Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox! part 38

Pyramid God… uh Sphinx

Righty Ho.  We're off to the pyramid to ask the Sphinx how to cure her badly-behaved great-great-great-great-[insert how many greats you figure would fit in a 1,000 years]-great granddaughter.

If none of that made any sense, you'll want to start here and then continue reading through the other 37 parts of my Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox series (why on Earth did I agree to this lunacy).

Before running off back into the desert there's another Vanilla sidequest to update.  This time the mercantile-obsessed vampire wants advanced throwing stars.  She's wondering which of the item stores on the Sentora continent to enquire at when Luka points out they might as well ask the same guy we got the basic throwing stars off.  Job done (it's the samurai NPC back at the Ilias temple in Iliasville in case you've forgotten).

Now for the Sphinx.  Her pyramid is out in the desert almost straight west from Sabasa.

Standing by the entrance is a friendly scorpion girl.  She asks if we're on the trial of the dragon.

Not really.  This universe's Sara seems more interested in succubising virile young men than chasing after Granberia.

Where are the heavenly knights anyway?  I thought we'd seen Tamamo earlier, but that was just me failing to parse the badly-translated Japanese correctly as it was the White Rabbit in disguise (thanks for catching that, Yuuto and others).

But don't answer the heavenly knights question – no spoilers… ;)

The scorpion girl also warns us that the mummies inside can petrify unwary adventurers and offers to sell us the gold needles needed to cure petrification (This is possibly a scam – none of my party members has been petrified so far).  I suspect Vanilla will be back here at some point when she decides to upgrade the item shop to include gold needles.

As the NPCs mentioned back in Sabasa, the pyramid is chock full of treasure.  At the end of every blind alley is a treasure chest and even the Nefertiti lamias of the top levels start throwing gold at us like it's rice once we get their happiness high enough.

In one of the chests (I think it's the green chest) is another fancy XP-modifying accessory – Shoes of Happiness.  Normally I'd be excited by 150% XP with no drawbacks as I'm the greediest McGreedison when it comes to bonus XP in RPGs.  Oddly, they're not that good in Paradox.  At this point Job XP seems harder to come by and Bondage Rope is still just a better way to level up characters on the back row (assuming I'm understanding the math and mechanics correctly).

Enough game mechanics, anyone might get the impression this is a normal computer RPG and not the filthiest of filthy hentai sex games.

Sadly there are no new monster girls in the pyramid.  All are repeat encounters from the previous MGQ series with the scorpion girl added to make it up to the usual four encounter types per game area.

So we get the aforementioned mummies:

The aforementioned Nefertiti lamias:

And something called a cobra girl despite well, see for yourself:

What is it with those claws?  I can only think it was drawn by someone with a vague impression of what a cobra is, and possibly got it mixed up with an armadillo in their head.  Or – more likely – about halfway through they decided she needed moar weird and grafted some additional Lovecraftian appendages onto her.

I'm curious to see what cobra girl's Bad End is.  It can't be the same as in the original as in that one she strangled Sara to death while taunting Luka over his inability to hold back from coming in her tight pussy.  In Paradox she's no less sadistic.  Her joy at strangling both Luka in her coils and Luka's cock in her muscular pussy is quite perverse.

Might want to make sure you've plenty of sausage on hand before interacting with her back at the castle, Luka my boy.

As predicted, the Nefertiti lamias are similar to the zombies of Chrome's mansion and fairies of the Forest of Spirits in that they count as a single entity when recruited.  They're also like the slug queen Meltei in that they count as a single entity with multiple attacks when fighting.  With four attacks, the same as our party, they would be an awkward encounter if it wasn't for lamias' crippling weakness to cold.  Barnny's ice arrow is very effective at freezing them solid.

Then, at the very top of the pyramid we run into one of the WTFiest monster girls of Monster Girl Quest's first instalment.

Back then we hadn't seen the Forest of Nope, or seen Delphinus's oldest of Old Testament interpretations of angels.  Monster Girl Quest was going to be this interesting hentai game with sexy succubi and other monster girls.  Then Sphinx:

Huh, am I supposed to fap to this?  How?

Welcome to the Monster Girl Quest universe.

The second dialogue option is to challenge her to a fight.  Don't be stupid, Luka.

The guide I'm following advises not pissing Sphinx off.  Probably a good plan.  In the original series she was an unwinnable fight.

