular party feeling a little overpowered.  Running into the new monster girl, Candle Wax Girl, in the tunnels quickly disabused me of that notion.

Three of them glooped up the party and set everyone on fire.  Nice combination of fetishes for the Bad End – a slime girl made out of hot, molten wax.

They’re an annoying monster at this stage.  They’re quick and tend to act first with annoying binds.  They also have fire attacks that hit the entire party (Not so good when the highly flammable Vanilla is in the party).  They didn’t seem weak to pleasure attacks, or any of the Barnny the Hunter’s special attacks.  I wasn’t even sure what race they were.  I thought they might be some kind of slime girl.

They’re not.  They’re actually the first Ghost race the player encounters.  Despite using fire a lot it turns out it’s also their weakness.  Which sort of makes sense given that they’re made out of sentient wax.

I should have probably caught the hint when the chest outside the tunnels gave me an anti-fire accessory.

Putting Rami back in the party made this section a lot easier.  The candle girls are the only new appearance.  The other monsters are ropers and medas, with the occasional orc or rabbit girl in the outside sections.

On the other side the monsters go back to the standard leech girls and wolf girls found across the rest of the Ilias continent.  Before heading directly off to the second Tartarus pit Alice suggests resting in the ruined village to the north.

The village has been destroyed and looks similar to the ruins of alt!Iliasville.  There are only two buildings that can be entered – a ruined inn and the ruins of a cook’s house.  We know it’s a cook’s house as there are stories about this village once playing host to a legendary chef who was lost when the a catastrophe befell the village.  This is confirmed when Luka finds a stash of recipes.  Alice is very sad at the loss of a great cooking talent.

Also in the cook’s house is Ilias.  She’s also planning to investigate Tartarus II for similar reasons as us.  She believes it’s the path to a parallel world(s).  There’s some other stuff but I’ll probably have to wait for Dargoth’s full translation as the automated stuff was in gibberish mode.

Her slime girl retainer has a friendly chat with Lime.  Both are happy with their fun adventure.

Okay.  Tomorrow it’s time to descend into Tartarus II

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox! part 16

SLUGS!!!!!

Where we at now?  Part 16.  Man, and I bet we're 2.nothing% into the game as well.  I'm still going to be writing this when I'm old and my teeth are falling out.  The Monmusu Quest: Paradox playthrough first started back here.

Right, time to pack the wellies and waterproofs.  Things are going to get extremely slimy.

The first quest from Midas Village is to sort out the slug problem in Midas Village.  The source originates from a tower in the west.  This tower.

(by this point you might want to start using the various Encounter Half abilities/accessories.  I had four parties of lusty orcs, bee girls and other assorted monster girls throw themselves at my feet in the journey to the tower.  How there are any human males left in Ilias continent I have no idea.)

Right, slug girls.  When it comes to creating a sexy (YMMV) monster girl the standard approach is to start with the famous ones of myth – your mermaids, harpies, lamia and the like.  Then, if you're feeling creative, you can invent other types by splicing different organisms to sexy women.  Conceivably that could include slugs.  I mean we already have things like spiders and octopuses.  And slugs and octopuses are both molluscs after all.

But at what point does someone go, "You know, one slug girl isn't enough.  What this game really needs is more slug."

(says the person planning to write "Sandwiched by Slugs" later this year)

Slug tower is a whole load of more slug (but no snails funnily enough).  The original slug girl isn't present, presumably because she'd be woefully under-levelled at this point.  Instead we get two new designs.

Slugs tend to the goth end of the fashion market apparently.  Although the one in the nun habit seems to be legitimately into the worship of a god that hates her.  Which is fairly hardcore goth when you think about it.

(renounce the false Goth music and embrace your lord and saviour, Black Metal!)

That one's likely showing my age.

Ah that picture of the girl with the wide-open mouth from the promo material – it's sister slug's temptation attack.  And, in a surprise for this game, she just wants to wrap her slimy tongue around our cock rather than us.

The Bad End sees her go down on her knees between Luka's legs.  I could say something about altar boys and priests, but I suspect I'm already beyond my limit of allowed risqué material after the sections with Mini and the loli bandits.

Sister slug is very well behaved for an MGQ monster girl.  At one point in the Bad End it even looks like she's going to let us go afterwards.  Then she asks if we'd like to accompany her on a pilgrimage and that becomes Luka's new quest.  There are worse fates in this world.  Like the one about two paragraphs down.

Not sure I trust sister slug's mate, the yellowy one, though.  Something in the way she's licking her lips.  She seems a little too fond of meat.  Careful there, Luka, it's not always your semen the girls are after.

Ulp, too late.

