Yet another of Idea Factory's PlayStation Vita releases making its way to PC recently, Moero Chronicle couples the recent popularity of monster girls with an onslaught of fan service to produce a fairly niche, but powerful title. The main catch of the original was the use of the PlayStation Vita's touch screen to shamelessly rub innocent monster girls up and down, an important feature which remains with this PC release. With even the monsters, clad in panties and little else, unable to escape from the grimey grasp of fan service, Moero Chronicle is only for those who prioritise cute girls over all else.

Additionally, somehow the gods of ecchi and all things ero have shone their light upon this title, and it has managed to avoid the censorship police entirely, although there was never any full blown nudity even in the original Japanese release. Still, it's rare to see such an openly ecchi title make it to the west untouched, and as much as the game is about cute monster girls, the focus is mainly on just how little clothing you can put them in. So as we said before, you've really gotta be in it for the girls to appreciate this title.

As a dungeon crawler, Moero Chronicle isn't overly focused on a storyline and wastes no time getting into the action from the start. After a short introduction, you're thrown into the Mushroom Forest where you quickly pick up how to navigate the maze of shrooms, how to battle, and perhaps most importantly, how to entice monster girls to join your party. While the main story is fairly light hearted though, there is an overwhelming number of opportunities to chat with your new furry, slimy, and scaly companions, so that you can get to know them a little better before putting them in the chain bikini. Actually, you can do that pretty much right off the bat, but there are other benefits to gain from bringing the girls gifts, engaging in their events, and even upgrading their rooms at the Inn. They're like the sexy monster girl version of a Tamagotchi.

While the visual novel elements make up about half of the game, the other half is taken up by fighting and exploring the monster side of the world. The fighting itself is nothing mind-blowing, though battling the higher level monster girls poses somewhat of a challenge, as does the rubbing mini-game to make them yours. The exploration as well is pretty standard as dungeon crawlers go, and while not quite as complex as similar games like Etrian Odyssey, provides enough mystery to keep you moving forward. Overall, we'd say the main thing to expect from Moero Chronicle is amusing conversations with cute monster girls, who are perhaps not wearing very much.

You are a perverted teenager. Sorry, we mean you play as a perverted teenager, named Io, who has recently realised that all the cute, sexy monster girls surrounding him are indeed, cute, sexy monster girls. A revelation we're sure. Although the world is separated into the "Human" side and Monstopia, where the monsters live, everything was fairly harmonious until recently. After the appearance of a legendary monster girl in the heart of Monstopia however, all the other monster girls started acting a little, odd. All of them, except for the girls in Io's town. Now it's said town's turn to send a hero to try and defeat the legendary monster girl, and as Io's never done anything useful before, he's been selected as their sacrifi- hero, to venture into the mushroomy depths of monster girl territory, and hopefully return victorious.

Alongside our cookie-cutter, pervert otaku protagonist is his very pretty childhood friend Lilia, who appears to be some kind of wolf girl, their kitty cat friend Leche, and an ever expanding host of other monster girl treats, including slimes, bees, imps, dragons, and a whole lot more. You also acquire the world's most perverted otter, Otton, along the way, who's masculine voice does not match his comical appearance or personality in the slightest. Alongside the main story, the girls also get their own events and stories as you increase your intimacy with them and progress through the game, adding another more moe dimension to the plot.

Let's start off with what we're really here for: the girls, which is evidently where most of the game's budget went. With up to 50 collectable girls, all voiced, with their own trope-y personalities, extra costumes, and individual events, Moero Chronicle is debatably a better galge than it is a dungeon crawler or RPG. We had no trouble burning time at the inn, where our new monster pals had settled in nicely. Depending on how much you like auto-ing through dialogue you may or may not be a fan of the inn to be fair. But we at least believe there's joy to be found in listening to the happy squeaks Lilia makes after we gave her a bag of sand and someone else's panties. If only that worked in real life. While the bag of sand increased our intimacy with her, the panties unlocked a new outfit which happened to be the smallest swimsuit in the world. We could also upgrade her room to boost our intimacy further or spend some "rub points" we earned down in the dungeon to pinch and poke her to climax. There's also a strange synthesis mechanic involving merging panties with defeated enemies to make eggs containing items, but frankly the details of how on earth that works are at best, alarming.

