Monster Girl Quest! Paradox RPG

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Monster Girl Quest Paradox is the sequel to Monster Girl Quest, though it's not a direct sequel. It uses the RPG Maker VX Ace engine instead of a Visual Novel engine, and is set in an Alternate Universe to the original game.

Basically, thirty years before the main plot would have happened, Ilias vanishes. Needless to say, the entire world (monster and human alike) doesn't know how to take this, but since then, monsters and humans have mostly decided to get along. While people still worship Ilias, it bothers them more than a little she's basically gone.

Luka (the hero of the original game) has a dream of Ilias, the night before his baptism (much like the original game). She is apparently using all of her power to send him a message that things have gone horribly pear-shaped in the world, and hints it's the reason for her apparent disappearance. Luka wakes up wondering what it means.

Of course, like the original game, he nearly misses the baptism again, instead choosing to save a villager being attacked by a slime. But he now finds both Alice and Ilias (in childlike forms) fighting each other (and believing each is responsible for their respective Baleful Polymorph into childlike bodies). Finally, he receives one last message from Ilias during his baptism (which has no effect, so he's still unbaptized like the last game) that he's the world's only hope.

Unlike the last game, this is an actual roleplaying game instead of a visual novel with roleplaying elements. The game even has elements of Dragon Quest, Pokemon, and Suikoden incorporated into the gameplay mechanics, though it retains several Visual Novel like elements.

The game consists of three parts, or chapters. Part 1 was released on 14 March 2015, while Part 2 was released on 23 June 2017.

An English translation of the demo can be found here.

Tropes used in Monster Girl Quest! Paradox RPG include:

• 100% Completion: Extremely difficult, to say the least. There's innumerable sidequests, and roughly 150 companions (in Part 1 alone) to recruit and train.
• Abandoned Mine: Several examples. Usually, you find mineral sources here, which unlock a line of equipment.
• Abandoned Laboratory: The Ancient Temple Ruins.
• Action Girl: The vast majority of enemies and allies are female.
• Alice Allusion: Even more than the previous game, to the point that there is an actual character called the White Rabbit, who leads Alice around.
• Alternate Universe: The entire game obviously takes places in an alternate universe to the original game. However, many other alternates come into play over the course of the game.
• Always Accurate Attack: Some attacks are 'certain-hit', and cannot miss or be reflected.
• Always Check Behind the Chair: Practically any object in the game can have an item hidden: cupboards, pots, barrels...
• Amazon Brigade: The vast majority of companions are female, and you can easily make the entire active party female (though Luka has to be in the party somewhere). Additionally, all but one enemy is female.
• Animated Armor: The Armoured Berserker gives this impression.
• Anti Frustration Feature:
  • The game has many sidequests, but these are helpfully listed on a notice board in the Pocket Monster Lord's Castle, so you can keep track of them.
  • The Evaluations return from the original game, giving you advice on how to handle enemies after you lose to them.
  • You can change difficulty at any time by talking to Reaper. Since you're automatically taken to her whenever you die, this lets you immediately lower the difficulty if it proves too much for you.
  • When shopping for equipment, there's a menu that shows you how equipping a particular piece of equipment would affect the stats of your party members, helping you make decisions on what to buy.
  • The potential number of recruitable characters in the game is enormous (over 150 in Part 1 alone). To avoid a case of Can't Catch Up, characters in the reserve party receive Leaked Experience, so any that fall behind can be leveled up quickly and safely.
  • Prior to most bosses, there's a magic circle or other means of restoring the party's HP and MP to full.
• Apocalypse How: A potential Multiversal example. At least one Universal example succeeds, the destruction of the world with the Administrator's Tower.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: 4 in the active party and 4 in the reserve party. Supposedly, this is because it's impractical to travel with a larger number. In Part 2, the reserve party limit is raised to 6 and later to 8.
  • It's even more arbitrary when one considers that some party members are multiple people, e.g. Nefertiti Lamias (four sisters). They even appear as multiple characters outside of the battle screen.
• Armor Is Useless: Played straight in the higher levels of the Labyrinth of Chaos. Due to the enemies' stats increasing indefinitely, they'll eventually be able to kill you no matter what armor your characters wear. Having maxed out Evasion and/or Magic Evasion, elemental resistances/immunities/absorption, or just killing the enemies before they kill you becomes vital.
• Armor of Invincibility: Strangely enough, one of the best armors in the first chapter is the Archangel Bra, which is as skimpy as it sounds.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Seemingly what the Ascension effect inflicts on its target, though apparently they can be brought back.
• The Assimilator: The Apoptosis phenomenon as a whole. It converts normal humans into more of its kind to destroy any inter-dimensional contamination.
• Asskicking Equals Authority: How monster society functions. It's one of the reasons why Alice is unable to hold on to her throne once she's shrunk.
• A Taste of Power: If you're defeated by the Armored Berserker - and you almost certainly will be - then Nero will step in, and you control him for the rest of the fight. He's incredibly powerful, with a number of skills that you can't otherwise access legitimately.
• Attack Reflector: The Reflect buff, and party members may also have an innate chance of reflecting magical attacks. However, some attacks can't be reflected at all.
• Attack Of The 50 Foot Whatever: Some monsters like the Sandworm are absolutely enormous. This doesn't stop them from being recruitable.
• Auto Revive: Some abilities, like Holy Martyr, give this effect. They generally only work once per battle.
• Ax Crazy: Morrigan. It's especially noticeable in comparison to her more level-headed siblings.
• An Axe To Grind: A weapon type. It has low accuracy, but it ignores the target's defense completely.
• Back from the Dead: Black Alice, seemingly.
• Background Magic Field: One of these was created by the Great Disaster, allowing all humans to use magic.
• The Bad Guy Wins: In the universe that the young Promestein came from, the angels won the Great Monster Wars.
• Badass Adorable: Any of the companions who are or have the bodies of children, like the Four Bandits, Mini, Alice and Ilias.
• Badass Family:
  • All Monster Lords are the direct descendants of the Dark Goddess, Alice the First.
  • Heinrich, Marcellus and Luka, a line of legendary heroes.