The first option doesn't appear to be helping much either until Alice explains the situation.  How do we transform sweet Princess Sara back to her original human form?  Oh, we can't.  Once her monster blood awakens that's it.  It's also the reason she's out of control now as she's neither one thing nor the other.  Sphinx offers a typically MGQ solution – force her to go full monster.  This will allow her to get control back of her body and shake off the influence of whoever's pulling strings in the background.  Sphinx gives us a vial of her blood and tells us to make Sara drink it.

Uh… if you say so Sphinx.

We'll see how that works out tomorrow.  (It's going to be a fight.  You just know it's going to be a fight.)

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox! part 37

Sabasa (Whatever Happened to Sweet Little Princess Sara?)

Up to part 37 now.  This is my playthrough of smutty monster girl game Monmusu Quest: Paradox.  If you've just tuned in, the first part is back here.

After braving the desert sands, juice-sucking cactus girls and whole-body-haumphing djinns we've finally arrived at Sabasa.

The sentries at the gate try and extort some bribes out of us.  It's possible to pay, but it's more fun to start a fight and watch them go cartwheeling off screen (they're not very strong).

Sonya remarks on how easy that was as she'd heard Sabasa was supposed to have a tough military.  A passing youth lets us know everything has gone to shit since Queen Sara took the throne.  She's only interested in playing and has replaced most of the guard with useless hoodlums.

Wait, did you say Queen Sara?

That's certainly different than the original series.

The usual run around the town NPCs reveals various rumours and tidbits of information.  Sara used to be nice as a princess, but then her father, the king, went missing investigating the Tartarus pit to the north.  As queen she's been terrible, so much so that there are whispers of assassination plots in the air.

There's also some information on the surrounding area.  Nearby is a pyramid full of treasure, but it's full of demons so only experienced adventurers should enter (this sounds like Sphinx's pyramid from the first series).  There's also a theatre in Grand Dole to the north that's been taken over by a succubus.  And also a witch-burning (?) village over to the west.

Sabasa's battle-fucker is down the alley between the weapon store and inn and looks like a fortune teller.

Beating her earns a wizard scroll.  She's also the 15th battle fucker I've beaten, which unlocks the battle-fucker class.

Deeper into Sabasa and up some stairs is a locked building.  Alice is able to open it with magic.  Over in the far corner are some documents with more notes on Queen Sara.  The rumours on her get more disturbing the deeper we go into Sabasa.  Some think she might be a succubus in disguise.

Blimmin' heck.  Did they need to make Sabasa so massive!

After much more walking we finally reach the castle.  Rather than doing their job and throwing us out, the various guard NPCs give out more gossip.  In fact, the only guards that seem remotely interested in actual guarding are the ones at the base of the steps to the throne room.  They'll only let Luka past.

Ah, there's Sara.

We remember you from the previous series where you were the cute and spunky little princess who had a crush on Granberia and sought the mark of the dragon from the Sphinx so you could ask her for her hand in marriage.

"Pull your trousers down so I can see your willy."

Uh?  I guess this world's Sara is a little different.

You're going to give us a blowjob?  Right here?

And a lot more forward.

Ah.  It's a battle-fuck.  That makes sense.  We lose the first time because I forgot to heal Luka up after the previous battle-fuck.  That corrected, we go with full HP.  That's more like it.  And our reward for winning is…

…Sara jumping on top and energy draining us to a withered husk with her succubus pussy.

Yeep!

Things are definitely not right in Sabasa.

Maybe this rebel group of assassins has the right idea after all.  Rumours are the leader can be found in an oasis to the north.

Sure enough, there's a suspicious character hanging around beneath a palm tree.

Sara is part of a bloodline that stretches back to the 1,000-year-old sphinx.  Her demon blood has activated to turn her into a succubus.  Not only that, the assassin thinks someone else is pulling strings behind the scene.  Yep, plenty of suspects there.

The plan is to go speak to the sphinx in the nearby pyramid to work out how to get Sara back to her senses.  While we go and do that, the assassin will try and track down the wire-puller.

Oh, there's a new monster girl.  A sweet little… uh… crocodile girl.

Run!  We already had enough vore yesterday, thanks.

And there'll likely be more vore tomorrow as we go and have a little chat (and hopefully just a chat) with Sphinx in her pyramid.

