Friday, October 13, 2017

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part2] - 3: Navy Headquarters

<- Previous: Port Marle

To progress further, we need to get a boat, and to do that we need to ask permission of the Admiral at the Navy Headquarters.

Navy HQ is a single big building with docks on either side.

Walking around are even more Sea Horse Marines.  They’re also joined by cutesy Sea Slug Marines.  I imagine we’ll be fighting both later on.

Inside, the Naval HQ has its own shop and blacksmith.  There is also a sailor girl battle fucker – Milia.

Her special technique is... armpit jobs?

Talking to the various characters reveals some background history.  There used to be three main pirate groups.  The Justi group went on to become the navy.  Rosa (who you might remember as the former queen of the mermaids in La Croix’s undead circus) led the mermaid pirates.  The third group was led by Selene.  She cropped up in the original series as a ghost and it’s also her treasure Luka needed to find in order to cross the sea to Port Natalia in both series.

Currently, both Rosa and Selene are missing.  The mermaid pirates also got beaten up during Neris’s mission to quell the rebel queens and are in hiding.

There is also information on two previously locked jobs – Pirate and Marine.

The quest character is Admiral Leviathan.  She’s not hard to miss.  She’s the giant monster girl on the top floor that looks like a monster girl version of a gyarados.

Is this what the sea horse marines become after evolving to the next level?

She can lend us a boat to take us to the next continent, but there is a problem she needs our help with first.  There are a new bunch of pirates causing trouble, the fishy pirates, and she wants us to help her put them down.

The plot thickens as a dog girl meets us on exiting the main HQ building.  She’s working for the fishy pirates and she takes us around the corner to their boat.  There we are met by the second-in-command, Ashel.

She also does all the cooking, cleaning and nursing

Talking to the crew reveals Ashel is hyper-competent.  The captain, Bonnie, isn’t.  Put it this way, she’s a mermaid that can’t swim.

To advance the story, you need to go downstairs and talk to the cat girl sitting on the main chair.

Go to the captain's chair first

She’s not in command, she just sits there because it’s warm and no-one knows how to get rid of her.  Talking here reveals Bonnie is upstairs sneaking food out of the storeroom.  You can find her here:

Bonnie is sneaking food in the storeroom

Luka is given a counter offer.  The fishy pirates can also provide us with a boat (this one), but they also need something from us.  Bonnie wants our help with fetching an item from a nearby dungeon.  It’s an old pirate treasure and Bonnie thinks nabbing it will raise the reputation of the fishy pirates.

Captain Bonnie of the MS Fish

So, the game is giving us another one of those mutually exclusive choices – Pirates or Marines?

Come back next week to see which choice I make.

Wednesday, October 11, 2017

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] - 2: Port Marle

<- Previous: Tunnel to Port Marle

It’s time to visit the first town of Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] – Port Marle.

Port Marle

I think this might be new-new as well, as I don’t remember it being in the original series.

Currently it’s under the control of the navy.  This is described as an independent and neutral monster girl organisation tasked with bringing some order to the oceans.  It’s neutral enough that both Mecha-Pope and Sara let Luka know they can’t use their influence as heads of state here.

Oh yeah, that’s right, we have both heads of royalty from the previous two countries we visited tagging along in our entourage.  That’s… weird.

(Succubus Sara, when?)

Aww, a lickle sea horse marine.

An adorably cute sea horse marine

This is the monster girl navy apparently.  Port Marle is swarming with sea horse marines and they are ridiculously cute.  It’s a shame Monmusu Quest: Paradox is what it is, as I think Arekishi (アレキシ)’s Tatsunoko Marine design would make an adorable mascot plushy.  But porn game, yadda yadda, blah blah.

As you might have noticed, we have some English translation from Dargoth and co’s sterling efforts.  I suspect we won’t have it for long, but I’m grateful that most of the new items, skills, names, etc are already translated.  Great job, guys.

There’s not too much going on in Port Marle.  The game of find Amira continues, but she’s not trying to hide behind trees and other items this time.

Amira's not too hard to find in Port Marle

There is also the town battlefucker.  These are always very easy to find.  Just look for the drained dudes sprawled outside her door.  Gina specialises in swords.