  • Ilias created the three Seraphs - Micaela, Lucifina and Eden - from her own holy essence. Each of them is a One Man Army, and while they share no biological relation, the first two do consider each other sisters.
  • Of course, the union of these families has led to some of the most powerful people in the series. Luka is the son of Marcellus and Lucifina, and it's heavily implied that Nero and Neris are the children of Luka and Alice from an alternate timeline.
• Baleful Polymorph: Both Alice and Ilias are transformed into much-weaker child forms at the start of the game.
• Bare Fisted Monk: The Martial Artist job and its variants.
• The Battle Didn't Count: The fights against Morrigan and Astaroth. Justified by them being far more powerful than the party, and holding back.
• Beef Gate: You can enter the forest around Enrika as soon as you can leave Ilias Village. The inhabitants will one-shot you if you try this, however.
• The Berserker: The Berserker job. Notable in that no item exists in Part 1 that teaches the job, meaning that the only character that can have it (without cheating) is Mina the Minotaur Girl, who starts with it.
• Big Bad: The Black Alice of the original universe. After being defeated by Luka and Alice, her dying self was summoned into the Paradox universe due to an experiment performed by the scientists of Remina. Thanks to the White Rabbit in her body, she was able to absorb the holy and dark energy used in the experiment and ascend to become a god of chaos.
• Big Eater: Both Alice and Ilias.
• Bigger on the Inside: The "Pocket Castle" is a massive castle shrunk down to pocket size you can enter and exit on the world map to switch out companions. In fact, after recruiting certain party members, you can also use it as a portable inn, item shop, and a weapons/armor store.
• The Big Guy: Many of your companions are much larger than any human, like Page 65537 and Nanabi.
• Bittersweet Ending: The end of the first chapter. You manage to return safely to the Paradox world, with important information on the threat of Chaos. But an entire world has fallen to Chaos, and the last living (for certain values of the word) inhabitant of that world sacrificed herself to let you escape.
• Bizarchitecture: The interiors of the Tartarus are combinations of pieces from other maps, giving a disjointed, chaotic impression.
• Black Magic: A skill type, which includes spells that do elemental damage and inflict status ailments.
• Bleak Level: The Tartarus, and the town of Remina accessed from them. They represent a sudden, unnerving shift from the otherwise bright aesthetic of the rest of the game.
• Blow You Away: The wind element, which succubi and harpies specialise in. One of the three natural elements.
  • Sylph is the spirit of wind, and resembles a fairy. Summoning her grants Luka a buff that increases agility, accuracy and evasion, makes his normal attack wind-elemental and boosts wind damage.
• Body Horror: The Apoptosis monsters, which are either combinations of biological and mechanical parts, or have extreme deformities, or both.
• Boisterous Bruiser: Several companions, such as Aisha the Bear Girl and Mina the Minotaur Girl.
• Bonus Dungeon: The Labyrinth of Chaos, released when some players found the game too easy. It has an infinite number of floors, populated by more-powerful versions of regular enemies, and with a boss every ten floors. Every hundred floors, the player has the option of facing a so-called superboss, which is even stronger than the usual boss.
• Boss Battle:
  • Boss Banter: You can talk with bosses just like regular enemies. While it isn't necessary to recruit them, raising their Affinity does reward you with items once it's high enough.
  • Bonus Boss: Several, including Nanabi, Sphinx, Alice XVI and Reaper. The superbosses in the Labyrinth of Chaos also count, and can include bosses that otherwise don't appear in the first chapter.
  • Boss in Mooks Clothing: The angels in the alternate Iliasville, Archangel Ranael and Principality Nagael. Despite being random encounters, they are as powerful as bonus bosses, and can wipe out the entire party in a single hit. Thankfully, they can be avoided simply by staying on the path.
  • Contractual Boss Immunity: Averted. While bosses tend to be more status-resistant than normal enemies, almost none have a blanket immunity to all status ailments.
  • Cowardly Boss: A non-gameplay example. Justice Kaiser has confronted Eva several times, only for the latter to flee immediately every time.
  • Dual Boss: Chrome and Frederika fight the party simultaneously.
  • Flunky Boss: The very first boss, a Bunny Slime, fights alongside two Slime Girls.
  • Skippable Boss: Many quests, and by extension their bosses, don't have to be completed to advance the story.
• Bottomless Magazines: All ranged weapons. A NPC at the first Tartarus even explicitly states that the machine weapons will never run out of ammunition, nor require maintenance.
• Breath Weapon: Many monsters have such an attack. They include the standard fire breath, as well as ice, poison and other types.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Several characters suffer this at the hands of the Lilith Sisters, which causes all sorts of trouble.
• Brick Joke: Remember how it was mentioned in the original game heroes can enter peoples houses and take stuff? You can do that yourself now.
• Broken Bridge:
  • As in the original game, the sea route between the Ilias and Sentora Continents is blocked by unnatural storms, requiring you to obtain a magical artifact to get through. Though unlike the original, the storm is caused by Morrigan instead of Alma Elma.
  • Somewhat more literally, a tunnel on the Sentora continent has collapsed.
• But Thou Must:
  • You cannot avoid choosing between Alice and Ilias at the start of the game. They won't let Luka leave the inn before he decides.
  • You also can't avoid recruiting Radio in the last dungeon. Even if you refuse to let her join, La Croix will force her in since her universe is about to be consumed by Chaos.
  • Averted with the recruitment of every other party member (except the Four Spirits, who are necessary for the plot). It's not necessary to complete the sidequests that lead to recruitment (and even if you do them, you can generally turn down their offers). Likewise, enemies that ask to join the party can be turned down. Though Sonya and Eva will force their way into the party unless you specifically avoid meeting them.
• Can't Catch Up: With more than a hundred possible companions, this is inevitable. However, thanks to reserve party members receiving Leaked Experience with no risk, they can catch up quite quickly.
• Can't Drop the Hero: Luka can never be removed from the party, although he can be in either the active or reserve party.
• Cap: Jobs and Races cap at level 10, while normal level is capped at 30 (in Part 1) and later 60 (in Part 2). However, enemies in the Labyrinth of Chaos have stats and movesets that easily exceed this, and Nero is level 80.
