I was intending to do Mary Skelter next instead of this since I wanted to split the two dungeon crawlers up, but then the Pirate entry in the series got announced for the West and I figured I’d do Crystal instead and finish the Skelter series in October, maybe.

Crystal is basically Chronicle, but a completely different take. A decent chunk of the monster girls are the same, but the story and some added gameplay elements make them fairly different experiences.

Story-4

The new main character is Zenox, the lucky pervert. He came to the big city(I don’t think it has a name) looking for his dad, who went to the big city to earn money to send home but went missing. After deciding that for a country bumpkin like him the church was the best place to ask, he goes there and the lights go off. After grope meeting a girl, it turns out the Dark bra was stolen and without it being next to the Panties of Light, the world will end. Yep, a bra and panty set that if separated ends the world, and is under the protection of a single priest, a single guard and the shrine maiden. After a bit of talking, the Goddess who left the underwear possesses the shrine maiden and informs the group that the panties will show the way to the bra. Otton from the first game then wears the panties and they glow toward area 1. Also it turns out a girl who wears the dark bra(anywhere on her body I guess) gets cursed into hating humans or acting extreme. From there, the plot becomes similar to Chronicle. Beat up monster girls to recruit them, meet the area leader, purify them and move on. There’s a more obvious bigger purpose to the whole thing, though the main character also feels more pointless then Io did. Zenox is just there to make girls orgasm and trip and grope boobs for cgs. Cgs which are honestly pretty bad.

So a few tangents. First, the area names. The game has names for them but instead refers to them as Area 1, 2, 3 and so on. Places that monsters girls live and instead of giving them names, they live in numbered zones like a detention hall or a prison. Also, just like Chronicle no one knows each other. It’s really weird that none of the area leaders would ever meet, since business between them was fine until literally a day before you show up.

2nd bit, this world literally has a creation mythos around a pair of panties and a bra. Why is their culture not formed around underwear? I know I shouldn’t expect world building from a silly game like this, but there’s so much silly potential in a world that worships girl’s undergarments. What a monster girls wears is literally their power source, so it’s not like other pairs don’t do things. Lots of miss potential here.

So recruiting the monsters involves three steps. Beating them up, rubbing them to orgasm, then putting the Panties of Light on them. That middle step is the most important, since a decent number of the relationships the guy has with the girls are based on how he made them orgasm. Do not be fooled by the romantic cliches, pleasure is what drives the relationships here. It’s a lot more blatant about that then it was with Io. Another constant is the line “shirt off my back” which is used in every unlock clothes changing scene with the monster girls. I’m pretty sure that is similar to the phrase they are using. It’s just each girl uses it and it sticks out oddly. Honestly a lot of the girls speech stuff is lost in translation, there are just so many speech ticks and barely any of them are in the English script.

I realized almost at the end of the game that the whole idea of making a girl orgasm to release her mind from evil is literally an old treatment for hysteria in women. Have to wonder if that was on purpose or they just wanted the rub minigame…

A new thing that I loved was what the game calls “peep” scenes. Each girl has an event you can find in their personal dungeons(more on them later) where after a minigame you get a scene of them talking to themselves. A lot of these show character traits you never usually see, like them studying or fangirling or something. It’s a nice change from their interactions with the guy and shows a bit of depth. A few are funny, a lot of them are just adorable. Also, at the end of the postgame you can get confession scenes from every girl. After these scenes you can go talk to them in their rooms for a mock h scene. Basically the writer came up with a reason for Zenox to massage them or something and we get a black screen while the girl moans for a bit. So unlike Chronicle, each girl gets an ending and basically a voice only moaning scene. All replayable from the extras section.

Gameplay-5

So for the most part this is the same game as Chronicle with new dungeons and a couple new monster girls. At surface level or just glancing in, they are basically the same. A lot of the side stuff has been shifted around or altered for what I think makes the game more smooth, but far more grindy. To deal with the general sameness of the game, I decided to use a trick I learned of, which the fact it works is stupid.

So this game(and Chronicle) has an accessory that gives you a 10% chance of a preemptive strike, where all your members go first in their usual order. This accessory stacks with itself, and you have 10 accessory slots. This means that outside of bosses and fixed encounters, you always go first with the same order with your characters. That second part is important becasue of the new combo system that was introduced. I would argue it’s better then the aura comboing from the previous game(which was actually nerfed via weakening the passives that boosted from it. Aura comboing is still here, but you’ll rarely do it). Basically if you use two specific skills right after each other, they trigger a third skill. In a normal fight this can be annoying since that means the two with the skills need to be right after each other as any monster or even Zenox’s turn kills the combo. Zenox does get a skill that Io didn’t have, called Insert(cause of course) that places a girl right after him in the turn line likely for the combo mechanic. The reason the combo mechanic is so good is it’s a free third skill. So if you have all 5 of your characters go before the enemies you can get 7 skills off before they attack. A lot of the combo’s are really simple to. Like just repeat the same skill to get the skill a third time. Like the melee all hit Blow Away has that. Makes it a great move even to post game. These combo’s are all themed on Kamesutra poses for some reason. Around 60% of them have a super form that happens more often the lower the health of the people doing the combo, which I find kind of dumb. These are all tracked in the menu, along with their stupid images, and once you discover a combo the game will tell if you can trigger one once you are on the second character’s turn.

