“Oh my god, a H-game visual novel with a plot? How preposterous! It’s about as likely as the world ending on the 21st Dec 2012!” I don’t believe that theory by the way.
Well, this will prove you wrong! What could have easily been just a bunch of porn is now…story-driven porn. But hey, if you’ll believe me, I enjoy the story more than the porn. Anyway, since Part 2 to MGQ has been recently released and is currently being fan-translated, I’ve decided to do a walkthrough of that, and thus that leaves me to do a quick review on Part 1.
Title: Monster Girl Quest [Part 1]
Developer: Torotoro Resistance
Platform: PC Game
Release Date: 2011
Genre: Eroge, Turn-Based RPG
Rating: 18+ What do you think?
Contains light spoilers. You have been warned.
Story and Plot
The world in MGQ is…different to ours. Actually that’s probably the biggest understatement, ever. The world there is home to two species – humans, and monster girls. The monster girls require human semen to survive cough Lotte no Omocha cough and thus they prey on the humans, creating a divided society in which heroes kill the monster girls under the guidance of their goddess, Ilias. Our hero (the player) is a young boy named Luka, who seeks to become the greatest hero and kill the Monster Lord, who is supposedly ordering all these attacks on humans. Along the way he is accompanied by the strange monster girl Alice, who seems to be hiding more than she lets on.
Isn’t that just the perfect setup for a hentai VN? Well, it’s actually a much deeper story than anyone who hasn’t played it would imagine. While Luka goes around looking for aid from four of the elemental spirits, he finds out that the Monster Lord didn’t order anything, and in fact most of the monster girls grew to attacking humans because it became the norm that humans would kill them if they didn’t adapt.
Luka starts to realize that humanity’s fanatical, religious worship of Ilias is a complete sham, since many of Ilias’ statements about monsters contradict each other, as if she had a deeper motive herself.
I find this standard of plot amazing really, for something that Torotoro Resistance could have easily made as a bunch of hentai scenes and nothing more. Obviously, you get raped when you lose, and so the ideal blueprint to follow would be to kill all the fugly ones, and accidentally “lose” to the hot ones cough To the player, it’s very obvious that Ilias is stringing humanity along as a higher being, when it’s completely possible she’s a monster herself set out to destroy other monsters, using humans to do so. Bitch.
Characters
As with a lot of hero-related series, you have a main, his sidekick, and the enemy. In this case we have Luka as the incredibly fresh main character, who does have an exponential growth curve much like any other protagonist, but is awesome all the same.
“A true Hero is always saving kidnapped Princesses! How could I possibly refuse such a perfect cliche!”
For a sidekick we have Alice, the glutton lamia who seems to only care about food. Ironically enough, she’s a monster, who is
technically an enemy but sticks around Luka for the hell of it anyway. The relationship between the two is another reason why MGQ is just so epic – they’re both more fond of the other than either of them will admit. Seriously, the character interaction is beyond the level of a hentai VN, as something that would attract more players with its monster girl porn than as a story.
Battle System
Similar to many RPGs, Monster Girl Quest uses a turn-based battle system. However since it operates as a visual novel at the same time, battles are in-built and unavoidable, meaning that farming or gaining EXP manually isn’t possible. To me that’s a good thing, since I always hate the repetitive farming in MMOs.
“These are your skill points. Because you suck at fighting, you only have two.”
Luka has a basic attack, a set of skills, and a wait, guard, surrender and request option (to be raped of course). Some of the battles are actually quite hard, and many further on in the game are unpredictable, in which you have a high chance of losing. In terms of skills, I find some such as Meditate pretty useful, as well as Death Sword Chaos Star for huge amounts of damage (at a cost of 4SP). There’s basically a lot of freedom with the skills you can use, which is very nice. You even get the wind elemental, Sylph, whose wind stops an enemy’s attack or binding, which can sometimes mean an instant loss.
Graphics and OST
Given that all the monster girls were drawn by different people, there’s no doubt that they would all look slightly different. While most of them are really well drawn (Alice, Tamamo, Alma Elma) some of them are less than ideal, and it’s really easy to spot which ones. However the majority of the art was pretty, as were the various facial expressions that Alice wore at various points.
In terms of the OST, I can say I actually really enjoyed it. Though I did get tired of the normal battle music after a while, the cities and towns as well as interactions with Alice and the other important monster girls also got their own BGM which complimented the setting nicely. While obviously not as good as a sound novel (you know, cause the whole story is set behind that soundtrack) Torotoro did as good a job with the sound as they did with the plot. Oh and I think there was a Touhou homage somewhere too.
Recommendation
The first thing I will say is that your mileage WILL vary. Chances are, if you’re a guy and already play eroge, you’ll find that this game is some awesome shit. If not…well, there’s always a first time. Amidst all the porn and other whatnot, there IS actually a really enjoyable story in there, so at least try it for that. Though girls, it’d be best to stay clear at all costs what are you doing on this post anyway?
I will be doing a walkthrough/impression for Part 2 as it gets fan-translated by RougeTranslator, so look out for that ^^
…And remember. Clean your keyboards regularly.