In 2010 an encyclopedia was released that would take the world by storm and quickly became one of the most popular tropes in anime for the next couple of years. That encyclopedia is the Monster Girl Encyclopedia. We’ve seen manga, anime, and most importantly, games, come out that are filled to the brim with monster girls! Depending on how deep you are into monster girls, you’ve probably heard of the Genkai Tokki series. For everyone else, Genkai Tokki is known for four things: dungeon crawling, monster girls, fanservice (remember this it is important), and ecchi. Surprisingly, most of the earlier games in this series have found their way to western shores.
The most recent title of the series to land ashore is a Switch port titled Moero Crystal H. Originally being released on PlayStation Vita in 2016, Moero Crystal was a direct sequel to the previous game in the series, Moero Chronicle, and was only released in Japan and Asia region. This Switch port is an enhanced version of the original Moero Crystal, featuring more than 80 monster girls, all previous DLC, and a remastered HD presentation. Does anything listed interest you? Well there is a whole lot to unpack with Moero Crystal H.
The story begins with our hero, Zenox, entering a new town on the lookout for his father. Zenox stumbles into this shrine that is said to house the “Bra of Darkness” and “Panties of Hope.” Being mistaken for a thief, Zenox is confronted by the shrine maiden, Luanna, who attempts to stop Zenox. After a big misunderstanding the real thief appears. It had stolen both the Bra of Darkness and the Panties of Hope. Luckily Zenox reclaims the Panties of Hope but the thief ends up getting away with the Bra of Darkness. Otton, a panty hunter mascot character, just happens to be there at the time that the bra was stolen and heard what the thief sounded like so he is recruited by Luanna and Zenox to track them down.
Apart from the story, Moreo Crystal H is a pretty typical and average first-person dungeon crawler like Dungeon Travelers 2, and Mary Skelter. The player uses the town as a central hub and then picks which dungeons to explore. Once in the dungeon the player explores, battles random or placed enemies. While exploring you’ll discover different monster girls that are under the power of the Bra of Darkness who Zenox and crew must defeat. You have two options: just beat them outright or try to break the spell by…stripping them.
During these battles different pieces of clothing can be attacked. Do enough damage, and these pieces will be destroyed and then you’ll enter the “Loving Scratch” mode and be able to tap, rub, pinch your way to breaking the Bra of Darkness’s curse. New to Moreo Crystal H is that you can upgrade loving scratch to an even more powerful “double scratch,” where you can now tap, rub and pinch two monster girls at one time! People who go in blindly might be shocked and even turned off because of this or the other heavy fanservice that’s in the game. I didn’t mind it much because I wanted to see the different monster girl designs. I found them to be unique and kept wanting to see what the next one was going to look like. 
All the fanservice aside, Moreo Crystal H unfortunately falls into the trap that most of these types of games fall into and that is poor balancing. There are some party members that you get in the very first dungeon that are so broken that you never have to take them out of your party and therefore you steamroll the rest of the game. Then on the flip side, if you don’t use those party members you’ll find that normal enemies are just damage sponges. The game does feature three difficulty settings so you can make it easier or harder depending on how you would like to play the game. Normally I play these games on hard; however, for the review I ended up playing Moreo Crystal H on normal so I could experience the game at its default settings. Apart from Moreo Crystal H’s shortcomings with its gameplay, the overall presentation, while nothing groundbreaking, is really solid. NPCs, monsters, and party members are all very high quality and unique. The voice cast features such talents as Reina Ueda and Rika Suzuki, whom bring life to each character.
While Moreo Crystal H is by no means a bad game with its heavy use of ecchi and fanservice, it might turn away a few players who are not into that. Though for the player who stays, they will find a pretty average first-person dungeon crawler RPG that has good presentation but ends up falling into the same problems that most other games in this genre fall into. For more info about the game please visit the official website!