• Casino Park: Grandoll, complete with gambling minigames.
• Cast from Hit Points: Some skills, notably the Necromancy skills, consume HP to use.
• Cast of Snowflakes: Even though there's well over a hundred party members in Part 1 alone, they all still have distinct personalities. It's also reflected in gameplay, as every character has a unique trait that affects their stats, skills, abilities and/or what equipment they use.
• Cerebus Syndrome: The game starts off with a bright and colorful aesthetic, cute monsters and light-hearted quests. Then you enter the first Tartarus...
• Chainmail Bikini: All over the place. The sprites for many monsters (notably the Devil Fighter) lack serious armor, and there's even an armor type called Skimpy.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: Your human party members can eventually grow powerful enough to survive being hit by multiple meteors by an Eldrich Abomination.
• Chef of Iron: The various cooking jobs. They can make foods with a range of effects, from buffing party members to damaging enemies.
• Chest Monster: The Mimic subtype of enemies, considered to be part of the Ghost race. The original Mimics copy literal chests, but later on are the Honey Pots, which pretend to be giant pots. They are much more powerful than the other enemies in their locations, and can act twice each turn.
• Childhood Friend: Sonya, to Luka.
• Clock Roaches: As it turns out, the Apoptosis monsters are this.
• Collection Sidequest: Many examples.
• Combat Tentacles: Scylla have these, and they allow them to attack multiple times per turn.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: In the Labyrinth of Chaos, the enemies often have access to skills or abilities that your characters cannot access. For example, complete immunity to physical or magical attacks.
  • Even before the Labyrinth, enemies have skills that they don't have as your party members. An egregious example is Rami the imp, who has the high-level fire spell Omega Blaze as an enemy (though lacks the MP to cast it) but not as your companion.
• Cosmic Horror: The true nature of Chaos.
• Counter Attack: When attacked, a character has a chance of launching a counterattack, which can be improved with certain pieces of equipment.
• Cover-Blowing Superpower: Both Nero and Neris seem to be wary of using their true power. This is because their true forms have the purple skin and white hair of the Monster Lords, as well as angelic energy wings. It's one of the many indications of their parentage.
• Curb Stomp Battle: Several examples:
  • When you first fight Nanabi, she'll almost certainly wipe out the entire party in one turn. Then Neris appears and returns the favour.
  • Similarly, the Armored Berserker will also crush the party unless you've overlevelled significantly. Nero comes to the rescue, and you get to control him to defeat the boss.
• Cut and Paste Environments: The interiors of the Tartarus consist of fragments of various other areas, all jumbled together with no apparent pattern.
  • Similarly, each floor of the Labyrinth of Chaos is a copy of an existing area on the world map.
• Cute Monster Girl: Naturally. They make up most of the enemies and recruitable allies in the game.
• Cyborg: Many of the Chimera and Apoptosis monsters. Also the San Ilias King and Marcellus.
• Dark Is Not Evil: All monsters are dark-aligned to some extent, but that doesn't automatically make them evil.
• Death Is a Slap on The Wrist:
  • Not only can you reload from a previous save, but in-universe, the Anthropomorphic Personification of death itself will allow Luka to come back to life, for reasons that are still unclear.
  • In Iliasburg, you can kill Amira infinitely. The moment you leave, she comes back to life, with no explanation.
• Defeat Means Friendship: A core part of the game. When you defeat all enemies in a random encounter, one of them may regain consciousness and ask to join the party. The chance of this happening is higher the higher that enemy's Affinity. Additionally, some bosses will automatically ask to join once they're defeated.
• Defend Command: Carrying over from the original game. It still halves (physical) damage received, but now it also replenishes 2 SP for the user. Additionally, certain upgrades can let it reduce damage by 75% or even 95%.
• Degraded Boss: The Bunny Slime is the very first boss, but appears as a normal enemy afterwards.
• Detachment Combat: Dullahans can detach their head, granting an extra action at the expense of reduced stats. Slimes can split their bodies in two for the same effect.
• Desperation Attack: Numerous abilities trigger when the user is at critical HP. One example is Papi's trait, which causes her to become Berserk and act twice per turn.
• The Dev Team Thinks Of Everything: You can avoid recruiting Sonya at the beginning of the game by not talking to the village chief. If you do this, most of her lines will be said by Luka instead.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: At the end, you manage to defeat Adramelech, a powerful Apoptosis that destroyed at least one world.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: Micaela, who is encountered on the brink of death at the summit of Mt Amos.
• Difficulty Levels: There are seven: Very Easy, Easy, Normal, Hard, Very Hard, Hell and Paradox. To give some perspective, on Very Easy it's possible to defeat all enemies (even bosses) with normal attacks. Party members automatically regenerate HP, while enemies take damage proportional to the damage they inflict on the party. On Paradox? The Level 1 Slime Girl, the first enemy in the game, is virtually guaranteed to kill you.
• Disc One Final Boss: Adrammalek, a high-level Apoptosis, complete with her unique theme music.
• Disc One Final Dungeon: The Administrator's Tower.
• Dishing Out Dirt: The earth element, which kitsunes specialise in. One of the three natural elements.
  • Gnome is the spirit of earth, and resembles a small elf. Summoning her grants Luka a buff that increases defence and critical hit chance, makes his normal attack wind-elemental, and boosts earth damage.
• Distracted by the Sexy: When enemies fall below half HP, there's a chance that they will attempt to 'tempt' Luka. If the player chooses to give in, they will use powerful pleasure attacks, potentially leading to a Game Over.
• Doomed Hometown: In the world accessed from the first Tartarus, Ilias Village has been destroyed by angels.
• Door to Before: At the end of the Cave of Treasures, there's a ladder to exit the dungeon.
• Drama-Preserving Handicap: Both Alice and Ilias are sealed into weaker child forms at the beginning of the game. This is necessary as otherwise they would easily crush any opposition (and, for that matter, would have no reason to join Luka in the first place).
• Drop the Hammer: Hammers and Clubs belong to the same weapon type. They do decent damage and ignore 50% of defense, but they have low accuracy and decrease the user's agility.
• Dual Wielding: The Battlemaster job.