She knows how to handle "swords"

To advance the story we need to go to the Navy Headquarters and request permission for a ship.  First we need to find someone to take us there.  This is the guy you need to talk to:

Where to find the boat to take us to the Naval HQ

He can’t take us there without a permit, so our next step is to find the viceroy.  She looks identical to the other Tatsunoko Marines.  You can find her stealing fish here:

Where to get the permit to be allowed to go to the Naval HQ

Talking to her grants us a permit to travel to Naval HQ.

-> Next: Navy Headquarters


Monday, October 09, 2017

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] - 1: Tunnel to Port Marle

It’s time to begin the playthrough of Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2].  I blogged my way through the whole of the first game back here.  There are fifty parts.  What can I say, it’s a long game.

MQ:P is a fairly complex in comparison to the original Monster Girl Quest series.  While I’ll be posting sexy monster girl screenshots and quipping about the crazier Bad End scenes, I’ll try to also make this a guide to help out people who are – like me – trying to battle through with limited or no translation.

The first time I booted this up from an old save file I was completely confused.  It’s been two years since I last played the game and I have no idea where I am or even where I’m supposed to go in order to find the brand new hawtness.

In the end, I played through part 1 again.  This wasn’t that much of a chore.  There’s a fairly extensive translation patch for part 1 out now and it’s fun to play through the game as a typical JRPG (I like the genre and have sunk lots of hours into more mainstream games like Final Fantasy).

If, like me, you also don’t remember what happened and where you’re supposed to go, here’s some help.  The last location visited in part 1 is the 3rd Tartarus region not far from Saloon.  This is likely where you’ll be and part 2 will start with Alice giving a little recap of the events of part 1.

Where you need to go is Port Marle.  The objective is to find a ship to take us to the next continent.

To get there, you need to go through the tunnel north of Luddite Village (this was the village where the three shikibus sisters went on an orgy rampage and drained the life out of all the male inhabitants (they deserved it).

If you're lost on coming back to the world of Monmusu Quest: Paradox, this is where you need to go

In part 1 this tunnel was closed.  In part 2 it’s open.

And so, off we go.

It’s time to meet the first monster girls of part 2.

Mushroom Girl

Mushroom widows

I was feeling fairly cocky as my party was over-levelled after I tried to 100% all the item drops in the library.  Turns out mushroom gal has a mass sleep attack that’s actually rather annoying.

Her bad end has Luka sitting on her lap while she wraps her fungus shawl type thing around him and uses it to wank him off.  The cum mixes with her spores and falls back on Luka to become the beginnings of her new seed bed and... I think it’s time we started seeing other people, Mushroom Girl.

Urscylla (Wolfscylla?)

There are wolves under her dress...

It’s downplayed, but I think she’s a proper Castlevania-style Scylla (with the snapping wolf heads around the waist) rather than the usual octopus girl.  The wolf heads don’t show up that much.  In her Bad End she’s more interested in inserting her tentacles into Luka’s anus

Come on.  It’s a hentai game, there are traditions to observe.

Last up in Novistador girl.

Ugly cute?  Surprised ugly cute?

I’m not sure what animal she’s hybridised with – some form of sea louse at a guess.  Her angry face on losing is surprisingly cute.

Boobies seem to be their thing.  They drop milk and if you knock their HP down low enough they’ll try and tempt Luka into inserting his cock into their tits.

Monster girl boobies work differently...

Their Bad End is a swarm of them wrapping those big boobs around Luka’s cock and smooshing away until they’ve milked him empty.

Ilias is also in the caves along with her tag-along Slime and Doggo.  She and Alice still loathe each other, but both Slime and Doggo are cheerful and friendly.

In the forest on the way to Port Marle a fourth new monster girl shows up – Fusuma (which also translates as folding door).  I’m guessing she’s some form of Youkai from Japanese myth.

I think this falls more on the side of "Creepy doll" than cute

This is the new artist that’s been brought in for MQ:P [part 2].  I don’t remember seeing their work in previous games.  Personally, I think their style is a bit too “creepy doll” to be sexy, but it’s quite fitting for Fusuma.  She might look like a vanilla monster girl, but her flowing cotton cape thing is drooling with digestive juices.  In the Bad End, she delights in telling Luka this as she wraps him up.  She also takes great relish in telling Luka how her pussy is filled with the same digestive juices and that she’s melting his dick inside her.

