Back in 2011, a group known as Torotoro resistance had released the first part of a rather (in)famous game inspired by a classic series of RPG’s from Japan known as Dragon Quest and an artist’s blog belonging to an internet user known as Kenkou Cross. It was known as Monster Girl Quest.
The game mixed the classic RPG combat elements with the lewd concept of monster girls. Despite the rather simplistic battle system, it was a surprisingly engaging puzzle game. But instead of familiar random encounters with pallet swapped enemies, every battle put you against a uniquely designed and drawn monster that required some thinking to beat. This, along with writing quality that was well above the average H-game, helped MGQ to quickly gain a cult following and an English fan translation.
Since then, the developers had released two more parts of the game with varied responses to their quality as well as starting to develop its Spinoff/Sequel Monster Girl Quest: Paradox.
And while the three parts of the original saga are, for the most part, remembered fondly and praised overall, it would be disingenuous to say that the game didn’t have its share of flaws. Be it either some questionable at times writing, or narrative choices that left you scratching your head and wondering about things. Like, how come the monsters haven’t taken over the world yet with the sheer power discrepancy that they display between themselves and the humans? Not to mention the art quality and the designs of certain fights.
As so, there had been attempts to fix this with variable results through modding and fan games. The most notable among these was Monster Girl Quest 3D, a very ambitious project that, as the name suggests, wanted to remake the game with 3D models on a new engine to add some depth to the gameplay. There were also plans to fix some of the most glaring holes in the writing and expand the world of Monster Girl Quest a little bit. Unfortunately, like many fan projects of its kind, it died very early in its development.
And this is where someone called Unknown Developer comes into place. As someone who was an avid follower of the above fan remake, he was greatly disheartened to see it discontinued. But instead of just shrugging and moving on, he decided to take things into his own hands.
He salvaged all the good ideas and pieces of the script that he could and decided to reel in the scope of the project considerably. He was only one man after all, and there was only so much that he could do. To make matters worse, he wasn’t a native English speaker either, and his countrymen were… well, let’s just say they were not particularly interested in the MGQ series.
And this is where Monster Girl Quest Remake had started. Armed with nothing more than passion, a recently bought copy of RPG maker VX Ace and a handful of leftover notes he took from the Monster Girl Quest 3D project, he began to recreate the world of Monster Girl Quest in the familiar grid-based format of classic JRPG’s akin to Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy.
Another immense blessing came in the form of Monster Girl Quest Paradox which, due to its spinoff nature, closely followed the story of the original game and had an enormous amount of assets to pilfer, which UnknownDev was quite happy to do.
What came out of this bizarre endeavor could be loosely described as: “The original Monster Girl quest remade with Paradox assets, with some original flavor sprinkled throughout. But be not hasty to dismiss it for its crude nature, because, while it is by no means a masterpiece, it is definitely worth to check out. Now let me tell you why that is.
THE GAMEPLAY
The most notable upgrade from the original comes from the expanded battle and inventory system, familiar to just about anyone who had ever played a JRPG before. You have your changeable equipment, usable items and all that jazz. If you played Paradox before however, you are going to be disappointed, as the remake is rather bare bones and most reminiscent of the very first Dragon Quest game, where you only controlled one character. But, as the developer wanted to deliberately distance himself from Paradox to make something more unique, he added a handful of things to separate the two from each other gameplay wise.
The most prominent is the addition of “battle items”. As the main character, Luka, is not a mage by any means. His repertoire of abilities is very limited and each new one must be fought for hard to obtain it through the new addition of side quests, but we will get to them later.
The battle items are a one-time use “spells” called Pseudo Magic in-game, and do the usual things like dealing damage, or applying buffs to Luka, such as reducing incoming physical/magical and pleasure type damage or increasing his attack power. There are ways to debuff enemies too, by setting them on fire or poisoning them or even slowing them down with the ever-useful slime grenades that envelop your enemies in the sticky stuff, allowing Luka to act more often through the game’s ATB system, which will be familiar to classic Final Fantasy fans.
The battle items can be bought in shops or found in the overworld from chests, but the most reliable way to get them (And you WILL need to get them, as the game is designed around their usage and management) is through crafting. This ties into another element that the remake actively promotes: almost none of the enemies you encounter drop any money.
This presents a problem, as you effectively have a soft cap on your gold, but only until you realize that all these enemies drop crafting components instead. About to venture into an area full of dangerous sea life that wants to rape you and then drag you off to their watery hideout? Go beat up a bunch of much weaker earthworm girls and scrape the slick oil cowering them right off their bodies to prepare a bunch of incendiary grenades. Have some leftover when you are done? SELL THEM!
That’s right! If you pay attention to what drops what and are mindful to not commit yourself to a bunch of long, dangerous and drawn out fights that put a drain on your resources, you, the player, will be able to make a profit and buy all those shiny new recipe books, to craft even more stuff, along with some spiffy armor and bling to make all the monster girls turn their heads at you as you strut through the towns in all your adorable shota glory.
The more vanilla gameplay elements are unfortunately very bare bones. Equipment progression is very linear and you never have an incentive to put on old gear or even accessories since none of it provides any tangible benefits, like elemental/status resistance or noticeable boosts to your speed or evasion stats. Only bigger numbers matter here, so you better get used to buying new stuff as soon as you can, if you want to survive, because the game expects for you to do so. The only exception to this is the regen ring you can get in San Ilia, which remans useful for drawn out boss fights all the way to Gnome, while the new desert amulet from Sabasa is handy for more straightforward battles or fights against magic wielding enemies, since it gives a higher magical defense compared to the ring.
