Moe Chronicles: Gotta rub 'em all!

The untimely interruption of my playthrough of Dungeon Travelers 2 left a giant first-person dungeon crawler-shaped hole in my heart. In order to fill that hole, I dove straight into Moe Chronicles as soon as my DT2 cartridge was back in its box. 15 hours later, I'm still deep down there and enjoying to trip to the fullest.

Although I'm glued to the game now, the early stages were rather inauspicious. Far from succumbing to the kind of instant crush I experienced with games like Demon Gaze and DT2, I was left unimpressed and even vaguely grossed out by MC, to the point of nearly considering quitting. I'll expand later on the reasons why I felt that way; for now, suffice it to say that I overcame these mixed feelings and learnt to love the game in earnest, to the point where nothing could be further from my mind than quitting.

I compared Criminal Girls to the Pokemon series before, but Moe Chronicles is the game that would genuinely deserve the appelation of "Pokemon: Pervy Version". Here is a game that has been designed purposefully as a collecting feast, with alluring monster girls in lieu of cute animals. And let's be honest: whoever was in charge of the character design did an amazing job. The Monster Girls are incredibly cute, each one having her own unique style and being instantly recognizable. Despite the fact that I'm too old to succumb to the lure of moe, I find all the girls absolutely adorable and always feel a thrill of excitement when encountering a new one.

Mind you, recruiting Monster Girls is significantly easier than recruiting Pokemons. There is only one Monster Girl of each type, and recruiting them doesn't imply pacing back and forth to trigger random encounters. Instead, each Monster Girl roams a small designated area and will do so until she is recruited. How convenient! Since we're talking about a Pokemon rip-off, it should make perfect sense that the recruitment process involves fighting the cornered Monster Girl in order to make her more... amenable, shall we say. Then comes the rubbing part, which is the equivalent of tossing a Pokeball at a weakened 'Mon and crossing your fingers while hoping for success—except that in that case, you do not keep your fingers crossed. Securing the recruitment of a Monster Girl involves poking the Vita screen in order to discover the girl's sensitive points; and while this may sound like pure fan-servicy fare, these phases are more complicated than one may think. For one thing, each Monster Girl has three sensitive points that must be rubbed in a given order; for another, these points are more often than not located on random body parts such as the ankle, the tip of the nose or the forearm, so going straight for bottoms or bosoms won't do the trick; and last but not least, the whole process is timed, and very unforgivingly at that. This strict time limit is what makes these rubbing phases compelling, transforming them into a full-blown challenge instead of the complacent fan-service display that they seem to be at first sight. Fail to pinpoint all sensitive areas and the involved Monster Girl will escape, forcing you to restart the whole recruiting process. I've currently reached a stage in the game where the time limit during the rubbing phases is so strict that there is virtually no chance of capturing a Monster Girl on the first try unless I'm lucky enough to put my finger right on her sensitive spots—literally.

It doesn't take long to realize than Moe Chronicles is hell-bent on forcing the player to go harem and to play with as many Monster Girls as possible, switching them at will and trying all sorts of party combinations. And truth must be told, this is actually the game's strongest point: the Monster Girls' abilities are so incredibly varied and so perfectly complementary that combining them is a joy rather than a chore and produces more often than not parties with a stellar alchemy. And stellar it should be, because this is a game that forbids solo runs—or any run involving less than a five-member party, for that matter. I was a bit crestfallen when discovering that, but quickly got over my disappointment when I realized that XP was attributed equally to all party members and not divided between them. (For instance, if a fight yields 10XP, each of the five party members will get 10XP and not just 2XP like in most RPGs.) To make switching between party members even smoother, newly recruited Monster Girls don't start at Lv.1 but rather at a level similar to the one of your party members, and the Monster Girls that are part of your roster yet not in the party still gain a modicum of XP—and that amount can be increased by refurbishing their rooms. But the game goes even further in its dedication to introduce the player to the joys of party-switching: should you decide to stick with the same party from beginning to end, this is made impossible by the implementation of what can only be described as planned obsolescence in the Monster Girls.

Here's how it works: as the game goes on, the progression of the Monster Girls slows down. They keep gaining levels, but their stats increase slower, up to the unavoidable moment when they become too weak to be efficient in battle and have to be replaced by newer and fresher Monster Girls—as a matter of fact, this downgrading of sorts usually happens around the time a Monster Girl with similar abilities is available for recruitment. I learnt about this cruel hidden rule the hard way: by the end of the first dungeon, my party comprised Lilia, Latte, Killer Bee, Goblin and Kobold and their alchemy was so perfect that I was firmly planning to cruise around with these Fab Five until the end. Alas, that was not meant to be: as I explored the fourth dungeon, I noticed that Lilia was starting to show alarming signs of weakness. She was taking more damage and her formely powerful hits were now hardly scratching foes, to the point where she become more a liability than an asset in battle. Although I didn't want to part with her, I had no other choice but to replace her by a newer Monster Girl with similar abilities, namely the powerful Dragon. I though this would be the end of it, but shortly after, the other girls in my team started showing the exact same symptoms, to my utter dismay. This led to a complete overhaul of my party, as I grudgingly replaced Latte, Killer Bee and Goblin by Jack-o'-Lantern, Kamaitachi and Minotaur respectively. The only original member I maintained was Kobold, because her turf is Healing and she's still stellar at it and because there are no other Monster Girls with skills similars to hers. I have yet to get used to the dynamic of that new party, but I've mostly gotten over my disappointment at losing my initial Fab Five. As a matter of fact, I've even developed a genuine relish for experimenting with party members, and I may well try a couple of other combinations before I'm done with the game.

The only downside of that otherwise great dungeon crawler, and the reason why I was not impressed by it at first, are the miserable production values. It's pretty obvious that a huge chunk of the game's budget went into designing the Monster Girls and that everything else got the short end of the stick. The designs of regular enemies are ugly, the soundtrack is mediocre, moving around feels painfully slow and clunky (although I ultimately got used to it) and, last but not least, the dungeon layouts are lustreless and pitifully basic, with none of the creativity at work in Dungeon Travelers 2 or Demon Gaze. There are no traps, no hidden rooms, no clever design tricks to be found; only empty corridors, dead ends and the occasional damage floor or one-way door, which seem to have been thrown there as an afterthought. To dissimulate somewhat that design poverty and prevent players from clearing dungeons too fast, the random encounter rate has been cranked up to Dragon Quest levels. This is by far the highest random encounter rate I've encountered so far in a first-person dungeon crawler, much higher than the rates at work in DT2 or Demon Gaze. These nearly constant encounters often get in the way of roaming and exploration, and despite my love for grinding, I find myself occasionally irritated by the fact that it's virtually impossible to take three steps without triggering a fight. Another point that rubbed me the wrong way is the absence of an instant save feature, combined with the fact that save points in dungeons are few and far between. Granted, the game is not excruciatingly hard and I've never lost a shred of my progression because of an unexpected Game Over so far, but the impossibility of instant-saving introduces a modicum of unease in my roaming that I could have done without.

All in all, while Moe Chronicles' grindy brand of dungeon crawling may not be as solid and engrossing as the crawling experiences offered by DT2 and Demon Gaze, it is still perfectly palatable and amply justifies playing the game. Expect at least another post about Moe Chronicles, maybe more if I'm inspired enough. And now, if you'll excuse me, I have some Roaming 'n' Rubbing to perform! Thanks for reading, and be my guest anytime!