Yup, definitely 110% creepy

The creepy art style suddenly seems very appropriate.

Welcome to Monster Girl Quest.  It’s only going to get worse.

(and we wouldn’t have it any other way).

-> Next – Port Marle.

Friday, October 06, 2017

A Brief Recap of Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 1]

Before I jump into a Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] playthrough I thought I’d do a quick recap of what happened in [part 1], especially considering it’s been over 2 years since that game came out.  Of course, you can always read through my original Let’s Play of [part 1], but be warned, it is 50 parts.


The original Monster Girl Quest saw the player take the role of Luka as he travelled through a fantasy world filled with sexy (and dangerous) monster girls.  Accompanying him was the Demon Lord Alice.  Eventually they hook up rather than killing each other and save the world from the mad Goddess Ilias.

Monmusu Quest: Paradox is set in an alternative reality version of that world.  Paradox’s world had some sort of catastrophe befell it in the past, opening up pits to mysterious locations known as Tartarus.  The main Goddess (and major antagonist of the first series) Ilias has been missing since this event.

As with the original series, the game starts with Luka about to embark on an adventure, and while the route he takes is similar to that of the “classic” Luka, there is a lot of multi-dimensional weirdness going on.

First up there’s Sonya.

The impossible girl...
She’s described as Luka’s childhood friend, except she didn’t exist in the original series universe and various characters seem to think she shouldn’t be present in this reality either.

Then we have the White Rabbit.

That annoying rabbit
The White Rabbit sealed Alice’s powers away and while she acts as a hindrance most of the time, it appears to be to force Luka down the same path as “classic” Luka.  It’s not stated why, but there are hints that the world is at risk of being consumed by chaos if Luka doesn’t follow the “correct” path.

The world also has other problems.  Luka already resolved Sara’s succubus nature emerging early in Sabasa in part 1.  Grand Noah supposedly has a malign monster girl pulling strings behind the throne and Grangold has gone to war with everyone.

The monster girl world is also in turmoil.  Since Alice got lolified by the White Rabbit, three contenders have arisen to contest the vacant throne.  One of them is Alice’s mother, Alice the 15th, which is confusing to our Alice (the 16th) because she thought her mother was dead.  Another is Black Alice (the 8th Alice and the secondary antagonist from the original series).  She’s currently trying to raise an army to challenge Alice the 15th and was shown in part 1 with an army of former demon lords and legendary monster girls resurrected as dolls.  The third is the mysterious Alice the 17th, who also shows up together with the equally mysterious Nero.

Luka and Alice's children from another reality?
There are strong hints that Nero and Neris are Luka and Alice’s twin children from the other “classic” reality.  What they’re doing here hasn’t been made clear, but they appear to be on Luka’s side.

Slotting into the role of initial antagonists are the three shikibus sisters – Morrigan, Astaroth and Lilith.

Morrigan, sexually draining Luka to death

Astaroth, sexually draining Luka to death

Lilith, sexually draining someone else to death (we're going to have to wait for Part 2 to see her have fun with Luka)
They’re the ones behind the harpies turning into uncontrollable nymphomaniacs, the Queen of the South Seas being turned into a dried squid, Sara going full succubus and fucking up her kingdom, and about 90% of the problems Luka encounters on entering a new area.  They also fucked all the male inhabitants of Luddite Village to death, but that was probably doing the world a service, to be fair.

Despite their obvious villainy (including both Morrigan and Astaroth being more than happy to sexually drain Luka to death if given the opportunity) they also appear to be following a higher purpose.  As with the White Rabbits, their manipulations appear designed to force Luka down the same, or similar, path to “classic” Luka from Monster Girl Quest.

Part 1 culminated in Luka and party investigating the third Tartarus region.  This took them to a lonely tower in an alternate future where the world was dead and the remnants in the process of being consumed by chaos.  It was rather sad as the little robot girl Radio took Luka’s party through various rooms and showed them the memories of both humans and monster girls trying, unsuccessfully, to stave off the end.

In another twist, the last remaining survivor at the top of the tower turns out to be La Croix.  La Croix was a villain (of the tragic sort) in the original series.  Here, she knows her world is doomed and she passes on her research notes to Luka in the hope he can prevent the same happening to his reality.  She then sacrifices herself to delay Adramalech long enough for Luka to escape back to his own reality.  This fails, but at least she does enough damage to Adramalech for Luka and party to finish her off.