• Dystopia: The two parallel worlds that the Seraphs and the Lilith Sisters come from, which have similarities to those in the Shin Megami Tensei. The world run by angels is entirely peaceful, but there is no free will - all are subservient to Ilias. Conversely, the world run by monsters allows anyone to do whatever they want - meaning it's a brutal Might Makes Right hellhole.
• Early Game Hell: On the higher difficulties (especially Paradox difficulty) the very first level becomes this. Due to Luka being alone and literally starting at Level 1, even the Slime Girls (also at Level 1) are incredibly tough enemies. Until you grind a few levels, every single battle will be a matter of chance. This is toned-down in Part 2, making it possible to complete the level on Paradox without having to spend hours doing so.
• An Economy Is You: Actually averted. The town maps are huge and feature numerous shops, of which the RPG standards (weapons, armor, items) are just a subset. These include shops for ordinary things like food, which you can also buy.
• Edible Ammunition: The cooking jobs can produce foods with a variety of effects, including dealing damage.
• Eldritch Abomination: The Apoptosis monsters could be all be considered examples. They comprise a variety of strange lineages, each one grotesque in its own way, and all members of a lineage are identical (down to sharing the same memories).
• Eldritch Location: Several examples:
  • The Tartarus are seven enormous craters scattered all over the world, following the Great Disaster. Their interiors contain strange combinations of other places like buildings and forests, populated by the powerful and twisted Apoptosis monsters. They also contain advanced machines, far beyond anything else in the setting.
  • Hades is a strange floating landmass, implied to be the afterlife, where Reaper resides. It contains representations of every boss encountered in the game, which can be refought here. Luka can access it when he dies (and it allows him to come back to life) or through a strange door in Ilias Temple. However, his party members cannot enter it, or even perceive him going through said door. If he accesses it via the door, then he will be accompanied by representations of his party members that are based on his memories (according to Reaper).
• Elemental Crafting: Equipment can be made from a variety of materials. In ascending order of power, they are: bronze, iron, gold, mithril, crystal.
• Elemental Embodiment: The Four Great Spirits. Modeled after Paracelsus' elementals, they represent the four classical elements of wind, earth, water and fire. Additionally, the Goddess Ilias and the Dark Goddess Alipheese the First are elementals of light and darkness, respectively.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: There are twelve elements: fire, ice, lightning, water, wind, earth, holy, dark, physical, pleasure, bio and sonic.
  • The first three are classified as the magical elements, the second three as the natural elements. Some enemies are aligned with one or the other, such that magic-aligned characters are resistant to fire, ice and lightning and weak to water, wind and earth; and vice versa for nature-aligned characters.
  • Holy and dark are clear Infinity+1 Elements, with most monsters being weak to holy while angels and a few monsters are weak to dark. These two elements are used much more rarely than the others, but they cannot be evaded or reflected by their target.
  • The physical element is, naturally, used by physical attacks. No enemies are resistant to physical damage in the normal game, but many have this in the Labyrinth of Chaos, requiring novel strategies.
  • The pleasure element is a defining aspect of the series, being inflicted by sexual acts. Succubi are both good at using and resisting this element.
  • Bio and sonic are associated with poison and sound-based attacks, respectively.
  • Notably, attacks can have more than one element. If a multi-element attack hits its target, the element that would do the most damage (based on the target's resistances) is used.
• Emergency Transformation: The San Ilia King was badly wounded by an explosion. To save his life, he had to be rebuilt using the unknown technology in the Ancient Temple Ruins.
• Encounter Bait: Available via abilities or equipment. It can be stacked up to four times, effectively resulting in encounters every second step.
• Encounter Repellant: Also available. It can also be stacked, resulting in virtually zero encounters.
• The Engineer: The Engineer job and its variants, specialising in using machines.
• Exclusively Evil: Averted HARD regarding the monsters. After Ilias disappeared, a large number of them decided coexistence with humanity was a great idea on their own and since humanity didn't have to worry about the events of the original game, most of them decided to accept the monsters as well. There are still bad apples on both sides, but the whole concept of monsters being always evil as Ilias proclaimed in the original game has been almost entirely discredited.
  • It's even averted for the Apoptosis monsters, to the point that they can also be recruited (though this is more difficult than recruiting normal monsters).
• Experience Booster: Many pieces of equipment, skills, or abilities boost either normal or Job EXP gain. However, these generally have downsides, like increasing normal EXP but decreasing Job EXP by the same amount.
• Experience Points: 2 types, 'normal' EXP and Job EXP. The former is used for normal video game levels, giving general increases in stats. The latter is used for leveling up both jobs and races.
• Exposed to the Elements: No matter where your characters are, their often-underdressed sprites will not change.
• Fan Disservice: Quite a few of the monsters.
• Fate Worse Than Death: The inhabitants of Remina, after the Great Disaster, became trapped in an endless form of this. They are literally embedded in the walls of their ruined city, and (due to a Groundhog Day Loop) experience torment that they can never get used to.
• Fetch Quest: All over the place. Notably, at several points you'll need to obtain the material for the next tier of equipment, in order to become powerful enough to advance in the game.
• Fire, Ice, Lightning: The three magical elements, used in Black Magic.
• Functional Magic: Usable by monsters, angels and (unlike the original game) all humans.
• Flashback: On occasion. The Administrator's Tower features several of these, showing the demise of the inhabitants.
• Fling a Light Into the Future: At the end of the first chapter, your party visits an alternate universe that has nearly been destroyed by Chaos. La Croix hands over her notes on Chaos, with the goal of preventing it from happening to the main Paradox universe.
• For Science!: Basically Promestein's entire motivation. She engages in all sorts of research, without regard for ethics (though not yet to the point of the original game's Promestein).
• Fragile Speedster: Harpies, Fairies, Elves and Succubi are all this, to some extent. Certain races or jobs can make them more durable.
• Frankenstein's Monster: Frederika, a giant zombie made from multiple corpses by Chrome. Unlike the original game (but like the original Frankenstein's Monster), she developed a new personality. After Chrome is defeated, Frederika asks to be allowed to stay with her.
• Funbag Airbag: In her sidequest, Rami literally throws herself off the summits of mountains. Thanks to this trope, she survives with no injury.