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox! part 36

Desert (Thirsty Cactus Girls and Hungry Djinns)

Welcome to part 36 of my Monmusu Quest: Paradox playthrough (for part one, follow this link).  It's time to put on our Lawrence of Arabia gear, we're heading into the desert!

The desert has four new encounters.  One is a repeat from the previous series:

Scorpion girls hate centipede girls for some reason.  Scorpion girls also have priors in mythology.  Human-scorpion centaurs showed up in Akkadian myth and were known as girtablilu (which is also the name Kenkou Cross uses for them in his Monster Girl Encyclopedia).

So why haven't you written about a scorpion girl yet, Hydra?

Dunno.  They're kind of hard and spiky, things not normally associated as being erotic.  I guess I'm just waiting for the right spark from my…

!!

Curse you, dank imagination!

Two of the encounters are brand new monster girls.  One, cactus girl, was shown on the trailer video.

Her Bad End looks more soft boobie pillows and softer nether regions then prickly spines.

Unfortunately she's also rather thirsty, so I suspect her attentions will leave Luka resembling a crumpled up drink carton at the end of it.

The other new monster girl is a type of harpy.  I think she's supposed to be some kind of ostrich girl.  The one we recruit and another we see later in Sabasa run around like crazy things.  Even Gob is impressed by her when they talk in the castle.

The last is a new slant on a monster girl that previously appeared in the first chapter of Monster Girl Quest.  The djinn was an optional (and hard!) encounter if Luka was stupid enough to pick up a lamp lying on the sand.  For Paradox she gets some new artwork for her battle screen appearance.

She reverts to human form for her temptation move.  Which is very tempting given she's a self-proclaimed master of the sexual arts.

Go on then, show us what you've got.  Ooh, that feels good.  And clouds of mysterious perfumed smoke.  How exotic and erotic.

And it feels so good as well.  Like it's not just my cock, but my whole lower body wrapped in warm, moist…  uh oh.

And… gulp.

MGQ is that annoying prankster who tells you you're going to get something awesome before tipping a bucket of ice cold water over your head.  "Ha ha.  Vore game.  Gotcha!"

It's a shame the new battle artwork (which is cool) tips the player off, but I guess anyone familiar with the original will know what's coming anyway.  I haven't managed to recruit a djinn yet, so I don't know if she has an all amazing sex skills and no stomach acid request option.

On the way to Sabasa there's another camping stop, this time at a convenient oasis.  Again the only party characters that show up are the main character ones.  This time it's just a recap of all the various things that have happened – angels, three succubus sisters, three wannabe monster lords.  Alice is looking for her mother, Luka his father.  In keeping with the previous campfire scenes, Alice teaches Luka a new sword skill – Death Sword Chaos Star.

Hmm, maybe I should actually equip him with a sword at some point.

That'll do for today.  Tomorrow we enter Sabasa.

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox! part 35

Abandoned Village (+ that cutscene)

Another day, another post of the seemingly never-ending Monmusu Quest: Paradox playthrough.  This game is certainly value for money.  This is part 35.  Part 1 can be found here.

First up, there's a bit I missed off in San Ilia.  I would have included it in the Side-Quest round-up of a couple of days ago had I spotted it sooner.

The first time visiting San Ilia there is a staircase that's blocked by a guard.  At some point he stands out of the way (I'm not sure when – it might be after doing the guard duty quest for the pope).

Those steps lead down to some kind of secret tech lab.  The scientist dude will give you some more machine type things.  I think they're for the Engineer job, but I don't know for sure as I haven't made much use of that job at all so far.  Talking to one of the dudes will also give you the item required to unlock the Gunner job.

Back to the main storyline and it's time to head west.  We've already done the Monte Carlo stuff, so it's time to continue on along the road.  Further along is the abandoned fishing village.  All the inhabitants have vanished.  There's an investigative team from Sabasa trying to figure out where everyone went.  The only clue is a note saying they've gone to live with God.

Backtracking to the east along the south side of the mountain range reveals the entrance to some tunnels.

Here was where I was a little unsure of the sequencing.  After leaving one of the houses in the abandoned village Alice suggests pushing on towards Sabasa.  The walkthrough I have suggests going back to the cave.  What I did do originally was head out across the desert.  Then I noticed the monsters in the caves appear earlier in the Monster Library (this game's monsterpedia).  As a result I've rejigged the playthrough notes a little and put things back in the sequence I think they're supposed to be done.