The end-boss of Part 1
Seemingly…

As they try to escape the collapsing reality, Adramalech returns to try and make sure Luka dies with her.  It takes a surprise intervention from Luka’s father to save Luka and friends.  The reunion is short-lived.  Something has gone seriously wrong across multiple realities and Luka’s dad is trying to fix it.  He leaves, telling Luka to go back and save his own world.  Luka has La Croix’s notes, but he needs to find the La Croix of his world to decipher them.

Luka's old man is kind of bad ass
And that’s where Part 1 left off.  Join me on Monday as the Let’s Play of Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] begins!

Wednesday, October 04, 2017

Stuff I missed the first time around in Monmusu Quest: Paradox and other Tips & Tricks

One of the inevitable things about JRPGs is you miss stuff, especially when you try to play them in the original Japanese.

After opening up Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] and being utterly confused as to where I was and where I was supposed to go next, I decided to play through part 1 again.  This time I had access to Dargoth's translated version.  This meant I could enjoy it more as a typical JRPG with the usual shiny side quests and distractions these games have.  It being in English also meant I could spot the things I missed first time around.

I didn't do too badly on the main plot in my original playthrough.  There were some minor things I mistranslated, but mostly it's all there.

There were a few extras I missed, some of which make the game a lot easier, so I thought I'd run through them here.

Amira gives useful advice

There's a reason that little goober is positioned right near the entrance to the pocket castle.


She's your information source.  Talk to her and she'll tell you what your current objective is as well as reeling off a list of available side quests.  If you ever get lost and don't know what you're supposed to be doing, go up to Amira and select "Ask for Information".

She also helps with:

You can recruit male members

If you played through part 1, you knew this already, as recruiting his Mecha-Popeness, the King of San Ilias, is one of the story events of the main plot.

What I didn't know, and only found out on a second playthrough, is he's not the only male character you can recruit.

The guard that gets trapped in the poison marsh in Iliasville can be recruited.  He can be found in the room with all the other NPCs giving out information on the various jobs.

You can also recruit the captains of the guards in San Ilias (John) and Sabasa (Samson) by talking to them after you've recruited Mecha-Pope and Sara.

Scat Captain can be recruited by going back to his house in Pornof to fulfill Kamuro's side quest (I think Sonya has to not be in the party as she won't let you in his house).

I'm guessing being able to recruit male characters gives people a little more variety for their ecchi.  If someone would rather the action was all monster girl on male, rather than monster girl on monster girl, they can set up their party that way.  You could even build up a reverse harem party with Alice or Sonya surrounded by a bunch of masculine dudes if you were so inclined.  I'm fine with the game having these options.

One of the male characters is actually very useful if you're trying to 100% all the monster item drops in the library.  The bottom class of items you can obtain from each monster girl is panties.  Get a character up to level 10 Gadabout and they learn a special skill "Steal Panties".

As to why you'd want to steal the panties off a monster girl... don't ask.  Compared to the rest of the stuff happening in the game, that's almost a vanilla fetish.

Anyway, Panty Sensei is rather good at this particular task.  He has a chance to steal at the beginning of combat, at the end of every combat round, and also with each normal attack.  This guy really seems to like women's underwear.  (His portrait also changes when he uses the transform skill of Hero of Justice).

If you want to go down the dark road of panty kleptomania, this dude will save you a fair bit of grinding.  You can also find him in Pornof.  Show him enough panties and he'll join the party.



And also on the subject of panties.

Boss panties can be stolen later in Hades

The bosses are one time encounters in the main story.  However, you can refight them later in the Hades room on the second floor of Ilias's temple.  This means, if you're a rabid 100% completionist, you don't have to grab their panties the first time around.  You can go back later with stronger party and steal them later.  It counts.

...assuming you have a pressing need to collect all the panties in the game.

Why am I offering tips on how to steal panties in a computer game?

Why even put this in the game in the first place, Toro Toro Resistance?

Ah, Japan.  Diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks and all that.

(It's still way tamer than most of the other stuff in the game.)

Battle Fuckers can be recruited

This might have been added in a later patch.  The battle fuckers are women scattered across the world map that reward you with items should you have enough hit points to survive their... ahem... techniques.  If you talk to them after winning they will ask to join the party.