• Gag Boobs: A few monsters, notably Rami and Nuruko.
• Gambit Pileup: There's countless factions in the game, all working towards their own, inscrutable ends. The fact that some of them come from alternate universes only complicates things further.
  • Nero and Neris, who are almost certainly the children of Luka and Alice, seem to be the group most focused on helping out Luka's party.
  • The Lilith Sisters are behind several of the problems the party encounters, but claim to be saving the world. What's more, they seem to be following the orders of Alice I.
  • The Seraphs, Zion and Gnosis, who seem to come from an alternate world in which the angels won the Great Monster Wars. They also appear to be trying to preserve the world, and if Zion is any indication, are directly opposed to the Lilith Sisters.
  • A figure calling herself Alice VIII, the supposedly-dead tyrant who had once terrorised the world, is aiming for the seat of Monster Lord. Many anti-human monsters have gathered to her cause. She turns out to not only be the real thing, but is apparently the same Alice VIII who should have died in the original game. On top of that, she has the support of the legendary puppeteer Kagetsumugi, through whom she has gained access to legendary monsters and even former Monster Lords as allies.
  • The kingdom of Grangold has declared war on the other human nations, and is currently winning, thanks to its army of monsters and dolls and its mysteriously powerful king. These advantages have led some to speculate that the kingdom may no longer be ruled by a human...
  • Most bewildering of all, the mafia is also a powerful faction, if a hidden one. It seems to be opposing the Church, to the point of attempting to assassinate the San Ilia King. Merlin and Lazarus are high-ranking figures in it, and seem to have their own plans...
• Gameplay And Story Integration:
  • Each character's trait and list of races tends to reflect their background. For example, Luka has an advantage with hero-related skills and weapons, and has access to the Human race and the Angel race.
  • Harpy Wings, an item used to travel to previously-visited towns, are also used by NPCs. One example is the merchant in Ilias Village, who uses one when you visit him for Vanilla's quest.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Almost all enemies have access to pleasure attacks, but few actually keep them when you recruit them.
• Genius Bonus: In real-life, apoptosis is the self-destruction of cells, and one of its purposes is to fight infection by destroying infected cells. In the game, Apoptosis is the immune system of space itself, and acts to stop the spread of Chaos by destroying people who trespass between universes.
• Genius Ditz: Chrome. A master of necromancy, spiritualism and puppeteering, who leaves notes discussing the secret passages of her base lying around, for anyone to find.
• Giant Hands of Doom: Possessed by several monsters, like Page 257 and Bandersnatch.
• Give Me Your Inventory Item: In battles, enemies may ask for certain items from your inventory, or money. If you give the requested item, their Affinity is raised by a lot (usually 25-30 points). Not giving the item doesn't lower Affinity, though.
• Gotta Catch Em All: You can recruit monsters to join your team, and you can recruit a staggering amount of them.
• The Grim Reaper: Reaper, apparently. Like all supernatural entities in the setting, she appears as a Cute Monster Girl, one with red hair, purple eyes, black clothing and a Sinister Scythe. She resides in Hades, which similarly is the afterlife of the setting.
• The Guards Must Be Crazy: The guards to the Sabasa palace become this, along with the rest of the army, once Sara takes over. The party can simply push past them with no trouble.
• Guest Star Party Member:
  • Nero becomes the only controllable character if you lose against the Armored Berserker. He's easily powerful enough to defeat the boss on his own, but you lose control after winning the battle.
  • Alma Elma joins the party temporarily at two points in Part 2, to defeat Granberia in the Coliseum and for the infiltration of Grangold.
• Hammerspace: As typical for an RPG. You can have up to 99 of any particular item.
• Harder Than Hard: Paradox difficulty. Suffice to say, there's a reason it's named for the game itself.
• Harmless Freezing: The Freeze status effect, which ice-elemental attacks have a low chance of inflicting. It prevents the victim from taking action for a few turns.
• Have a Nice Death: As in the original game, dying in battle gives you the option of viewing an 'Evaluation' by Ilias. It generally consists of tips on how to defeat the enemy that you lost to, interspersed with insults.
• Healing Checkpoint: Often in dungeons, there's a magic circle, or a barrel full of supplies, that fully restores the party's HP and MP.
• Healing Potion: Or Herb, rather.
• Health Damage Asymmetry: Very noticeable, given the recruitment mechanic.
• Heinz Hybrid: Alice, and other Monster Lords, contain the genes of all monsters (in gameplay terms, though, Alice can only access 6 races). A more traditional example is Nero, a human/monster/angel hybrid.
• Heroes Prefer Swords: The sword is the main weapon of the hero jobs, and Luka starts with it. It's also used by Heinrich and Marcellus.
• Heroic Lineage: Luka is the son of the hero Marcellus, and through him, the even more famous Heinrich. It's also heavily implied that Nero and Neris are the children of Luka and Alice from an alternate universe.
• Heroic Sacrifice: At the end of Part 1, La Croix stays behind with her zombies to hold off Adramalech for as long as possible, so that the party can escape.
• Hidden Elf Village: Enrika is a literal example, being hidden in a large forest filled with powerful monsters. Though it's inhabited by fairies and angels in addition to elves.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: The fights against Nanabi and the Armoured Berserker. Upon being defeated, someone else will intervene and win the battle for you. However, it is possible, with extreme grinding and/or a New Game Plus, to defeat them normally.
• The Hunter: The Hunter job and its variants.
• I Am a Humanitarian: Various monsters have access to Predation skills, allowing them to devour your party members whole. This is a form of instant death that can't be resolved until after the battle. Notably, your own party members can do this too, and it's actually an effective strategy. To prevent it being a complete Game Breaker, Predation skills only work if the target has the Digestion status (or some other status such as Stun, for certain skills).
• Idol Singer: Saki, a succubus idol in the city of Grandoll.
• Implacable Man: Adramelech. The alternate La Croix has fought her several times, only for Adramelech to come back stronger each time. In the Administrator's Tower, La Croix sacrifices herself to delay Adramelech long enough for the party to escape, but she still catches up with them before they leave the tower. And even after the party defeats her and continues running, she appears again and tries to drag Luka into the void.