Right, so we're looking for some missing villagers.  Also, the item needed to recruit Chrome is supposed to be around here as well.

There's another new encounter in the caves – centipede girl.

She's another returning monster girl appearing out of sequence.  I think she originally appeared in the Forest of Nope (Plansect Village) in the second chapter.  I don't know why she has another three centipede heads sticking out of her ass.  Maybe her inspiration is more from a mythological centipede demon rather than MGQ's usual approach of grafting porn star body onto whatever living organism the encyclopaedia happened to fall open on.

The cave loops around on itself.  Near the end there's a choice to carry on to the Puppet-master's Tower or investigate the lower levels of the caves.

We exit the caves and step out onto a plateau.  To confuse matters, the monsters that appear here are a jump above the monsters in the desert on the way to Sabasa.  It doesn't matter as there's not much to do here, yet.

Entering the Puppet-master's Tower triggers a cutscene.  This caught me by surprise as the guide I'm working from said the tower was locked and doesn't open in this chapter.  I'm not sure if it was because the person writing the original guide wanted to avoid spoilers, or if the cutscene only triggers under certain conditions (Looking for the item Chrome wants.  Currently not having the item Chrome wants).  Luka is met by a mysterious masked figure.  Luka asks if they have the item Chrome wants and is told it can be found at the bottom of the caves before being evicted from the tower by a mysterious magical force.

The masked figure is either a mysterious figure known as Shadow Pongee or a servant of them.  Shadow Pongee is a powerful demon that keeps themself to themself.  Alice imparts what she knows on them, and also mentions that her mother warned her not to mess with Shadow Pongee.

Then there's a cutscene in the tower, but it's a bit spoilery, so I'll shift it to the end of the post.

As for Demon Thread Chrome wants, it's in a chest at the bottom of the caves.

I wasn't able to find the villagers.  I think they might be in the tower (which is now locked).  This is probably not good for them.  Mad scientists need their spare parts…

Now we have the Demon Thread we can recruit Chrome.  Recruiting Chrome also recruits her buddy, Frederikastein.  Chrome is like Eva in that she has a ton of different job levels.  Her stats also reveal what she actually is.  I've been wondering that from the first MGQ series.  Her race is given as Imp, which is a little surprising as sex-obsessed imps develop into the even more sex-obsessed succubi.  This probably explains why Chrome is only a level four imp.  She's too interested in playing around with dead body parts and being little Miss Herbert West.

Next up it's time to head off into the deserts.

..

And now for that spoilery cutscene.

Back in the Puppet-master's Tower the masked figure is up in the throne room.  Then we get our first sighting of Black Alice in a very literal example of 'power behind the throne'.

Black Alice is still unequivocally evil.  Oh, wait.  Did I catch that right?  This Black Alice sounds like the same Black Alice from the original story.  She mentions how being infused with the 'White Rabbit' (In MGQ this was an experimental mixture of holy and demon elements that turned already monstrous monster girls into Resident Evil-esque abominations) was not enough to defeat the unblessed hero (Luka, in the original series).

Then we get a whole load of brand new boss characters as the game introduces some new sub-bosses for Black Alice.  I don't think TTR has even spoiled any of these on his website or blog.

I was too busy taking screenshots to catch names or details on them.  I also wasn't paying attention enough to spot if these were existing boss monster girls or artificial creatures created by Shadow Pongee to mimic mythological monster girl deities.

And that's not all of it either.  Shadow Pongee has been a very busy mad scientist.  She's been using a fusion of zombie and doll techniques to resurrect previous monster lords.

There's the 9th:

The 10th and 11th (combined into one because much of their bodies was missing):

And even Black Alice's own grandmother, the 6th:

Little Alice, I think you have a lot of unresolved issues.

As for Luka, it looks like a boss rush through the entire Monster Lord lineage is in our future.

I think this is TTR's way of saying, "What, you thought I was running out of ideas.  Look, still got all these."

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox! part 34

Forest of Spirits (More Spoilers ahoy)

This is a daily series documenting my playthrough of monster girl hentai game Monmusu Quest: Paradox.  If you've just joined, the first part can be found back here (and then there are a lot of parts to read through).

It's time to head off to the Forest of Spirits to find and recruit the first of the elemental spirits – Sylph.  This is close to a direct re-run of the original series.  The monsters are also the same.  There are:

The twin fairies.

