Moero Chronicle Hyper

Genre: First-Person Dungeon Crawler / Monster Collecting Turn-Based JRPG

Players: 1

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Review:

Moero Chronicle Hyper, released on Nintendo Switch in 2019 after its original PlayStation Vita release never made it out of Japan, is the second game in the Genkai Tokki Moero Chronicle series. This is a First-Person Dungeon Crawler / Turn-Based JRPG similar to the Etrian Odyssey series, but with a decidedly pervy tone. Players head out on a quest to figure out why the extremely sexualized monster girls of the kingdom have suddenly become hostile toward humans, recruiting cute monster girls to assist you by defeating them in a battle that involves destroying their clothes and rubbing them in sensitive spots to turn them to your side.

Okay, so whenever I review a particularly pervy game, I feel a need to preface the review by saying that I have nothing in particular for or against videogames that aim to be semi-erotic in nature. Rather, I try to judge the game on its qualities as a videogame, and to some extent on whether the erotic content actually works for the game or just seems egregious. So the question here is, is this a good game, and is the sexy stuff done well?

In terms of presentation, I can say that this game uses some very nice hand-drawn anime-style art for its character portraits, and some pretty rudimentary 3D for its dungeons. The art for the girls is, as you might hope given the game’s focus, really well-designed and full of personality, and the game’s numerous monster girls are rendered in a variety of costumes. The animation here is pretty simple, apparently just warping and stretching the still image rather than doing anything interesting with it, but they do at least make sure that all the appropriate parts jiggle whenever one of the monster girls takes damage.

The music that accompanies the visuals, likewise, ranges from decent anime-esque stuff to forgettable fare and even some that are outright bad. On the bright side though, the Japanese-only voice acting here seems pretty good, and from what I can tell it looks like the game is fully-voiced.

This game’s story is pretty terrible, and seems to serve as a thinly-veiled excuse to have players interacting with a bunch of scantily-clad monster girls. It’s not really clear why the game’s main character, Io, is arbitrarily chosen to “save the world” by investigating the suddenly aggressive nature of the monster girls, save for that his village’s mayor finds Io to be expendable. It’s also not clear why series mascot Otton (a pink seal-shaped thing with a phallic-shaped head) is latching onto the group or why busting the clothes off of girls and rubbing their “weak spots” cures them of their mysterious malady, or why Otton knows this would work. Maybe something here is lost in the translation, but overall it’s just an absurd mess that’s little more than a thin window dressing over the game’s clearly perverted intentions.

I suppose that if you’re looking for logic in a game where you fight cartoony cows with four massive boob-shaped udders and flying saucers with boobs for a top half, you’re probably looking in the wrong place. I can’t help but think I would respect the game more if it just dropped the contrivances and thin veneer of explanation for its absurd elements and just went with it, you know? Oh, and for those wondering, aside from the bare nipple on the boob UFOs, this game seems to refrain from any actual nudity, but there is so little left to the imagination throughout that it’s safe to say that this is a game that you probably won’t want to be playing in front of other people.

Is it sexy? At times, sure… but it’s also bizarre in that way only the Japanese can do, and it never crosses the line into full-fledged pornography so those looking to enjoy the game in that way may be a tad disappointed.

The gameplay here starts out pretty basic as far as First-Person Dungeon Crawlers go. The dungeons are fairly rudimentary and straightforward, as is the elemental system-influenced combat with a combo system in place that gives bonus damage for repeatedly exploiting enemies’ elemental weaknesses. However, the game does add twists to the game to keep things interesting. For starters, Io’s role in combat isn’t to fight, but to act as a pervy cheerleader of sorts, building up energy and releasing it onto one of the fighting girls in your party to power up her attack (occasionally getting too worked up and needing a breather). This must be weighed against the need to use items or flee, as Io is the only one who can do those things.

When enemies encounter a monster girl enemy, they can engage in a boss battle of sorts where they can target each element of her clothing to destroy them, resulting in the game going to “scratch” mode, where players move a cursor on the screen or use the touchscreen and rub her picture to try to find her weak points. Doing so within a limited time results in the girl joining your party. There’s a fair number of girls to collect, but I’m not sure this game does enough to give players a reason to want to collect them – after gathering together a strong party with diverse skills that pair well together, it seems best to just focus on them rather than splitting your efforts onto others.

There are other systems here that build on the gameplay, but I feel like many of them are half-baked. Each of the girls has four collectable outfits that are more than just new eye candy – each comes with its own job class attached that changes not only the girl’s appearance but her stats and skills. However, there doesn’t seem to be much reason to dabble with this – after finding a class with the skills you prefer for the character, there’s not much reason to change it, unless you want to ogle the different outfits. There’s also a “dating sim”-style affinity system which can be used to unlock further bonuses, and an ability to pair your girls with monster “pets” that randomly join you after a battle to enhance their bonuses. There’s definitely an attempt at something deep and interesting here, but it seems somewhat scatterbrained and nonsensical.

In short, Moero Chronicle Hyper is an Etrian Odyssey-style Dungeon Crawler that seems to be having something of an identity crisis. It clearly wants to be a pervy version of that sort of game, but tries to dress up its more outrageous elements in mundane and even generic story elements that don’t even begin to explain its absurdities. It wants to have deep and involved gameplay mechanics beyond the basics of the genre, but those mechanics don’t seem to come together in a cohesive manner. It’s not a bad Dungeon Crawler, but it’s not an especially great one, and the highly sexualized presentation is likely to turn off many players who would otherwise consider giving it a go.

tl;dr – Moero Chronicle H is a game that combines an Etrian Odyssey-style Dungeon Crawler and a Pokemon-style Monster-collecting game with a lot of perversion Japanese weirdness. The highly sexual tone of the game clashes with its otherwise mundane story elements, and while its gameplay definitely makes an attempt at doing something interesting, its disparate elements don’t come together cohesively. All in all, this is a decent game with some positive qualities, but it’s not a great one, and its presentation will be a non-starter with some players.

Grade: C+

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