MonMusu Hunter 2 is an isometric Action game that follows the immediate consequences of the ending in the original title. It turns out that defeating an eldritch being has upset the balance of things and caused the demon realm to ramp up their invasion a notch by summoning a powerful new foe called Yog-Sothoth. We play as the same nameless hero who has traveled to a new guild in order to hunt this grave new threat. Much to his dismay, the quest giver doubts his abilities and with the recent events costing the lives of many Hunters, instead chooses to send us to target her underlings to prove ourselves.
This swanky-looking new guild we find ourselves in isn’t the only thing that has changed. So too has the gameplay. It has been heavily overhauled from the original. Firstly are the weapons. You can either purchase a Machine Gun or a Diffusion weapon. We no longer have the ability to carry both of them around and swap them at will, making this first purchase a rather important one. As you may guess, the Machine-gun fires a rapid burst of projectiles. It has the faster reload time of the two and greater range, though it lacks much in the way of immediate stopping power. The Diffusion gun is the opposite. It takes a good while to reload but causes devastating damage if you are skilled enough to reliably land your shots. You’ll find that it fires a single slow-moving projectile that also explodes after reaching a certain range. This makes it possible to hit your opponent with both the projectile and the ensuing explosion as well, though you’ll be the one in trouble if you miss a shot at the short-range it operates at.
A new addition is that of a melee attack. Pressing the D key will cause our character to lunge with a knife and knock our foe back slightly to give us some breathing room. It is primarily helpful for Machine-gun users as you’d be much better off blasting them with a Diffusion projectile at close range. We are also unable to perform the melee attack when reloading. That fact causes it to be of even less use to Diffusion users, considering how much time we spend reloading after every shot. You’ll be glad you have it if we ever run out of ammo, however. Gone are the days of being able to fire an infinite amount of bullets. This causes every shot to feel that much more decisive as we don’t have a ton to spend carelessly. There are supply crates randomly found throughout the stages, but with the monsters respawning when you leave an area and the items not, it can get rather dicey spending too much time trying to find your main target.
The monster girls you’ll be encountering as you make your way through the levels are as agile as ever. You can not outrun them, and with some foes, superior attack range isn’t on your side either. One feature I really missed was that of the land mines. They are no longer in the game, which is a shame. It was really fun smacking one down behind you to turn the tides on an opponent that was chasing you down, or to get them to accidentally step on it by clever movement and quick thinking. The S key goes unused too, so why it was removed in this sequel is beyond me. A feature that did make it back is getting paid to cum inside the monster girls after managing to incapacitate them. You get substantially more gold from the act, making it something you actually want to go out of your way and do. This is how you get them into your dungeon as well. No longer do you have to buy them all. Just have sex with them once, and they are yours to keep in the dungeon below your room.
Another change for the better is that of the level layout. They used to be completely linear, yet are now labyrinthine in nature. You will have to make an effort to find your primary target and pick a direction to go in, hoping it leads to her. It can lead to a player being significantly worn down by the time you reach her from all the other monmusu encounters. On the flip side, if you are skilled enough, you can be better off since you can find more ammo to face your target with. Your main concern will be our air supply, which also doubles as your life bar and is constantly ticking down. It isn’t possible to carry around spare air tanks anymore. We have to hope we find one out in the environments and replenish it on the spot. This makes it much faster-paced and more of a gamble to have sex with random monster girls for that hefty reward.
Not having spare air tanks makes it so we have to face bosses with a single air tank now. This is a significantly more challenging title than its predecessor. Even without that change, the difficulty is noticeably higher. The skills we gained of knowing how to position our character and when to shoot will prove invaluable. We can’t outrun the monster girls, yet we can weave around in a manner that they can’t keep up with our sporadic movements. This allows us to avoid encounters if we are running out of time, or simply to handle the flow of battle when there is more than a single enemy. When it comes to bosses, it is no longer possible to tank them since we have so little oxygen. They have become far greater threats to us now, and we’ll actually have to move out of the way of their attacks if we hope to win. Interestingly enough, we are no longer locked into the same area when facing them. If things are going poorly, it is possible to run away and try to find some more air somewhere. Hopefully, without being cut down by some random monmusu girl while you do so.
The money we gain from slaying our targets or sexing up monster girls is now used to upgrade weapons. Both weapons start at level one and can go all the way to five with enough cash. You’ll be a force to be reckoned with by that point, but not overpowered. An incredibly important thing to know is that you can not store a weapon. As an example, let’s say you have a level five Diffusion gun but want to try the machine-gun. If you buy it, your previous weapon is gone forever, and it becomes necessary to spend a ton of money upgrading it all over again from scratch should you want to swap back. This heavily discourages switching up your playstyle and causes us to commit to one gun through the entire game. MonMusu Hunter 2 has around a single hour of playtime, so it is a bad move on the dev’s part to disincentivize experimentation or anything to extend the life-span. It effectively makes gold worthless as well after getting a level five weapon.
In total, this title only has 4 stages, one less than its predecessor. I’m fairly sure the third level uses the same environment from the last game’s final stage, and the final stage of this sequel is a simple boss rush in a similar locale. I do enjoy the improvements in gameplay and a non-linear level design making the stages longer than its predecessor’s, yet one can’t help but feel it is lacking in the content department. Where it ups the ante is in the sex animations with the monmusu girls. They now have more frames and variations during intercourse other than a short looped animation followed immediately by ejaculation. Sex now includes a low-intensity beginning, a higher intensity farther into it, and then climax. In each step of that, facial expressions and body placement change. Each girl still only has one position, but the act is significantly better put together. Better still is that we can now zoom in to have a more generous view of what’s going on. We are also given control to go slower or faster during sex and can climax at will with the Shift key.
Whether it be bosses or regular foes, the simple act of having sex with them will see each added to your dungeon collection. It will fill up rapidly, and if you missed any, you could always replay any of the first three levels. The fourth stage is a boss rush mode, so there are no monmusus you can miss in it. Still, not being able to replay it again is an odd decision. With the combination of switching weapons being a bad idea once you spent gold upgrading it, and every foe being so easy and free to obtain, this actually has less replay value than the original. I’m not a fan of grinding in video games, generally, yet this does leave little else to do once the credits roll other than to admire your dungeon. Once again, the need to delete your current weapon to change to another is quite the fatal flaw. Replaying it with the different playstyle afforded by an unfamiliar gun and slowly upgrading it could have easily made a second playthrough more tempting.
When all is said and done, Monmusu Hunter 2 is a decent sequel which I did end up enjoying more than the original. The gameplay is improved, levels are now more than a straight line, and it packs some semblance of challenge this time. I actually died a fair bit throughout, especially in the finale. With the predecessor, I was never even threatened at possible failure. While it lacks the same replay value, I relished the adventure far more here. The fast-paced nature forced by our character slowly running out of air and having to face down dangerous foes in a rush to find our target is exhilarating. It remains a Japanese exclusive, however. Some of the text is important, more so if you’ve never played the original and have no idea how to position your shots. I’d suggest The Textractor to translate it for those that can’t read the language. Ultimately, MonMusus Hunter 2 is a bit of a mixed bag when it comes to improvements, but enough has been steered in the right direction to make it the better experience of the two and one to strongly consider for those that liked the concept introduced in the original.
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