Most of them are human, so they're fairly limited in power and how they can be levelled up.  However, a couple have some useful traits if you're looking to 100% your library.

Louise has a +50% to item drop.  You'll want her around if you're grinding through encounters to try and get their rare drop.  She's the battle fucker in Happiness Village.



Bunny-chan has a +50% to recruit rate.  Useful if you're trying to recruit every monster girl to your waifu harem.  You can find her in the casino in Pornof.



New scenes for old monster girls

About half of the monster girls in the game are repeated from the original Monster Girl Quest, right down to their H-scenes.  This has been the source of some criticism of the Paradox series, and fairly so, I think.  Although, I can understand it's a way to throw in a massive amount of encounters while on a limited dev budget.

I knew Lime (the slime girl from the starting area) had a new scene you can request in the pocket castle if you get her happiness high enough.  She's not the only one.

The leech girl has new artwork.



As does the sea cucumber girl.



Pretty nice if you like the idea of being sucked up into a monster girl and wrapped up in her soft flesh.

I don't know how many have new scenes.  I don't think it's many, unfortunately.  You can scan through the art folder in the game directory to check.  That was how I found out these two existed.

Old-school Monster Girl Quest mode

This might also be something that was added in a later patch.  The Hades room has a book shelf where you can replay the normal encounter battles.



This is useful as some of the monster girls have temptation and Bad End scenes that can't be requested in the pocket castle.  It's easier to check them out here rather than chasing through the countryside after them.

It also allows you enable what I like to think of as "classic" Monster Girl Quest mode.  One of my original criticisms of MQ:P compared to MGQ was that the traditional JRPG party mechanic lost the focus of all the sexy stuff being aimed solely at Luka that the first game had.  Well, you can emulate that here.  Just remove everyone else from the party, select the monster girl you want, and then enjoy her throwing all her sexy attacks at Luka.

(which she will have no hesitation doing)

It's a pretty nice addition as far as I'm concerned.

There is also the option to go into the Labyrinth of Chaos for players wanting some post-game content.  I'm not there yet, so I haven't had a chance to try it out.

General Hints and Tips  

Monmusu Quest: Paradox does have a bewildering array of jobs, races and skills.  Unless you're playing on the really high difficulties, you probably don't need to worry about it that much as the game is fairly easy as long as you level up enough.  If you're trying to find everything, you'll likely have a bigger problem trying to prevent your main party from over-levelling to the point where they easily curbstomp everything.

As Luka always has to be present in the party, he's the one most likely to get out of hand.  I normally give him the "Job XP Full Focus" ability to stop him hitting level 40 while everyone else is only level 20.

(Assuming you want to try out the various different monster girls.  Keeping the same party of Luka, Alice, Sonya, and A N Other should allow you to breeze through the main story line without too much grinding.)

Skills and Gear

What determines damage varies on the skill.  Swords use Att, Black Magic uses Mag, White Magic uses Will, Unarmed/Rapiers use some combination of Agi and Att, Pleasure attacks use Dex, and so on.  Hats and Armour provide more than a boost to defense.  Your character might be able to equip heavy armour, but if they're mainly using Unarmed skills, you still want to equip them in the best Gi, as that class of Chest clothing boosts Agi, which also boosts the damage of Unarmed skills.  The same is true for Robes for Black Magic uses.

(You succubi will probably want Dresses or Skimpy as their bonus to Dex will make them better able to turn your foes into quivering masses of orgasming jelly.)

Efficient Levelling and 100%ing

There are a lot of monster girls to level up should you so desire.  Some jobs provide abilities that make this a little more efficient.

Gadabout is pretty useless apart from the later jobs it's needed to unlock, but at Level 9 you get the Playfulness ability.  This gives +50% XP at the cost of the character not following orders.  Which won't matter as positions 5-8 in the party still get XP even if they don't participate in the battle.  Bondage ropes are also useful for this reason despite their hefty drawback.

Noble and King jobs can be unlocked by trading in enough medals to the Medal Queen.  Noble has a +50% XP ability and King a +100% XP ability (although you'll need to max out both Warrior and Noble first).  These abilities can still be equipped even after the character has moved onto another job.

Giving them the Job Wrist or Hard Job Wrist accessories will also speed up unlocking those abilities.