Did I remember to warn you the MGQ series occasionally shows really gruesome Bad Ends where Luka is eaten alive by the monster girl in a really gruesome manner?  That one might have slipped my mind.

She also eats you alive back in the pocket castle if you request the wrong sex favour.

Really eats you, team-mate or not.  Luka has to make the trek back from Hades and respawns back at the gate to the castle.  This is the first monster girl that happens with I think.  It also surprised me as it had different artwork.  Up until then I'd assumed that most of the requests either duplicated the Bad Ends with slightly different dialogues or were new scenes like Lime's Slime Heaven.  Now I'm wondering what else I might have missed as most of the time I've been avoiding losing (walking back from town is annoying) because I figured I'd see the scenes in the castle after recruiting the monster girl.

Predation is just one of Elizabeth's (the carnivorous slug girl) five scenes back at the castle (six counting her Bad End).  That part of the game is a little random.  I think the only criteria determining how many scenes a particular monster girl gets is how enthusiastic their artist is for drawing them.

With Elizabeth you get a slimy paizuri scene

And various sex scenes

Including one that touches on the fact a lot of slugs are hermaphrodites

(although I suspect some could have quite happily gone without being shown that).

Kudos to the artist (I think it's UN_DO) for putting in that little bit extra.

At the top of the slug tower the slug boss is actually three bosses.  They're having sticky fun with some poor (jammy) lad.  He's nearly out of baby juice, so it's rather convenient Luka happened to come along at this precise moment…

The slug queen is a three-in-one boss.  She counts as a single target, but has three separate attacks.  Barnny's Land-Dweller Killer attacks whittle her down to no HP eventually.

After beating her Luka tells her about the slug epidemic in Midas Village.  The slug queens admit they might have got a little carried away with reproduction.  But it's okay, they'll just copulate for pleasure from now on.

That works, I suppose.

The slug queen(s) can be recruited to the party.  This requires Luka proving he has enough love for the slug race.  It can be done by feeding the original slug girl enough lettuce to get her happiness above 100.  She then gives you a slug medal which can be presented to the slug queens as proof.

The slug queens also like lettuce and their 100 happiness H-scene is oddly beautiful in a weirdly mystical way.  Certainly imaginative and worth a look.

(I did consider posting it here, but I'm also conscious that what I'm doing here could be seen as not much different to the posts of all the CGIs that appeared on some sites within a couple of days of Paradox coming out.  For that reason I will be deliberately omitting some material.  The artists and creators of Monmusu Quest: Paradox have done a good job.  Please support them by buying the game so they'll go on to make more.)

That's the slugs exterminated in as much as Luka ever exterminates anything.  Not that it makes any difference as Midas Village is still infested with slug girls.  Flora, the legendary maid, says that's okay.  It was the same last time.  The numbers dropped to manageable levels over the following year.  Poor slug girls, they die so young.  Anyway, that's the Maid job unlocked.

Tomorrow it's time to get some gold so the nice man in the metalsmith shop can make us some glittery new gear.

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox! part 15

The Medal Queen and Midas Village

We’re at part 15 of the Monmusu Quest: Paradox playthrough – the grim log of a hapless author destroyed by a JRPG.  The madness starts back here.

A bitty episode today, I’m afraid.  It’s more new locations discovered and endless NPCs to talk to.

Just north of the harpy tower there’s a little palace-type thing.  Entering puts us in a wood outside it, though.

A slug girl, earthworm girl and leech girl are hanging out outside a hut.  They like it here because it’s damp.  I think they’re all NPCs just here for flavour purposes, but it might be because I don’t have the right party composition to trigger further dialogue.  At this point Luka’s harem is already so big I doubt I’ll get a chance to try them all out, let alone level them up.  It’s like Pokémon all over again and I needed to learn MS Access to figure that out (yes, I was that geeky).

The house contains another battle-fucker – Meirin.  She’s some kind of martial artist, I think, and her technique is the titjob.  They must have run out of time on her artwork as it’s just the same sprite with a semen splash added at the end when Luka – predictably – fails to hold out.

If you do beat her you get some kind of martial arts scroll.  There are a number of accessories like this and I haven’t figured out what they do yet to be honest.

Carrying on north and we find some kind of teleporter that teleports us across the water to a small island.  The first structure (the one we’re teleported into) is the North Ilias Monastery.

I think this is another tutorial area.  There are various NPCs talking about advanced jobs and attributes.  This is a little worrying as I’m using every dirty trick I can think of to boost XP and Lime is still only a level 9 thief.  I’m guessing this will make sense later.  Maybe.  There’s some stuff about attributes and + systems that machine translation hasn’t a hope of making clear.  I guess experimentation is what it’ll have to be.

