MonMusu Hunter is an isometric Action game that takes place over a thousand years in the future. This future is hardly a happy one as millennia prior, the demon world merged with ours and has destroyed civilization as we knew it. In this new ravaged world, there is one very lucrative profession, that of hunting powerful demons. We are one of these said “Hunters” looking to make a name for himself in the guild. A long-ranged fighter by nature, he takes up both a crossbow and a cannon (rifle) to begin the life or death struggles that await him.
Despite the lore, this title is actually really light-hearted. It is not as serious or dramatic a tale as the intro would lead you to believe. Nature has reclaimed the lands we will be exploring, giving it a lively look and the demons/monsters we face are pretty adorable. Interestingly enough, that opening sequence was narrated in English to fill us in on what’s happening. The thing there is that this title is entirely in Japanese and has not been translated. From then on out, you will need to have some ability to read Japanese or use a third-party program like The Textractor to translate it into English on the fly. There are several menus to interact with and essential tips you’ll miss out on otherwise.
We start off our journey inside of our room. In here we can either save the game, return to the title screen, or visit our dungeon where the monster girls we purchase are found. Considering we haven’t done any jobs yet and are broke as dirt, there is little to do but head into the guild proper. The guild serves as a hub-world of sorts that allows us to receive a new mission, talk to the single inhabitant, and purchase new monster girls for our collection. It won’t take up much of your time either. The meat of the game comes from your hunts across the five stages. Talking to the mission giver, you will find that this title is entirely linear. There are no side quests or anything of the sort. In exchange for that lack of scale, the missions we do take are each found in entirely new zones and have no repeating monsters between them. The want to see what’s next will likely keep you engaged right until you finish this hour-long adventure.
So off into the wild we go. It won’t take long before you encounter a group of enemies who are all too eager to massacre the player that didn’t read or understand any of the tips for playing it. The first thing to note is that what you see at the top of your screen is not precisely a life bar. It is your air supply that will naturally drain over time and from being winded by your enemy’s attacks. This effectively gives you a timer from the second you leave the guild. One could simply play it safe by avoiding as much conflict as possible while rushing toward your monster girl target. That is a viable tactic, but defeating other monsters along the way has its own monetary reward. You see, once an enemy is too weakened to move, the guild will actually pay you bonuses for taking the time to ejaculate inside her. Why? I have no idea, yet it can also randomly reward you with an extra air tank to increase the time you can take on a stage.
Going full Cosby on a monmusu girl is all well and good, though first, you have to incapacitate her. All of your opponents are faster and more agile than you. Not only that, but they can attack more rapidly as well. You don’t have much in the way of an advantage when it comes to sheer combat skills., not even when it comes to how far our attacks reach as not all foes are melee-based. Positioning our character and knowing when to take a shot is what will lead us to victory. We have no close-ranged attacks, but the two ranged weapons in our possession can cater to two different playstyles. First off, we have the Crossbow. It reloads much faster and has greater range at the expense of not having sheer stopping power. Next is the Cannon. The range of it is extremely low, and it can take a while to reload, yet landing a hit will stun an enemy far longer thanks to the overwhelming force of its projectile. Both have unlimited ammo and can not be swapped without reloading. Your choice will come down to how you prefer to hunt.
Our final form of attack comes with the land mines. These cause devastating damage should a monster girl step on one. It can be very handy when you are being chased down as to immediately turn the tides of the fight. They can also be used more meticulously via dancing around your foe in a way where they’ll accidentally step on it trying to reach you. Be wary, however, as we only have five. Whether you want to save them for your main target or use them on a whim is up to you. Neither choice is the correct way to play since, for all we know, our target could be the flying type meaning land mines are useless in that situation.
I find this type of gameplay really interesting. Winning fights with cunning instead of brute force lends itself well to the sensation of hunting a dangerous creature. That constantly draining air supply also forces one to play more aggressively than we would otherwise. I found it to be a real shame that as the difficultly started to ramp up, it was already over. Those five missions will go by in a breeze, and we are never given much of a chance to put what we’ve learned to use. From the start of the game, you are as powerful as you’re going to get. There is no leveling up or carrying additional objects. Our understanding of how the title functions is what allows us to tackle the more dangerous future missions. It’s a real bummer the playtime is only around an hour.
As much as I enjoyed the gameplay, it does have its issues. Chief among these are balancing. To be more specific, the risk and reward of having sex with an incapacitated monster girl. Our monetary reward is pitiful, and the rare extra air tank we get does not offset all the time we spent. It is simply a much better idea to rush straight for the boss/target with all the air possible and claim your large reward. None of the benefits outweigh the risk involved in getting freaky with nature. After we beat the title’s five stages, we unlock a free play mode. This lets us return to any of the previous five missions and allows us to play in them for as long as our air supply lasts. It also respawns the boss if you leave that room, making repeatedly defeating them and leaving a much better economic prospect than sexing up random monster girls. It is a highly flawed system that could be fixed by having them act as multipliers to your overall payout.
With that said, MonMusu Hunter does have a rather large bestiary of 15 foes in total. All of them have unique sex animations that are all serviceable. This is where the dungeon in your room comes into play. Any monster girl you have defeated can then be purchased and can be sexed at will. There is no way you’ll have enough to buy most of them from the five stages alone. It does encourage you to replay it and grind out money via this method. You may get a sort of Pokemon vibe with this and want to collect them all, not just for the lewd animations. Speaking of, all of the sex is of the vanilla variety. Outside of the non-human aspect of the intercourse, there is nothing outlandish here. There is missionary, doggy style, oral, and other standard stuff. It was certainly interesting watching our hero vigorously go at a giant spider, though.
Each of the five levels have a different background, but they are mostly set dressing that doesn’t affect the gameplay. That is for all except the final stage, which plays with the concept of having our range-based character fight in dark corridors. I was not expecting it to change that drastically in the final mission, which is where the ” yes to all of this. gimme more” rant of mine a few paragraphs back materialized from. It was one heck of a send-off. The story never truly went anywhere after the intro, however. For the most part, you just receive information on your next mission, and it wasn’t until the fifth that anything of note happens. This is not one you’d play for the story, but for the action and pixel animation sex with a wide variety of monster girls.
When it comes down to it, MonMusu Hunter while flawed, is pretty darn fun. Its main issue comes from that there simply isn’t enough of it and an unbalanced risk/reward system that promotes rushing through it. The times when it does give you an incentive to partake in its slow-paced, somewhat tactical combat is where it truly shines. If you are in it simply because you love yourself some monster girls, the nicely drawn spites and variety of them offers plenty to enjoy as well. It’s a shame this was never translated as there isn’t all that much text, but what is there is important, like the tip of matching your and your enemy’s shadow to know when you are in the proper position to shoot. Of course, this isn’t a negative and doesn’t affect my rating, but it is something of note to my primarily English-speaking audience. That being said, MonMusu Hunter was a surprisingly apt game, which I immediately plan to jump right into its sequel. It may not be one of the best H titles I’ve played, but the potential is vast, and I’m all too eager to see where it goes.
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