If you want to be a greedy mcgreedyson and 100% everything, a few job combinations help.

Thief and Master Thief are self-explanatory.

Fortune Teller and Gambler give +50% and +100% bonus to item drops.  (Getting the rare item drops needs the most annoying grinding in my experience)

Hunter and Monster Tamer are what you need for those +50% and +100% recruitment bonuses.

Steal Ingredient is unlocked by Cook.

Steal Material initially confused me as I thought it might be an Engineer unlock at first.  It's actually a unique skill learnt by the Wing Harpy race (they can also steal food as well).

Harpies make the best thieves if you're really greedy in nabbing resources from enemies (ah, so many hours in the various Final Fantasy games).  Mini, the phoenix in a pot you fight right near the start of the game, is probably your best party thief.  One, she's a harpy and can unlock the Wing Harpy skills.  Two, she's immune to fire and gets a free auto-rez for the first time she's knocked out.  Although, with Monmusu Quest: Paradox, I'm guessing most players have other things in mind when assembling their best waifu party. ;)

Some tip and tricks anyway.  Feel free to post your own in the comments below.  



Tuesday, October 03, 2017

A brief guide to Text Hooking and Machine Translation for Monmusu Quest: Paradox

If you want to play a cool new Japanese hentai game, but can't read Japanese, you're probably going to want some form of machine translation.  For a long time I used an AGTH + Translation Aggregator combo.  Unfortunately, Windows 10 and text hookers don't seem to like each other.  Any game I tried to run with AGTH attached imploded without starting.

"Text hooker, what's that?" you might ask.

In basic terms, machine translation for Japanese visual novels and RPGs has two components.  The first is the text hooker.  This "hacks" into the game while it's running and outputs text to your computer's clipboard.  This is then picked up by the second component, the translator, and automatically translated into English, usually by running it through one of Google's or some other website's machine translation engine.  Results may vary - automated machine translation is not a precise science - but what you get should be enough to give you the gist of what's going on.

Currently, I'm running ITH with a fix for Windows 10.

Rather than copy'n'paste someone else's work, here is a link to the guide I used:


I don't know who you are, OriginalRen, but many thanks for writing this.

ITH (the text hooker) and Translation Aggregator (the translator) are the important components.  Dictionaries improve things, but the various internet translators are usually enough.

Here are links to the various bits of software (bear in mind they might be out of date).


Follow the above guide to install them.  Make sure Translation Aggregator is automatically picking up from your computer's clipboard.

Right, now to run it with Monmusu Quest: Paradox.

First off, let's get the first hurdle out of the way.  Your computer needs to have the locale set to Japanese otherwise the Japanese characters will come out as gibberish and translation won't work.  You do this by going into:

Settings -> Time & Language -> Additional date, time & regional settings -> Region -> Administrative -> Change System Locale -> Select: Japanese.


After you've done this, you'll be able to play Japanese games on your PC (usually they don't start if your PC is set to the wrong locale).

Now, a swift pictorial guide on how to get machine translation up and running (I'm assuming you've already downloaded the software as per the guide above).

1. Starting.

Start up your game, ITH (as administrator) and Translation Aggregator.  They will give you these screens:

Game

ITH

Translation Aggregator
2. Attach ITH to the game.

You need to click on Process (button on the top left) on the ITH window.  This will open a new dialog.


You need to select the game from the list of processes (for MQ:P it's Game.exe), and then click on Attach.  If it works you should see the following two windows:



(Note: the last big Windows 10 upgrade screwed this up for me and I got a "failed to attach" message.  I don't know if or when this will be fixed.  I managed to get around it by reverting the last Windows 10 update, which might not be possible for some people.  If that's you, I can't really help here as I don't know who's responsible for maintaining ITH and where the fixes can be found.  If someone does, please post the links in the comments.)

At this point ITH is waiting for you do something on the game.  Do something in the game (any button press for the next line of text should do it) and ITH will show these 3 lines:


Now, if you go up and click on the grey bar with "ConsoleOutput" on it you'll see a dropdown box with the some new selections.  Select one of the "GetGlyphOutlineW" options (I'm not sure it matters; I usually pick the bottom one).

3. Clipboard to Translation

Now, go back to playing the game.  You'll notice the text will start showing up in ITH window (as well as a lot of other junk if you happen to be in one of the options/stats menus).