• Impossible Thief: The game has a variety of stealing skills, which allow you to steal not just the standard RPG fare, but also cooking ingredients, crafting materials, and even breast milk and panties.
• Impossible Item Drop: All over the place. While all enemies are sentient, unlike many RPGs, many of them don't have pockets, or clothing, or bodies that could feasibly carry objects. It doesn't stop them from carrying weapons, armor, items or money.
• Improbable Weapon: Numerous examples. Merchants use abacuses, doctors use scalpels, maids use plates...
• Inexplicable Treasure Chest: In every dungeon.
• Infinity+1 Element: Both holy and dark count. They can't be evaded or reflected, and skills that inflict this damage are harder to obtain than others.
• Infinity+1 Sword: Many of the weapons found in the Labyrinth of Chaos. Practically impossible to get, but when they have names like 'Excalibur'...
  • The Mitra Sealed Castle contains many empty pedestals. According to Alice/Ilias, these once held weapons of incredible power that were employed during the Great Monster Wars, but they were then sealed in the castle, supposedly on these pedestals. None of these weapons can be obtained yet, but their names can be found on the pedestals.
• Invisible To Normals: The door to Hades in Ilias Temple is visible (and accessible) only to Luka. When he uses it, other people only perceive him as staring at a blank spot of wall.
• Item Crafting: Has a synthesis option to make better equipment.
  • Item Farming: Which requires a lot of this trope.
• Jiggle Physics: Occur in some characters' sprites, like Rami's.
• Job System: Set up very similar to the one used by Dragon Quest VI.
• Joke Character: The three Unfortunate Friends: Amira, Pyhar and Domaimer. The human and monster parts of their bodies are inverted (reflected in their names, which are the Japanese syllables for lamia, harpy and mermaid reversed). They're the only monster companions to have no request scenes.
  • Lethal Joke Character: But they're not necessarily useless. Pyhar, for example, gains a bonus to evasion and magic evasion from her trait. Combined with the innately high evasion of harpies, and another buff to boost it further, she can achieve 100% evasion and avoid all attacks.
• Karma Houdini: As is standard for the series, all enemy monsters will rape Luka upon defeating the party, and many will outright kill him. Some of them explicitly have histories of crimes against humans, the Roper being one example. This doesn't prevent them from being recruited, at which point there's no way to punish them.
• Kingmaker Scenario: You can resolve the standoff between Lily and Lucia, by defeating one faction. The person you support will then join your party.
  • Part 2 has more of these, such as the decision to join either the pirates or the navy.
• Kleptomaniac Hero: Unlike the original game, this is outright encouraged.
• Kraken and Leviathan: Kraken is a high-ranking Scylla and the queen of the South Sea. However, she's dried up into a tiny squid by Astaroth, making her effectively a non-entity during the first chapter.
• Last Chance Hit Point: The Endure ability will let a character survive a normally lethal blow with 1 HP, once per battle. Formerly, it was bugged and worked an indefinite number of times per battle, which effectively made the party immortal so long as characters were healed.
• Lazy Backup: A partial example, similar to Final Fantasy X. There's 4 characters in the active party and 4 in the reserve party, and they can be freely switched out during your turn in battle. However, if all 4 active members die, you lose the fight even if some reserve members are still alive.
• Leaked Experience: Party members in reserve receive just as much EXP and Job EXP as those in the active party. This can be exploited, by giving them equipment or skills that boost EXP and/or Job EXP while giving a penalty (e.g. the Bondage Rope accessory, which doubles EXP but gives the user the Blind, Silence and Paralyzed ailments). The reserve members will level up quickly without even having to fight.
• Level-Locked Loot: There are several different ranks of chests. All but the lowest rank require some level of thief skill to open.
• Level Up At Intimacy 5: There are two types of this. Party members can be given gifts to raise their Affection, which (at certain thresholds) causes them to give gifts in return and unlocks their Request scenes. The other type is "Battle Fucking", an in-universe sport based around enduring sexual acts, which rewards the player with an item if Luka has enough HP to win.
• Light Is Not Good: All angels are light-aligned, but that doesn't mean that they're necessarily good.
• Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: With respects to pure damage, arguably inverted. In the early game, magic can do considerable damage by exploiting elemental weaknesses. Physical skills can do comparable damage, but are limited by SP, making them less useful in longer battles. In the late game, however, warrior-type classes like Battlemaster can easily surpass the damage output of any mage class, especially due to an increased frequency of elemental resistances. On the other hand, status-inflicting magic remains useful, as even many late-game bosses are vulnerable to at least some ailments.
• Loads and Loads of Characters: Even more than the original. There's around 150 companions alone, and that's just in Part 1 - trailers claim that there'll be 500 in the full game. And that's not considering the hundreds upon hundreds of NPCs...
• Logical Weakness: The elemental weaknesses of each race tend to be this. For example, Land-Dwellers and Sea-Dwellers are weak to lightning, as they are covered in conductive slime.
• Lord British Postulate: Reaper, the hardest Bonus Boss in Part 1, wasn't supposed to be beatable in Part 1. This didn't stop many from trying, and succeeding. This caused the developer to release the Labyrinth of Chaos, a post-game bonus dungeon originally meant for Part 3, containing vastly more powerful versions of all enemies. Naturally, players have managed to defeat Reaper even in the Labyrinth.
• The Lost Woods: Enrika is located in one of these.
• Ludd Was Right: The inhabitants of the aptly named Luddite Village believe this. They eschew the advanced technology that the rest of the world uses, believing it to be heretical, even as the majority of the faith accepts it.
• Mad Scientist: Promestein, full stop.
• Madness Mantra: In the Remina accessed through the first Tartarus, the people you encounter will at first talk normally, but devolve into gibberish. One of them transforms into an Apoptosis and attacks.
• The Mafia: Are apparently a faction in the game. Their true purpose, if they have any, is unknown. Notably, both Lazarus and Merlin, formerly Marcellus' friends, are part of it.
• Magic Knight: The Magiknight job.
• Magitek: Various examples, such as Brynhildr.
• Making a Splash: The water element, which mermaids and sea-dwellers specialise in. One of the three natural elements.
