Wasn’t ever sure if I wanted to do this game, but looking through my library for dating sims this is one of the best examples of the genre in the west. It’s still a jokey gimmicky setting, but it has all the mechanics and does something unique for the genre beyond a silly setting. It might be the best performing dating sim series in the west?

It got me to laugh a decent amount, I definitely don’t regret playing it.

It is the multiplayer dating sim. Pretty sure there isn’t any other unless you count speed-running.

Story-5

You play as one of four horny characters who realizes prom is right around the corner, and wants a date. No, needs a date. You have narrowed your candidates to 6(8 with dlc) other monsters in your school.

Miranda, the mermaid princess from a tyrannically ruled under sea kingdom who has her serfs eat for her.

Vera, a medusa who loves money and crime that gets her money.

Polly, a ghost who does copious drugs and sex because it can’t hurt her no more anyway.

Damien, a demon prince of hell who loves violence and fire. Usually combined.

Liam, a 400+ year old vampire who likes things that aren’t trending. He’s a hipster I guess.

Scott, the lovable good boy werewolf who likes sports.

Dlc adds Calculetster, a sentient computer good boy, and Zoe, a girl who loves fanfiction who was once an eldritch god.

Pursue one of them and get a date to prom. The game also has 45~ secret endings, basically more story focused event chains that also have endings attached that add more love interests, friends, and ridiculous situations to the mix. Like the apocalypse. It’s a lot of dark comedy and over the top nonsense mixed with some coming of age and other random topics. Often I found it hilarious, sometimes I did not.

In total I have three issues with the game and one has to do with the writing, though I definitely enjoyed it overall. It can be preachy though. Sometimes this fits and the comedy carries it well enough. Other times it’s pretty heavy handed and going from an ending about the apocalypse because you wanted to fuck your friends to protag is an a-hole for trying to force something sexual with an aro-ace guy is just tonal whiplash even if they kind of deserved it for being way more aggressive in that ending then they usually are. This is entirely based on what endings you get but is definitely weird to me. It’s basically a party game, this kind of randomized life lesson stuff is kind of not going to vibe with the drinking/party mood the rest of the game has going for it. I’m guessing the intended audience doesn’t mind though, Monster Prom is pretty well received over all. Not that is has any competition in what it does.

Gameplay-4

It’s a dating sim, but condensed to be be the bare minimum. You have 5 social stats and money. You pick a place in the school to raise a stat and get an event. Each event has you choose 1 of 2 choices, which will check your stats. If you have enough stat you win and get more stats and usually affection points. Though sometimes you want to pick the choice you will fail, as you want heart points with the other love interest as many events have you choosing between two of them. Have enough heart points and the right stats by the end of the run to win your prom date. Repeat.

You can either play in short form, with 6 event times + 3 lunches, or long form with 12 events + 6 lunches. Lunches being much more limited in the events you can get and usually are not stat checks, just stat or heart choices. Or the shop. You can also play with other people, that being the real gimmick of the Monster Prom series, it being a multiplayer dating sim. You can compete for the same love interests or get endings that block other players, like the apocalypse. There’s 47 total special endings with the dlc and these see special scenarios happening during the event times where if you win each stat check, usually by picking the choice who’s stat it’s related to is higher for your current stats, you get a different epilogue and a special image. It also lets you date around 10 other characters then the 8 main love interests. A few of these are completely random if they happen, though most are based on getting items from the shop.

So RNG is the name of the game. As you see events and get special and normal prom win endings you unlock items in the shop to trigger more endings. The game tracks every unique event you see and which of the 8 total outcomes for each you can get(big fail, fail, win, big win). It shows these stats at the end of each run. In multiplayer it adds all the events each player sees, making this far easier to 100% with a group. Which I didn’t have.

In general, it’s a multiple choice game where you want to get enough hearts to get a happy prom date. Repeat until you are satisfied.

Back to issues, the second one continuing from the writing section is, the rng probably works fine in multiplayer and you are playing the game to goof off with friends. For single player and especially someone trying to unlock everything it can be a pain, though dating sims always have some level of that. No, the actual issue is the GIFT item. It’s 12 items in 1, you can get it once a run, and 4 of those items are either run ending or force a different ending on you that you might have finished already. You also have to roll all 12 to get the 13th to be possible to roll to get all the endings. It’s not a fun thing to mess with and I’m glad nothing like it seems to be in the sequels.

Third, the game isn’t well documented when it comes to unlocks. Or more like, some unlocks are just way to random. I had to grind for the final ending to the original game as I hit the guessed condition a while back and it just didn’t unlock. No idea what I did to get it accessible other then maybe have bought each item from the shop and finished a run with all of them? No idea, things just seemed to unlock at random. Pretty sure the wiki is just straight up wrong for the Lore Coupon unlock, that seems based on Coven events triggered in total, no just getting the Angel Blood ending.

Lewdness- 3

So the reason I qualify this as an ecchi game at all is because a series tradition of each main love interest getting 1 fanservice focused cg per game. The guys get topless shots of their pecs with maybe some tighty whitey bulge, while the girls are usually naked save for whatever prop is covering them up.

In this game, you have Miranda covering her boobs with a skull, Vera from behind with only a sheet covering the last 20% of her cheeks(2 different endings of this, one with cultists and the other with some blood on her), Polly is covered by laying down(she’s the top image), and Zoe kind of covers herself with her tentacles. There’s also the ORGY ending with all six of the original game love interests in a bath together.

Final Thoughts

So the scores are really low, and that’s mostly because the nature of the game. Dating sims basically work or not, I don’t find them fun gameplay wise. At least I haven’t’ really found one where the spreadsheet stats are compelling. The lewd is low and I knew that going in, it’s the fact the series has a tradition of one per game per main love interest that caught my interest.

As for story getting a low score, the game is basically a bunch of random short stories and one off skits. There is no main plot theme to explore and thus, nothing to make the story shine. It’s funny but without a central story I have a hard time giving it a high score. It has themes and messages but they are disorganized and usually told directly rather then implied or taught through the scenario presented. Basically it’s a comedy fast food type of experience and like most pretentious critics, fast food doesn’t score well with me. If I scored just on comedy it would be like a 7 or 8 for me. But I score on theme or how well the storyline grips me, not if a random joke makes me laugh.

Save for Monster Prom: Second Term

100% save to both with and without the dlc. All images unlocked, which means all items in the shop unlocked.

Gameplay: 4/10 Eroticness: 3/10 Story: 5/10

Completion:

Lots of runs. It’s hard to describe the process without rambling, but in general each love interest needs 5 runs, 4 successes with each player avatar(with 1 of those not being a special ending) and 1 failed run. There are 47 total special endings that also need unlocking though a decent amount of those overlap the love interest runs. So the minimum is like 55-60 runs?