The bottom line should match what Luka is currently saying on screen
This text should now be automatically copied to Translation Aggregator.  That sends the text off to various online translators and pastes the outputs to the relevant windows.  Having multiple translators makes it easier to cross-reference and get a better idea of what the best translation is (automated machine translation being an imprecise science and all that).


And that's pretty much what I did to get machine translation up and running again.  Unfortunately, setting this all up can be a little fiddly and I'm not an expert or very knowledgeable on either ITH or TA, so I won't be able to help too much if you run into problems.  For those, you might want to go and ask on the relevant forums.

(Bear in mind, about 90% of those problems are usually people not setting their Locale to Japanese.)

Bonus: An English Translation

Okay, a partial English translation.  I keep linking to Dargoth.com because these guys are doing great work, considering just how much work there is.

The current patch they have for part 1 and 2 has most of the skills, items, and other mechanics stuff translated.  These are the things that are usually the fiddliest to translate with text hooking & machine translation, so I highly recommend using their patch for the game as it makes things way easier to follow.  Also, if you didn't get around to playing part 1, most of the main story is translated for that.

They also have a link for getting the most up-to-date translations directly.  I will warn that patching and tinkering around with the new files is fiddly.  I was able to fudge it into working after some trial and error, but it did involve a fair bit of tearing my hair out.  Search through the comments, or even post requests of your own, if you have problems.  Someone there will be better able to help you than me.

Hope this helps, anyway. 

Monday, October 02, 2017

Introducing Monmusu Quest: Paradox week

It’s been asked for, but before I leap headlong into Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] I thought I’d take a bit of time to get the hype train rolling (and by hype train, I mean one of those old steam trains that should really be in a museum).

Aside from promoting my own succubus/monster girl writing (which you can check out here if you’d like to give me some of your lovely cash, or here if you want a sample first), one of the things I like to cover on this here blog is succubus/monster girl sex games.  I love them, been playing them since back when this blog first started and they’re the sort of niche interest thing that rarely gets written about anywhere.  They also overlap quite nicely with my own work as I like to write about hot succubi/monster girls doing sexy things to their (un)lucky prey, and these games also feature lots of scenes of hot succubi/monster girls doing sexy things to their (un)lucky prey.

Last year I didn’t get to write much on monster girl hentai games.  This was mostly due to upgrading my laptop to Windows 10, and then finding out that Windows 10 did not get on with my translation software at all.  So, when Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] came out earlier this year, I was not able to leap straight into a continuation of my epic playthrough.  Instead the game sat rather forlornly, untouched, in a folder on my hard drive as I joined everyone else in waiting for Dargoth and crew to work through their translation.

Then I found some machine translation software that worked (more on that tomorrow) and thought I might as well start the madness again.

So, what is Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2], and why are you planning to devote an ungodly number of hours blogging your way through it?

Because it’s... fun?

As for the What is? question, here is a brief potted history of the Monster Girl Quest game series:

One of the key popularisers of monster girls on the internet is Kenkou Cross’s Monster Girl Encyclopaedia (I think this is the right link to their stuff).  Not long after that started to increase in popularity, screenshots and a short demo of a game featuring KC’s artwork appeared.  As far as I can tell, KC had little to do with the game aside from providing artwork of one of the main characters – Alice.  The person (people?) behind what would become Monster Girl Quest (or Monmusu Quest) was Toro Toro Resistance.  Previous to this, they’d written several sexy monster girl stories and a series of sexy voice dramas under the banner of Whispers of the Immoral Girl and the Female Pervert.

The first Monster Girl Quest told a story of a brave wannabe adventurer, Luka, setting off on a quest to defeat the Demon Lord with a sexy lamia, Alice, in tow (who also happened to be that same Demon Lord).


The game was essentially a Visual Novel with a series of RPG-style battles.  The main difference to a normal RPG was that all the enemies were monster girls and were more interested in fucking Luka’s brains out than killing him (although, most of the time they did end up killing, and sometimes eating, him in the Bad Ends, but that always seemed incidental to the fucking his brains out part).  The main difference to a normal sex game was the decent storyline and characters, as well a mind-boggling variety and inventiveness to the monster girl encounters.  Most similar games have maybe 15 distinct enemies; Monster Girl Quest had around 50.