Recruiting random monsters for crafting is gone, in fact crafting as a mechanic is gone entirely. Instead you just use a new currency you get from fights to visit a shop to directly upgrade gear, kind of like how Mary Skelter does it with multiple of a special currency type that basically does nothing else. You can also unseal special bonuses from the girls you recruit to put on your gear. Things like damage reduction, xp bonuses, status effect immunity and so on. You pay with the special currency once to unlock these and then can mix and match them with any gear you have. It’s a lot more controlled then the mechanic in Chronicle.

The monster partners are gone, but pairing up your team with others is not. You can “equip” 2 other monster girls to each member of your active party. All girls you recruit have an attack and defense bonus they give when equipped, and the ones that are random chance based happen more often as their relationship with the ones they are equipped to go up. This relationship mechanic is actually the source of the one thing I decided not to complete as it’s just a huge time sink.

The game has 86 girls to recruit and each one has their own relationship tracker with each other girl. So 86 prime, or 86! combinations. These grow as you fight, just like panty xp for skills or the girls love for the male character. Unlike those two, there is no other mechanic that either helps the growth speed or acts as another option to grow it. Once you hit 3 stars out of 5 you get the option to pair girls in rooms, which really doesn’t do anything other then put them both on screen. At five you get double scratch, where both girls get put into the rub minigame. The game even tracks who has double scratched with who, though I don’t think that actually does anything. In fact, other then male protag love points, double scratch only does one other thing. Give you a unique head armor based on the individual girls in question. Thing is, double scratch is an unlock that I would usually do 100% as I consider it a matter of completion, but it would take an extra 100 hours of grinding to finish, easy. So instead I decided to just unlock it an an option for each girl with at least one other girl.

The next biggest addition is three dungeons floors for each of the recruitable girls. In a mechanic called doki doki shooter, you play a simple schmup trying to destroy the girls clothes. Underneath specific parts you will find crystals that when tapped bring you into one of three dungeons for that girl. The goal of each of these is to find the other exit, and find the building material to upgrade the girls rooms if you care to.(Rooms up passive xp gain)

Each dungeon is represented by a different crystal, which when complete do different things. The green one(which always contains the peep scenes mentioned in story) unlocks the final relationship heart needed to get confession ends. The blue one unlocks a unique skill for that girl they always have access to. The red one lets you set panty and bra separately. Bra is skill set a girl has, panty decides stat set.

Which is a good time to draw attention to the final big change from Chronicle, no random stat gains. Girls stats are decided by who they are and what they are wearing only. While that sound like a better system, and it should have been, the difference in the good characters and bad characters stat wise is way to big. Like 200-300 attack at end game levels when you will be close to 600-700 on the strong girls. While you can beat the game using whoever you want, doing so on any difficulty other then easy will be a headache. The other odd thing is that the girls with the good stats are mostly found in the first three or four areas. Nearly all the endgame girls are just not good.

One weird change is the fortune teller. In Chronicle she told you where the next event for the monster girls was, as they would place relationship events in dungeons. Which was stupid, and they got rid of that for this game. Now the fortune teller tells you where and how to find the next underwear set in a girls list. She basically gives you the dungeon to look in and one of three clues on how to find it, which are kind of pointless. Chest, gather spot, monster drop. In that order, so her clues are kind of silly. She doesn’t even give you floor numbers or monster types to hunt for, so she kind of feels pointless. There’s two girls where she might be helpful as they join at an awkward time between dungeons and that’s about it.

Lewd-5

I want to start with the cgs for once in a Genkai Tokki game, as unlike Chronicle and Monpiece they actually kind of managed some actual decent lewd in them. Not the first one though, the first actual cg of the game looks bad. It’s a standard he groped her via nonsense, but she’s wearing something that is supposed to be armor and it doesn’t even look like his hand is touching her. It honestly looks like he’s waving to her boob.

Then the second cg happens. A busty girl bathing with another girl groping her and I was just shocked. Which sounds ridiculous, but to this point this series actually hasn’t done lewd very well. It was some horny designs here and there, but when it comes to full out sex appeal it doesn’t do much with those designs. Either the girls featured are too young looking, lacking in any real curves, or it’s a big group shot which tend to be lacking in actual lewd power. So I was surprised to see a single lewd cg for once.