When you're spending time with the girls down in the dungeon things are a lot less cosy, but we still found a large number of events where we could chat with our furry friends despite the dangerous surroundings. Lilia seems to get the most events as she's the main girl, but a good number of the other monsters take part in the main quest at some point. Of course, you'll also encounter a couple of new girls on each floor who you'll need to rub into submission. When fighting a wild monster girl your first job is to destroy all their clothing, after which the"Bumping Scratch" mini game begins, which, just like back at the inn, requires you to caress all of the girl's most sensitive spots in order to free her from being brainwashed. This is a bit tricky to do with a controller, to be honest, but we just about managed.

That about explains your interactions with the girls, but what about the actual fighting and the dungeon crawling? In the battles themselves, our heroic protagonist actually doesn't do any fighting at all, taking a backseat while his harem fights tooth and claw. Io has a few options to choose from each turn, including using items or running away, but his special talent is charging up his Desire. Desire can be charged up to a max of 100% and is used to power up your girls' attacks. Honestly, we mostly found ourselves having Io use healing items, or even just idling in random encounters, partly because his "charge up" sound is... questionable. As for your girls, they each seem to have their only specialty, although no class system exists in the game.

For example, our slime seems to be a kind of knight because she has high defense, and our dog girl is a mage with fire and healing spells. They also get traits like "Animal Ears" and "Loli", which grant bonuses like increasing the attack of every other girl with animal ears in the party. Overall, with so many different girls and a variety of different traits and classes available, you can arrange your ideal party quite easily. Girls who are left back at the inn also gain experience while they're there, which is a feature we really liked and certainly saves on the hassle of leveling everyone up together.

The dungeon has some basic features that add a bit of flavour to making your way through the floors. There are numerous chests you'll find scattered about, often holding either new equipment or fresh panties to unlock new outfits for the girls. There are also doors with switches, damaging floor tiles, and "strong enemy" encounters you'll meet on the way down. Though not riveting by any means, the dungeon exploring was entertaining enough to keep us going between events, though as you're able to Auto through most of the random encounters without difficulty, the lack of challenge can make it fairly repetitive.

That's about it as far as content and gameplay goes, and all in all Moero Chronicle is, like many dungeon crawlers, a fairly simple game fundamentally. Though in this case most of the joy comes from the cute girls rather than the challenge.

Concerning the sound design, the music is quite frankly forgettable at best, but we could really appreciate the voice acting. The VAs did a good job making each girl feel unique, whether it was their manner of speaking or their unusual accent. One of our favourites was the tomboy Troll. This, of course, goes for the ecchi scenes as well, which we could really "appreciate". On a slightly related note, one thing we did find amusing was the number of typos throughout the English translation, which was surprising given that this is effectively a re-release. You'd think they'd have checked the script just one more time just in case.

The last thing we'll mention before finishing up in the game's art which we really liked, but isn't without fault. Most of the girls are drawn such that they represent their monster pretty accurately, though we're a little sad that the slime girl isn't actually a slime girl, and the effort put into their extra outfits is very much the icing on the cake. Something that struck us as off was that the girls only have one artwork each, meaning that even when having a casual conversation with our troll companion, she remains bent over with her butt in our face. While not necessarily a bad thing by any means, it would've been nice to see some more variety for each girl.

Moero Chronicle is a game that's trying to cater to a very specific audience, and we think it does so quite successfully. But if you're not in that ecchi-loving, moe-monster-girl-crazed fan club, then it might not be quite to your tastes. While we didn't find the dungeon crawling itself wildly exciting, the sheer volume of monster girls in Moero Chronicle did leave us somewhat in awe. The time we spent chatting with them and poking them was good fun, and although lacking in variety, the pretty art work satisfied our moe quota for at least a week. With a reasonable amount of content, we think that Moero Chronicle justifies its price tag, just be aware of what you're walking into beforehand!

Though it still feels like a portable title in many ways, we did enjoy this PC release of Moero Chronicle, and hopefully, this paves the way for its sequel Moero Crystal to make an appearance in our game library soon. Along with the recent release of Superdimension Neptune Vs Sega Hard Girls, Moero Chronicle is another title in Compile Heart's recent flood of PlayStation to PC ports, a theme that we, in general, hope will continue with even their latest releases. On that note, we think it should be said as well that if you are a fan of Compile Heart's other titles, that Moero Chronicle might be worth at least taking a look at.

Had the chance to try out Moero Chronicle yet yourself? Looking forward to picking it up soon? Let us know what you think about this latest PC port in the comments below!