The game quickly picked up a cult following and spawned a host of memes like “touch fluffy tail”and this:


It was also the first part of a trilogy.


Chapter two continued Luka and Alice’s adventures, where it became more obvious that Luka’s real quest was to fix the various divisions in the world and that Alice fancied the tits off him.


By chapter 3 it was fairly evident that most of the monster girls (including Demon Lord Alice and her four knights) weren’t the real threat here, so the game upended it all by having the angel Ilias turn genocidal and attempt to destroy the world because it had grown “impure”.

Make no mistake, Monster Girl Quest games are sex games, but they had a pretty decent story and the characters were engaging.

Toro Toro Resistance was able to squeeze a lot out of a visual novel engine to make Monster Girl Quest, but I suspect they were hankering to make a proper JRPG along the lines of classics like the Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest series.  So, a couple of years later we got this:


Monmusu Quest: Paradox is an alternate universe version of the Monster Girl Quest series.  Luka is still off on his adventures, but things have gone wrong somewhere and it seems like chaos is threatening to eat that world and others.  While MGQ was a visual novel with battles, MQ:P is a much more traditional JRPG.  There is a lot more freedom of movement and the monster girl fights are your standard random encounters (with Luka having a party this time rather than fighting alone).  Like Pokemon, you can pretty much recruit all the monster girls you fight, building up a sizable harem for Luka (that will try to eat him if he’s not careful).  Toro Toro Resistance threw everything in there in terms of mechanics.  If you like old-school JRPGs, MQ:P might still be of interest even if you’re not into the freaky sex stuff.

And now we’re onto Part 2.


I decided to start up the Let’s Play series again because I enjoyed doing it the first time around, and it’s a fairly time-efficient way of keeping the blog running with new content while I try to sort out my tangled mess of writing projects behind the scenes.

A couple of things to be aware of and changes from the last series:

I won’t be running it daily this time around.  It was too brutal and I felt that it didn’t leave me enough time form my own writing.  The Mon-Wed-Fri schedule I used for Monmusu Conquered World seemed to work okay (aside from near the end when I was struggling to maintain my interest in the game).  This means the series will likely run for some time, but as I won’t be running it daily, that will leave gaps in the week for me to blog about other stuff/post new stories (more on that in a mo).

I’ll be making it more of a walkthrough, so there will be more screenshots of the less titillating RPG overworld maps to show which characters to interact with at which time in order to advance the story.  I got a fair few comments from people struggling with untranslated versions of the game that appreciated some form of guide, so it makes sense to focus on that.  It won’t be an exhaustive guide.  I don’t read Japanese either, so I’m inevitably going to miss stuff (I do in English videogame RPGs).  Feel free to point out when this happens in the comments.

Also, there is a chance the series might go on pause.  As I’ve mentioned before, Windows 10 and text hookers really don’t get along.  I have one that works, but the last Windows 10 update broke it and I was only able to get it working again by reverting the update.  Windows 10 being Windows 10, that update is going to get pushed through at some point, at which point I’m going to be boned until I can find a fix.  MQ:P is way too complex to play without some form of translation support.

Now for my own writing.  That’s currently in a bit of a mess.  On the plus side, I’ve thought up two new novel ideas that might be cool in the past month.

Actually, that's not a plus.

My main problem at the moment is staying focused long enough on the same project.  Too easily distracted by the shiny new ideas, sigh.  Once the MQ:P series is up and running that will give me plenty of time to try and sort my writing shit out (and playing through MQ:P will likely fire up some fresh inspiration in the process).  This is better than a very long gap between updates and concerned comments/emails asking if I’m still alive.

The two main items on the sorting shit out front are the H-space Monster Girl Bestiary and Succubus Summoning 301.  For SS 301 I have a pretty good idea of what the first couple of chapters are and intend working on that while the MQ:P playthrough is keeping things ticking over here.  The H-space MGB is a little more awkward as I’m struggling to manage word bloat.  Those pieces either need to be proper stories in their own right, or 1.5K sex scenes I rattle off in a couple of hours as a break from meatier projects.  Currently they’re falling into a middle ground of too-long-but-not-long-enough that isn’t working (for me).

Anyway, for the rest of the week I’ll be posting MQ:P recaps, part one hints, etc.  I'm planning to start posting the playthrough proper around this time next week.

I hope you enjoy!