Moero Chronicle Hyper (Nintendo Switch) Review

This opens on a monologue that sets a new stage where Monster Girls and humans live alongside one another in peace - at least, they did once. In this world, the land is split between the Human land of Lotium and the Monster Land of Monstopia, and one day the once friendly Monster Girls suddenly changed, turning ferocious towards humans, even those who were once great friends. The rumour is the cause of this is the Legendary Monster Girl who reigned deep at the heart of Monstopia, and it became a grand quest for human heroes to trek into the lands of the Monster Girls and try to slay this creature, hoping it will snap all of the others out of their new rage.

The latest chosen to embark on one of these quests is a young man named Io. Io is already struggling when it comes to Monster Girls, or even just girls in general. Hitting puberty is whooping his lowly buttocks as he obsesses constantly over any and all women, making it impossible for him to even speak to the opposite sex - all except for his childhood friend, the monster girl Lilia. However, his obsessive pervy thoughts have even begun to wander towards her. He doesn't have much time to think on it though, as he's informed he has been chosen as the latest victim to go and try hunt the Legendary Monster Girl.

While Monster Monpiece is a card game, Moero Chronicle Hyper is more reminiscent of an Etrian Odyssey-style, first-person, dungeon-crawling RPG, although, the dungeons are nothing like anything else. The very first step of Io and Lilia brings them into a forest of Phallic Mushrooms. It's not the only Phallic thing in this forest either, as the game's mascot makes its big splash here. His name is Otton, and he talks like a cool hero from a shonen series... but looks like a pink seal. With a pair of panties worn around his neck. And his head looks like a penis. He's on a quest across the world to collect the worn panties of Monster Girls. This really helps to set the tone of the game and what to expect. As do the first few enemies.

The very first enemy encountered looks like a humanoid cartoon cow with four huge, naked, pendulous breasts. Oh and giant breasts growing out of the side of its head. In the same dungeon, there are mustachioed muscular Rabbit-men with panties pulled over their faces. Best of all is the UFO, which is basically two breasts mashed together into the shape of a flying saucer... being flown by an alien that has a pair of breasts for a head, with little breast spheres floating around it. Subtle. This sort of theme continues throughout. Enemies stuffed to bursting with innuendo. It's often over the top, and not just the enemies. The environments, the writing, and the comedy, is constantly obnoxious. It's just too on the nose, there's no real subtlety.

The combat system offers up some standard fare. Io doesn't actually battle, but gets a turn every round to choose between storing up energy, imbuing one of the girls with it, or using an item. The actual battling is done by the Monster girls. Just Lillia at first, but there are over 50 Monster Girls to find and recruit over the course of the game, each with their own special attacks and passive attributes that when fully considered can play into the team building. Battles are a usual, turned-based affair. There's a standard elemental rock-paper-scissors style system, familiar debuffs - nothing new under the sun.

As for the recruitable girls, they are interesting. They span the usual fantasy creature of both East and West. Dragon and Chimera. Yuki-Onna and Kamaitachi. It's great to see such a wide range of characters, however, the designs of the girls' designs are very disappointing. Nothing like the monster girls of Monster Musume which actually have monster… girls. They're just standard cute anime girls with the occasional tail or animal ears. Each dungeon has a handful of them scattered through that wander as mobs on the map, and need to be defeated to be acquired. Doing so makes for one of the most interesting aspects of the combat.

The girls have destructible clothing, and the appropriate attacks need to be used to destroy each part. Once all of the clothes have been destroyed a touch screen mini-game plays out known as "Bumping Scratch," where touch or regular controls are used to rub, touch, pinch, and poke various parts of the lady and raise their excitement. Get them to fever pitch and they lose their curse, becoming friendly and joining the party. The synergy of forging a party is strange, though.

As the ladies are used, they gain experience and level up, increasing their statistics, all as normal - but they also gain special skills separately to the process of levelling up, and these are linked to their outfits. Each has a set of passive and usable skills. So, equip clothing, level it up, until all skills are unlocked, hunt down more clothing, repeat. The strange thing is the skills remain locked to the item, only usable when that item is equipped, so there is little incentive to level the skills up, other than to see the girls in the party wearing less and less. The costumes themselves are as disappointing as the overall designs. Fanciful names for each, but they're basically all lingerie. Not even well thought out, or particularly impressively designed. The trick to party synergy relies on character "Moe Traits," including things like "Tiny Tits," "Masochist," "Cute Butt," and "Tsundere." Balancing these traits gives some powerful passive bonuses.