  • Undine is the spirit of water, and resembles a mermaid-shaped slime.
• Mana Meter: There are 2 meters, MP and SP. MP is used for magic, SP for physical skills. Some skills (e.g. Holy skills) use both MP and SP. Party members automatically begin battle with half their maximum SP (more with certain equipment), but MP doesn't replenish on its own.
• Marshmallow Hell: Just like Dragon Quest VIII, there is a Puff Puff skill. It utilises a hidden breast size stat, which means that flat-chested characters do no damage with it, while the most buxom characters can make full use of the skill.
• Mass Super-Empowering Event: One effect of the Great Disaster was to fill the atmosphere with mana, allowing all humans to use magic.
• Mirror Match: It's possible for characters to fight against themselves. The most common example is when a recruited monster fights against their random encounter version, but more specific examples (i.e. with named characters) can occur in a New Game Plus or in the Labyrinth of Chaos.
• Mithril: A material used for forging weapons and armour.
• Monster Knight: Any party member can be any job, though they aren't necessarily suited for all jobs.
• Monster Compendium: Accessed in Hades, it allows you to refight any monster.
• Monster Lord: The eponymous position. It is held by the strongest monster, which (for 16 generations so far) has been a member of the Fateburn family.
• Monster Progenitor: Alice I created the Six Ancestors, who each gave rise to a lineage of monsters: succubi (Minagi), slimes (Kanade), plants (Kanon), beasts and kitsune (Tamamo-no-Mae), scyllas (Hiruko) and harpies and lamias (Saja).
• More Friends, More Benefits: You can recruit as many companions as you want (barring mutually-exclusive ones) with no penalty. That said, trying to level up over a hundred companions...
• Mutually Exclusive Party Members:
• Part 1 has Alice and Ilias, and Lily and Lucia. It's possible to have both of the latter pair on a New Game Plus, due to party members other than Alice/Ilias being carried over. Having both Alice and Ilias is impossible without cheating.
• Part 2 introduces more of these, including some companions who are exclusive to the Alice or Ilias routes. Alice gives access to Alicteromeria, Lilith and Lilim, and Morrigan, while Ilias gives access to Heinrich, Eden, Micaela and Lucifina.
• Mutually Exclusive Powerups: Both Alice and Ilias, and Lily and Lucia, offer various skills and abilities. Thanks to the above restriction, these are mutually exclusive. However, the Holy skills taught by Ilias can be learnt later when Luka unlocks the Angel race. Similarly, the Cursed Sword skills taught by Alice can be learnt from a job available in Part 2.
• Necromancer: An intermediate job, whose skills are Cast from Hit Points. Also the professions of Chrome, La Croix and Kagetsumugi.
• Nephilim: Luka is this. As are his implied descendants, Nero and Neris.
• No Hero Discount: By the end of the first chapter, you are literally fighting to save the entire multiverse from destruction. Don't expect any shop to know about this. Not even the shops run by your own party members.
• No Name Given: Averted. Most of the monster girls from the first game now have names, though this only applies to the ones that join your party.
• Non Lethal KO: Applies not just to your party members, but also to your enemies as well (unless otherwise dictated by the plot). Though unlike your party, enemies can't revive each other.
  • The Angel Halo presumably causes this, as in the previous game.
• Notice This: Places that you should investigate are marked with sparkles.
• One Hit KO: There are four types of instant death in the game: 'normal' Instant Death, Ascension, Climax, and Predation.
• One Hit Wonder: The Suicidal Training ability doubles EXP gain but also reduces maximum HP to 1% of normal. The trope can also be invoked with they key item Orb of Life Drain, which decreases Luka's HP by any amount.
• One Man Army: Neris. In one day, she manages to conquer Plansect Village, defeat Cassandra (considered the equal of Alice XV), defeat the entire Arachne faction, and fight Granberia to a draw. And after fighting the last of these, she claimed to be holding back.
• One Size Fits All: Played with. All characters of the same race can all wear the same armor, even if they vary in size (e.g. Ilias can wear the same armor as Promestein, despite the former having a child's body, because they're both angels). However, different races have access to different combinations of armor types. Races with drastically inhuman shapes, like Slimes or Insects, can't wear many types of armor.
• One Steve Limit: Averted. All Monster Lords use the name Alice, and "White Rabbit" is the name of both a person and a drug.
• One-Time Dungeon: The Administrator's Tower, due to the entire universe it's located in being consumed by Apoptosis. Partially subverted, as you can enter the ruins of the version in the Paradox universe and encounter the same enemies, so nothing there is potentially Lost Forever.
• One-Winged Angel: Lily and Lucia, if fought as bosses, transform their arms into masses of giant worms.
• Organ Drops: Somewhat disturbingly, these are also included in the game, even though all enemies are sentient. Apparently, the organs (which include things like tails) are all shed naturally.
• Our Angels Are Different: The angels of the setting cover a wide range of forms, from the standard woman with wings and halo (Micaela, Lucifina), to forms that would be indistinguishable from the average monster. Formerly, they were invincible to any attack not employing holy energy. However, thanks to the angels being expelled from Heaven and the atmosphere becoming saturated with holy energy, this trait has been lost.
• Our Monsters Are Different: As in the previous game, they're an all-female group of beings which depend on human men to reproduce. They're split into a wide range of different races:
  • Beast Folk: The Beast race. They're strong and fast, though not very durable, and are weak to pleasure.
  • Bee People: The Insect race, though not all of them are social. They also include arachnids and myriapods in addition to literal insects. In general, they are extremely durable, thanks to their exoskeletons, and they have a high reproduction rate.
  • Blob Monster: The Slime race. Their amorphous body gives a few advantages (high physical defence, immunity to water and being bound) but also many disadvantages (reflected in their weaknesses to elements and statuses).
  • Golem: The Doll race, mechanical beings constructed to serve people. They're immune to many status ailments thanks to their artificial body.
  • Harping on About Harpies: The Harpy race. Fast but fragile, skilled with wind and thief skills.
  • Horny Devils: The Succubus race. Unlike other monsters, they're dependent on human men for food as well. They specialise in pleasure attacks and wind.