As for the rest, I found it lacking in a way compared to Chronicle. The dungeons are less lewd themed(1st is a toy island, second is a casino), and the enemies are either just straight copies or less sex themed when they are new. The ability to mix and match panty and bras adds some appeal, but most of the new girls just kind of blend with the ones brought over from Chronicle, which make up the bulk of the girls any way. It still lacks any real busty girls which weakens it over all for me. Having only two real body shapes(medium and loli) for a majority of the girls just makes them feel too bland. I do like the designs in a more cool or silly focus, but not really in a lewd one. Also, having the top and bottom be mixed and matched means there is no things like a slingshot bikini, all sets need to be two distinct pieces which feels like it could limit the outfit options, but then you get Pegasus statue panties and twisty fans tied to nipples I guess and it’s obvious they had some fun with this.

When a boob focused guy finds the girls butts more appealing then their busts, you screwed up. That is kind of how I feel about the designs. The game still has the pose thing from Chronicle, where only story girls get more then a single pose and since most girls aren’t posing sexually to start with changing their clothes feels more silly then sexy.

Double scratch can kind of help, by letting you pair girls up on screen for the rubbing minigame. This would let you set up some decent screenshots of the girls without a lot of the empty space most of them have. The girls can also roommate for screenshots, which I guess is the only point to that mechanic.

I did see the nude flash thing more in this then Chronicle. Every girl had it happens on recruit and I think you can replay those in the training room in town. Honestly I think some people might find those lewd, but since most of the underwear cover less I feel the no clothes thing isn’t as appealing as it could be.

Something I found in postgame that I want to mention is the mon-nip key item. It makes every tap in free scratch add to the nudity flash thing that makes stars cover the girls privates instead of their clothes. Basically you can trigger them at will with this item and once you clear post game you get double free scratch so you can get two nudity flashes on screen whenever you want. I like the idea of the item, even if personally nudity flash isn’t as appealing as some of the underwear the girls wear.

Also, doki doki shooting. It’s basically that shoot clothes off girl thing you see on a bunch of cheap Steam games, but it has a purpose for other things. The girls always wear their default outfits for this mode and it could be lewd fun for a bit. Sadly once you get all the crystals out the mode just goes all the way up and ends without anything special. It would have been cool if you could trigger nude flash by fighting a boss that only showed up after doing the girl’s deep dungeons.

Verdict

If you like Chronicle you’ll like this. That’s the easy way recommend style. It really is just more of Chronicle with changes to add more grinding and things to do other then go through the main dungeons. The changes to the gallery are really nice, having full scene replay and the girl viewer being at the same zoom as the rubbing minigame are way better then Chronicle’s basic stuff and the stupid over zoomed girls in its viewer.

Post game was kind of bland. While better written then Chronicle’s weird idea for it, Crystal’s end game had little to look forward to as you just get recolors of all the story girls from the first game but without their special poses in the minigames. The best thing about the postgame was unlocking the confession ending stuff, which I wished I liked more. To many used jealousy or silly misunderstanding for their romance.

So which of the two would I suggest to someone looking to play only one for whatever reason? I think Crystal is better for people who like collecting things and checklist style games. Crystal having actual girl endings with everyone is also a big plus over Chronicle as well. For actual combat and dungeon crawling I kind of like Chronicle more. That might just be fatigue setting in since they are way to similar, but I found Chronicle more enjoyable as a game since I needed the aura combo’s to help fight or had to use stat buff moves to do enough damage. Thanks to the combo system, I never needed more then spamming group hits and some finishing moves to win every fight in Crystal. So for gameplay and the main story(Io is just way better then Zenox) Chronicle is better. Crystal is better for everything else.

Switch save for Moero Crystal H

All cgs, all girls, all lingerie, full bestiary, all endings/scenes unlocked. Left two girls rooms un-upgraded so that you can see the different rooms. Double scratch is possible for every girl, I did not do companion grind for double scratch with everyone. Not worth it. I do not have the hundred+ extra hours to do that. Nor did I bother with second half of the 48 combo menu. I did the 48 main moves, the second half is the “secret” versions which are the same combos with the word secret in front and the kamesutra image has it’s colors inverted. Not worth it either.

Gameplay: 5/10 Eroticness: 5/10 Story: 4/10

Completion:

Get every girl’s underwear, see all of their inn/confessions/peep scenes, and fill the library(bestiary and 48 combo). The real issue is the amount of reading if you put off the girls scenes until the end so that you can see the confessions at the same time as the rest of their stuff. Other then that, it’s grindy but I found it mostly easier then Chronicle. Definitely never had money issues for gifts or room upgrades.