Assorted fairies.  There are six of these and they attack in various combinations of three.  When recruited all six are counted as a single character.  This is the same as how it was with the zombies in Chrome's mansion.  I suspect UN_DO's lamias in the Sphinx's pyramid and the slime girls in Undine's fountain will likely be treated the same way.

Elves.  As well as new addition, Brownies.

For the brownies, because there are two of them they get two attacks.  The same is true for the twin fairies.  Because of this it's possible to get some annoying fights where the opponents have more attacks than Luka's party.

Fairies do have a minimise magic spell, but as the negative status wears off at the end of combat it's not something to worry about.  My party at the time was heavy on pyromaniac magicians, and shrinking them didn't seem to affect the boominess of their spells at all.

Elf's temptation scene is… well… tempting.

I wish they'd done it like this for more of the monster girls.  Most of the time the art change, if any, seems to come after selecting 'Please do naughty things to me.'

NPC fairies hint about a scary monster wandering the woods.  That was Chimera Dryad in the first series.  It's hard to see how it could be in Paradox as Promestein, the mystery figure from the first MGQ chapter, is on our side (maybe) this time.

Sylph is at the end of the forest, up in the north.  She's fun and playful, but we still have to fight her to prove our worth in wielding her.

The fight is straightforward enough (I had both Remi and Rami in the party, and imps are resistant to wind magic).

Right, we're about to go into spoilerific territory again.  If you'd rather wait to be surprised when playing the game yourself, I'd skip the following section and rejoin us tomorrow.

..

..

The walkthrough I've been following has some ominous lines for this part of the story.

-Fight and recruit Slyph at the end of the forest
-Watch a cutscene
-Facepalm
-Reminisce about the quality of part 3's writing

The music goes ominous and a mystery sprite shows up.  Given the walkthrough comments I wonder if the game is going to punk us and have it turn out to be stupid and non-threatening.

Not Chimera Dryad.  Kinda looks threatening.

It's some kind of berserker armour.  It screams 'Angel!' a lot.  And then 'Extinction!'  Then it attacks with a cool battle theme.

It's another hopeless boss fight.  The berserker armour wipes the floor with us in next to no time.  It's about to follow-through and finish us off for good when Nero steps in.

He's not alone.  Alice the 17th is there as well.  She asks if Luka and his party are okay and whether she can leave the crazy armour to elder brother.

Wait, what?!  Elder brother.

If Alice the 17th is Luka's daughter from the original MGQ-verse then this is a pretty strong implication Nero is Luka's son.  This is in keeping with the end of MGQ, where Alice was expecting twins – one a human boy, the other a demon girl.

Very interesting.

Alice (17th) spirits the party to safety while Nero hangs around to fight the armour.  Nero looks pretty badass.

Yep, ridiculously badass.  We get to control him for the fight and he's about a level bazillion and something.  So many options.  I get him to throw comets at the berserker armour.  I remember that being good in Final Fantasy 7.

It's a shame the artwork for the armour is a bit iffy.  I can see it's trying to draw on the same melted-angel weirdness as Luka's sword from the original series.  The colours and contrast don't really work.

Berserker armour takes a lot of comets to the face before going down.

Then it's time for more cutscene.

This time I think we're in the parallel world.  Their Micaela is explaining to Luka and Alice the origins of both the world and Luka.  Ilias and the first monster lord were created out of opposing light and dark elements.  Luka's mother was an angel.  She was engaged in the first revolt against Ilias and fled to live as a mortal on the world below.  She fell in love with Marcellus, Luka's father, and the rest – as they say – is history.

In the parallel MGQ-world anyway.  This world's Micaela has already met an untimely end.  Luka's dreams reveal the truth and he wakes up with the realisation of his not-quite-human lineage.  This causes an in-game change as it opens up the Lowly Angel race for him.

Sylph reminds him she's in Luka's head.  And is also outside in the castle grounds.  I still haven't figured out how the elemental spirits work in Paradox.  I'll have to look at Luka's skill menu a little closer.

I'm not sure what the walkthrough guide found facepalm-worthy about the cutscene.  The awkwardness of the dream revelation of Luka's half-angel nature, maybe?

Anyway, Alice comes in and suggests it's time to head for Sabasa.  As it's a long distance away across deserts, wastelands and mountains she suggests we go to Monte Carlo first.

Ah, we might have done things a little out of sequence here, given we've already done the Monte Carlo quests.  Oh well, let's press on further westwards… tomorrow.