Outside the monastery and there’s one other structure on the island.  It’s a palace found in an oasis.  Sadly the monster girls are the same standard wandering monsters for the Ilias continent we’ve already seen many times before.

The structure next to the oasis is the palace of the Medal Queen.

This is where you can trade in all those small medals that keep turning up in various barrels and pots.  The trade list includes various items, job certificates and you can even ask the queen herself to join the party with enough medals.

That’s probably not happening for a while.  Currently I have a mighty 6 medals.  Three is enough to unlock the Noble job and that’s probably better than a sword I can’t use because of giving everyone in the party all the greedy jobs.

There doesn’t seem to be anything else to this area at the moment.

Next stop is the Midas Village.  That’s the next quest hub and it’s to the north-east.

Midas Village has a slug problem.  There are a ridiculous number of slug girls crawling around.  The old chap by the entrance explains it’s been a bad year and they have a bit of an epidemic of them at the moment.  He also fills in with other bits of information.  There’s a gold mine to the north (overrun with monster girls) and a famous but retired Maid lives in the village somewhere (the source of the certificate to unlock the Maid job).

There is definitely a slug girl problem.  The NPC normally charged with teleporting the player to places of interest is complaining because a slug girl is currently doing their job.  The preacher used to reset the respawn point has been replaced by a slug girl in a nun habit.  The normal preacher is over in the corner, apparently being ‘tended’ to by his own slug harem.

There’s even a slug girl roaming the cow fields to the west.

“Moo.  I’m a cow.”

Um, yes dear.

There’s a useful shop in this area.  The maid in the field (if you have recruited the orc girl she’ll be standing next to her) sells various meats.  These are useful for raising the happiness of the more predatory monster girls back in the pocket castle.

There is a battle-fucker.  She’s dressed as a maid and hangs around outside the house of the maid of legend.

She’s another handjob specialist.  No wonder monster girls are so tempting – do none of the human girls shag?

Actually, you’ll want to boost Luka’s HP high enough to win this battle-fuck as soon as possible.  Her reward is a useful accessory that gives 1.5x Job XP with no drawback.

There are two quests originating from Midas Village.

The first is from the blacksmith in the shop.  He needs a chunk of gold from the mines in the north.  Fetch that and it will unlock a whole lot of shiny new gear.

The second is given by the legendary maid.  Back when she was in her prime there was a similar slug girl outbreak.  It originated from a tower out in the west.  She went there and defeated the slug queen responsible for flooding the land with an epidemic of slug girls.  She thinks the same thing has happened again and tasks Luka and party with defeating the slug queen.  As a reward she’ll hand over the certificate that unlocks the maid job.

So more setup today rather than frantic fighting and fucking.

The guide I’ve been following (yes, I know it’s a cheat but as the alternative was wandering the realm without the faintest idea of what to do, I did what I had to do) suggests doing the gold mine first.  I did check out both locations and as the monster girls found in the slug tower appear before the monster girls from the gold mine in the monsterpedia I think the tower is supposed to be the next location.

So join us tomorrow for sexy… uh… slug girls?  It’s going to be slimy and icky, isn’t it…

Oh, and if you're enjoying this so far and on the off chance you want to show your appreciation with a small financial contribution.  I don't have a Paypal button or a Patreon account.  Instead I ask people to check out my ebooks.  This is better.  I still get money and you get more wickedly sexy content along the same lines as MGQ and similar games.  The books can be found on Amazon and Smashwords.  Please give them a look if you've liked what you've read here so far.

(really should have picked a blog post with more sex in it before putting in the ebook plug)

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox! part 14

The Harpy Tower

The epic playthrough of Monmusu Quest: Paradox continues.  The first part was posted back here.

Currently we’re looking for the harpies as they’ve all buggered off somewhere.  Some of the folks think it might be to a mysterious tower to the north.  Before then we might as well check out (translation: steal all their stuff while they’re buggered off) the harpy village.  It’s the big tree next to the village.

The harpy village is a ghost town.  It’s also a little weird to navigate as there are hidden paths around the back of the tree that take the player higher up.  If you’re wondering how you’re supposed to reach the higher branches, look for the sign post and then walk into the tree trunk.

Right at the top we find Nero drinking tea (out of his own cup – he brought it with him) in the chief’s house.  He has the answer to why all the harpies have vanished.  They’ve been infected with a virus that turns them into uncontrollable nymphomaniacs.

Hrm, isn’t this MGQ-verse?  I thought every monster girl was already an uncontrollable nymphomaniac.

Anyway, because the infected pose a risk to the humans around them, the queen has quarantined all the harpies off in a tower to the north.  The weird thing about the virus is everyone thought it extinct thousands of years ago.  More evidence of timey-wimey weirdness likely originating from the Tartarus pits.  If Luka can travel into the future of a parallel world then so too can ancient travellers from the past.  One of them must have brought the virus with them.

