MonMusu Hunter J is the third and final entry into this adult-oriented series. It takes place a full year after the events that occurred in Hunter 2 and sees our nameless hero bored out of his wits with nothing left to hunt. That is until a far eastern land contacts him for his services in order to take down an evil Youkai threatening the entire region. Wasting no time, we talk to our employer and find out we need to remove the threat of this youkai’s underlings before it being possible to reach her. One thing you’ll quickly notice is that there is no longer a hub world. The entirety of it is now shown on a single static screen, for better or worse.
It is no surprise that this finale has not been translated into English, considering none of the others were. If us Westerners aren’t able to read Japanese, we will need a third-party app to translate it on the fly. I use the Textractor, but the change to having portraits instead of simple text in the guild makes it a bit more challenging to navigate around menus. This is not a negative. It is just something worth noting for my audience. The most vital thing to know concerning these menus is how to upgrade your weapon and ammo you can carry. Unlike its other two predecessors, this title does require some amount of grinding unless you want to end up having to fight with a knife for most of a level.
Interestingly enough, this is no longer an Isometric action game. It now takes place on a 2D plane and plays more like a beat em up. Gone are the days when you had multiple weapons to choose from, had land mines to outwit your foes, and character positioning was vital. Our character is now faster than the enemies we face, and the 2D view makes it far easier to line up shots. Nothing accounts for this significant advantage we now have in combat. It is by far the easiest game in the series. I believe the incredibly small amount of ammo we can carry before upgrading was meant to offset this. The problem here is that we are faster than our foes and can simply rush past all of them to blast our main target.
Our air supply is still intertwined with our life bar. It will constantly tick down the longer we take in a level. Some air canisters are scattered around the stages, yet with how short levels are and the ability to easily avoid encounters, it draining is a none threat now. The level design is once again completely linear, which is a shame as they had something going with that labyrinthine design of Hunter 2. Another omission are the ammo pickups. You will not receive more bullets in a level. This decision directly underplays the act of combat outside of your main target. With these lack of resources, a player has three choices. Either grind to be able to carry more ammo, use your knife until the boss fight, or simply walk past everything until reaching your objective.
The machine-gun is now our only weapon. It is pretty powerful despite the lack of ammo. They could have played off of this weakness and made it more interesting by adding a couple of spare bullets through a level. That would have made pushing deeper into enemy territory feasible by giving us an excuse to actually fight enemies, knowing full well we are wasting resources. In its defense, it does try to provide you with some monetary incentive to slay them. If you manage to incapacitate a foe, you’ll then have the option to have sex with her. Given that you hold out long enough to be able to climax within her, the guild will pay you a hefty amount of gold. Our main target doesn’t earn us all that much cash, so going around impregnating the entire animal kingdom is well worth your time for the sake of upgrading ammo capacity and firepower.
It is possible to back out of a level at any time. This has been a feature in every MH game, yet one will be more tempted to abuse it here, given we have no recourse of getting more ammo. Completing a stage in one-go is counterproductive. The most effective route is to grind money until satisfied, then return to the guild in order to purchase upgrades and save your progress. It is entirely possible to complete the game without any upgrades, yet you will run out of ammo during boss fights due to the lack of bullets and power. Given how easy MomMusu Hunter J is, I actually found doing so pretty enjoyable. I’d just rush to the boss and unload everything I have at her. Afterward, it comes down to being able to take down your wounded foe with the knife.
What has no doubt had considerable improvement are the backgrounds and the sprite-work. It no longer looks like a basic RPGMaker game when it comes to the environments. Sprites have also been enlarged to make use of this new 2D plane and look much more detailed. If all you care about in this series are the lewd aspects with various monster girls, this entry is the best yet. This does have a slight cost, however. Including the bosses, there are 11 girls in total. The original had 15, and MonMusu Hunter 2 had 16 monsters. None of them had any girls repeated from what I recall, making them all worth a look for monster girl fans. MH J is no exception. It has quite an interesting line-up, including things such as turtles, ghosts, and cyclops women. During sex, we still have the ability to zoom in further, increase the tempo, or climax at will with the Shift key.
Having sex with a monster girl will add her to your collection. There is no longer a dungeon. It is now just a black background within a menu. It is functional but is another area where the flair of the series is now gone in exchange for simplicity. Incapacitating them has also been reworked a bit. MonMusus will immediately start walking to the right of the screen, trying to escape once no longer able to fight. You need to be careful not to wound two of them at the same time, as your sex animations are very long, and one will likely escape. I thought this change was pretty cool. If not careful of your shots or how close to an exit you are, then there goes your bonus payout.
In total, MonMusu J has 4 stages that should last you around thirty minutes. After defeating your final foe, we will unlock a free play mode, which gives us unrestricted access to the first three levels. It is handy if you missed any monmusu girls or would like to max out your stats. I had some fun with it, believe it or not, even after all the flaws I’ve pointed out. There is nothing that truly makes it terrible. The combat is just ultimately too basic compared to the rest of the series and incredibly unbalanced. It was a brave decision to change the formula so much, and it could have worked out really well by getting rid of the remaining RPG aspects. One of the most critical parts of a beat em up is its balance, and they leaned far too much into having players power through everything instead of properly designing a level. MonMusu J is quite the odd finale. It is by no means flat-out bad; it is just too bland to wholeheartedly recommend to those not also enticed by the lewd monster girl content it offers.
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