As Luka is locked to using only a certain sword, due to plot contrivances, you instead can upgrade your offensive potential by special orbs that you can insert into the sword’s pommel. The 0.3 version only has three: one gives a small overall boost to all stats, the second allows you to bank your SP and the third gives a hefty attack power boost.
Unfortunately, just like regular equipment, not all orbs are made equal. The starting one will be discarded as soon as you get the second one, because banking your SP is a huge game changer. To the point where the third orb, despite giving you almost a hundred extra damage per regular attack, just can’t catch up, since you can build up your SP on weaker enemies and use it to spam a bunch of special attacks on a stronger enemy or a boss battle.
Now, if you played the original, you should know that Luka usually started at max SP when the fight would begin. You won’t have such mercy here. Your SP will start at a random number from eight to twenty and will slowly build up with every successful attack. SP also builds up when you receive damage and use the defend command, so at times it might be beneficial to tank some hits to then counter with a special attack. You can also use a special item to recover your SP which can be crafted as well.
But even then, you will quickly run out, so you better get ready to throw out some battle items when you do. They will be one of your primary sources of damage and even then, you will be well advised to run away from some of the harder regular battles instead to not waste them and do your level and material grinding in safer places, filled with regular beasties, which are also a new addition.
Instead of only facing humanoid monsters, Luka can also encounter more mundane foes such as; wild dogs, man eating plants and bandits, which are, mercifully, much easier to deal with when compared to the titular monster girls and will allow you to slowly let your strength grow, before you can face the thicker foes.
The boss encounters are all over the place in terms of challenge. Some of them can be beaten with sufficient preparations and nonstop bombardment of battle items. Others require more thinking like buffing and debuffing. Some are a huge drain on your resources, but don’t be afraid to use them. If you don’t fight through every single battle, you will have enough to go around. And lastly, some, like the final battle of the 0.2 version against Granberia are a boring slug fest where you have to exchange attacks, defend and heal for ten minutes straight. A couple of them definitely stood out, like the Harpy Queen and the first Inquisitors encounter, partially because you had access to temporary party members during them, which is a feature that I hope will continue to expand in the future.
While Luka can’t permanently recruit anyone, he does receive temporary party members like in Final Fantasy 2 or Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. They will help out during certain parts of the story. One of them was even armed with a musket, which really made me want one for Luka.
THE MUSIC
There is not much to say here. The game reuses the original OST and has a handful of new tracks. The boss ones are dynamic and nice and the dungeons are atmospheric. My favorite one was the funky track that played in the haunted mansion, which was a huge improvement over the dreary boring track from the original. The worst one by far is the first regular battle theme which is VERY unfortunate since you will be hearing it for a while and it starts to really get on your nerves. It is easy to replace the music tracks yourself with the proper knowhow, but it would be much better if the main battle theme was replaced with something better that gets your blood pumping and excited rather than cringe with every encounter. Thankfully the Sabasa region introduced a new track which was far better.
THE STORY
Without going into spoilers too much, UnknownDev was not very satisfied with certain plot twists brought on by part 3 of the original and decided to change a few things around. The overall story is still the same journey of Luka to spread peace and coexistence between humans and monsters, but it has a few new unique events brought by sidequests, such as an introduction to monster boys as a rare genetic quirk, which will make a few eyebrows raise, including my own, but the execution of it was surprisingly tame and didn’t stand out from the overall world building too much.
As mentioned earlier, new skills for Luka are now locked behind side quests. Gone are the days when Alice would give you free lessons on swordsmanship. You want some? Better get your butt moving and grab something tasty to exchange for them. The land is now rife with one of a kind delicacies, like the royal bee jelly or certain nearly extinct species of boars, which your travelling glutton companion will happily devour in exchange for secrets of monster swordsmanship. Said delicacies will make you scour new, never before seen areas, like bee girl hives and the bottom of the ocean to have some fun between the main story missions.
Also, there is now an overall stronger theme of conflict. The humans are no longer pushovers and are shown on multiple occasions that there is a reason why the monsters haven’t taken over yet and when you see them stand their ground, it is glorious and makes you want to shout in excitement. This also goes both ways, since, besides the ineffective Ilias Kreuz terrorist group, there is now a group of inquisitors made out of heroes baptized by Ilias. They actively hunt down monsters in classic Warhammer 40k fashion and you will have to butt heads with them on multiple occasions to preserve the ideals of peace and coexistence. Luka will also receive occasional help from the alliance army made out of soldiers from the various countries across the world that specialize with dealing with monsters in a more orderly and less genocidal fashion. They are for the most part neutral against the friendly ones like the mermaids and the elves.
The events that were in the original are also expanded with new context, like explaining why the playful and easily bored Alma Elma was blocking the sea route between the two continents for months or making the Goddess Sword held in San Ilias much more important and relevant to the story. The heavenly knights are also more proactive in general, shown doing important things around the world that are not always directly relevant to what Luka is doing.
The stakes are also much higher. The game does not shy away from death like the original and the mermaid school bombing in the remake is a much a bigger deal than in the original. It had actual casualties and is referenced multiple times down the road, showing Alice being more proactive and actually giving orders behind the curtains to look into Ilias Kreuz and other matters like the civil war in Plansect or the mysterious disappearance of Papi the dragon’s mother from Iliasburg.
Overall, while the game has many major flaws, has bad grammar at times and tile errors allowing you walks into certain random objects, I still highly recommend it to any MGQ fan. It can be frustrating at times, but the developer has shown that he is actively working the quirks out and with each new area of the game, it becomes more and more apparent that he is becoming better at figuring out little things like game balance. It is an ambitious but very promising project worth checking out. There is fun to be had for sure when compared to other numerous worthless RPG maker games and the game shows that soul and love was put into it by its creator.