Nero, who clearly knows way more than he’s letting on, has a cure.  It’s the rare fruit of some kind of world tree.  I don’t think that location was in the first series.  Might be wrong though.

Armed with a cure, we toddle off north in search of the tower.

There’s a big forest and a whole lot of nothing in this region.  The monsters are the same bee girls, orcs, rabbit girls and sparrow daughters as before.  The tower is next to a lake at the north fringe of the big forest.

We knock on the door and tell them we have a cure.  A harpy opens the door.

“Forget the medicine.  Let’s have sex!”

This will not be straightforward.

Actually, the tower is fairly straightforward.  And a little dull.  There’s nothing new here.  The harpy and harpy twins return from the first game.  The other wandering monsters are the same sparrow daughters we’ve already fought (and fucked).

I think I might have got a little lucky with having the right people in the party.  Harpies have annoyingly high evasion and dodge most attacks.  I found this out later when I returned to the tower to try and recruit the harpy twins.  I’d noticed that the Slime race picks up a couple of anti-harpy skills around level 6 or 7.  I figured that was a hint the game was expecting Bunni and Lime to be useful in this section.  Unfortunately, damage bonuses only apply if you actually hit the target and the slimes are about as accurate as the England cricket team after a night on the piss.

The tower has three floors and on the top floor is a returning boss from the first series – the lovely harpy queen.

Despite desires on spiriting Luka off to be her babies-forever husband, the harpy queen was (sort of) one of the good guys.  Given that the human and harpy village are already co-existing, it was going to take something like this nympho-inducing plague to give Luka a reason to fight her.  She does try to fight the effects, but it’s Luka, and every monster girl in the planet wants his man meat.

As with the first series, the harpy queen is the first to employ a Counter stance (where attacking sets the player up for an instant loss).  I was wondering if Paradox would bring that back and how it’d be implemented with the party fights.  The game asks me if I want to attack and I wisely decide to hang back while queen harpy is showing her funky moves.

After the fight we find out that the quarantine is going to have to continue.  More powerful individuals need more of the cure and the harpy queen is so powerful that curing her would leave nothing left for her people.  Her solution is to stay in self-imposed quarantine.

This is also a convenient excuse to leave the harpy tower open for future visits.  If you didn’t pick up either Reina (the normal harpy) or Pina & Pii (the harpy twins), you can come back later.  I’d advise much later – the harpies are a damn pain to hit.

I’m not 100% on it, but I don’t think the harpy queen can be recruited this chapter.  I think this is a quest for future chapters.  It will be interesting to see if she’s been given any new H-scenes.  In the castle Reina and Chun (sparrow daughter) only have one request scene at 10 happiness.  Pina and Pii have three (they like bananas) and I think the 50 happiness might be new, although I can’t remember exactly how many scenes they had in the original series.

Back at the now populated harpy village and there’s some more story background.

In the harpy queen’s house one of the harpies tells Luka and others that a trio of powerful demons visited the queen right before the epidemic started.

Oh hello, first sighting of the succubus trio.

Morrigan (her name translates to ‘harpoon cancer’ amusingly):

Lilith:

And Astaroth:

Machine translation doesn’t help too much with what was said, or it might be that it was too late at night and my eyes had gone blurry.  Alice is a bit surprised at the names.  Sometimes demons might be given the names of a trio of infamous and powerful succubi from the past, but it’s considered bad form.

(uh oh, I think these might be the original name holders)

Alice decides the best plan from here is to investigate the second Tartarus hole in the east, but as it’s a bit difficult – and dangerous – to get to, they should visit Midas village in the north and get some better equipment.

Before then there are a few minor sub-quests to fill in now that the harpies have come back.

Talking to the harpies in the item shop with Vanilla will expand her inventory in the pocket castle item shop.  Harpy wings (an item to teleport to any town previously visited) will be available to buy.

Rami, the ludicrously busty imp, wants to fly.  She’s not too good at it (“too much air resistance” as Remi and Rumi joke).  Talking to a harpy in the inn will suggest she jump off the top of the mountain the slimes inhabit next to Iliasville.

With the harpies now back a couple of new characters can be recruited.  Tiny Lamia (her name is even Teeny) can be recruited from the Sutherland Inn in Iliasburg.  She’s of the Lamia race and likely the first recruit with the Maid job.  She also takes on running the inn in the pocket castle and the party can rest there for the ultra-cheap price of 1G.

The unfortunate harpy, Pyhar, can also now be recruited from Pornburg providing you have Amira in the party.

That’ll do for today.  I’ll pick it up again tomorrow.