  • Mix-and-Match Critters: The Chimera race. They're combinations of different types of monsters, and are more powerful than normal monsters.
  • Our Dragons Are Different: Vary wildly in shape. Pure dragons look like standard Western dragons but with a human body in their mouth. Interbreeding with humans leads to the human-like dragonkin, who are human-like aside from their scales, claws and occasionally wings and tail.
  • Our Elves Are Better: Essentially standard fantasy elves. They're skilled with the natural elements and with bows, but are relatively weak compared to other monsters.
  • Our Fairies Are Different: More or less the standard, being tiny girls with insect wings. They specialise in the natural elements and are very fast and agile, but are the physically weakest race.
  • Our Ghosts Are Different: They're produced from dark magic and souls, and take a variety of forms. Mimics are a subrace of these.
  • Our Mermaids Are Different: Most of them have the standard lower half of a fish, though one (the Anglerfish Girl) is almost entirely fish. They're skilled with water and singing, and their blood has healing properties.
  • Our Vampires Are Different: Essentially the standard modern idea of vampires, though they don't burn in the sun. Their cloaks are part of their bodies and can be controlled.
  • Our Zombies Are Different: Creations of a necromancer. Like standard video game zombies, they are damaged by healing (reflected by their constant Zombie status). On the other hand, they're immune to instant death and are actually healed by poison.
  • Plant Person: The Plant race. Notably, this covers fungi as well as actual plants.
  • Scylla and Charybdis: Scylla have the lower half of an octopus or other cephalopod. They have a rivalry with Lamias.
  • Snake People: Lamias have the lower body of a snake, though the group also includes Medusas. They have a rivalry with Scyllas. Alice appears as one, though she's technically many races.
  • Youkai: The Kitsune and arguably the Demi-Human races. Kitsune are a subset of Beasts that are better at magic, and skilled with earth. Demi-Humans include monsters like oni.
  • Then there's the two races that don't fit any particular mold, Land-Dweller and Sea-Dweller. These contain all the monsters that don't fit into one of the aforementioned categories. Land-Dwellers include slug girls and worm girls, but even the likes of crocodile girls. Sea-Dwellers include all non-mermaid aquatic monsters like crab girls.
• Out with a Bang: Any monster (or angel) can kill their partner through sex, either by draining their partner of life force (most examples), or by eating their partner. Notably, a surprisingly large number of companions will do this to Luka in their low Affection request scenes (and a few don't have any non-lethal scenes).
• The Paladin: An intermediate job. Arguably, the Holy Knight is this as well.
• Parental Incest:
  • While it's not explicitly spelled out, Neris' crush on Luka falls into this. Though, technically, the latter is merely an alternate-universe version of her father.
  • Luka can Request scenes with Ilias, Lucifina and Micaela, who are respectively his grandmother, mother and aunt. However, it's not clear whether they (especially the first and third) actually have any genetic relationship with him, given that they're beings of holy energy. Additionally, this Ilias is from a parallel world while the lattertwo are artificial creations.
• Peninsula of Power Leveling: Several examples:
  • The cave leading to Rostrum is good early on, as it has an encounter with four Candle Girls, who can be killed quite easily with AoE fire spells.
  • The alternate Ilias Village is surrounded by high-ranking angels who don't give EXP when defeated, but give 25 Job EXP. With certain builds, it's possible to kill them relatively quickly.
  • Once the storyline for the first chapter is cleared, the ruins of the Administrator's Tower become this. It is the only location in the game with infinitely-spawning Mimics and Honey Pots, which give 15 Job EXP each.
• Physical God: Ilias, and Alipheese the First.
• Pillar of Light: Some Holy skills have this effect.
• Playing With Fire: Plenty of weapons, spells and other skills use the fire element. Some characters (e.g. Rami) inflict additional damage with fire.
  • Salamander is the spirit of fire, and appears to be a naked elf with hair made of fire.
• Powers of Two Minus One: Inverted with the three book monsters. Their names use powers of two plus one (i.e. 17, 257, 65537).
• Quicksand Box: The game is even larger than its predecessor, with countless sidequests to get lost in.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Just at the end of the first chapter, the party is likely to consist of: a Nephilim hero, either the Monster Lord or the goddess who created humans and angels, a club-wielding priestess, a boomerang-loving slime, a mysterious tentacled being that looks like a young scylla, an angel Mad Scientist, the leader of the human faith, a gynoid, the spirit of wind, a former princess, an alchemist with worms for arms, the spirit of earth, and a second gynoid... and that's just some of the major characters!
• Random Effect Spell: The Oracle skills, learned by the Fortune Teller job and its variants.
• Random Encounters: In contrast to the original, where every encounter was unique.
• Randomly Drops: A lot of item crafting ingredients can only be obtained this way.
• Rare Candy: The stat-boosting Seeds, as well as other items with effects such as free EXP.
• Really 700 Years Old: All over the place:
  • The most extreme example is Ilias, who either looks like a girl or a young woman, and is older than the planet.
  • Chrome also looks like a girl, but is over a hundred years old.
• Redemption Demotion: Many monsters are first fought as bosses before being recruited into the party. Naturally, they're far less powerful as members of the party.
• The Red Mage: The Sage job, which can use both White and Black Magic.
• Relationship Values: There are 2 different types, for enemies and companions.
  • Enemies have Affinity, which is raised by using the Talk command, and is especially increased by giving them gifts. The higher the value, the greater the chance that they will ask to join the party at the end of the battle. Additionally, enemies with high Affinity may randomly offer gifts to the party.
  • Companions have Affection, which is raised by giving gifts of food. Picking the right type of food result in significant increases, but the wrong type will cause Affection to decrease. At high Affection, companions will reward Luka with items and accept Requests (sexual encounters).
• Revive Kills Zombie: Anything with the Zombie status, though it also works the other way around: poison heals them.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: Several party members are royals of some sort, and it's possible for any character to have the Noble or Lord jobs.
• Say It With Hearts: Or stars, in Saki's case.
• Schizo-Tech: All over the place. It is entirely possible to have a club-user and a gunner in your party at the same time. Also related to the plot: the advanced technology in the setting generally comes from the various Tartarus.
• Schmuck Bait: Some treasure chests are located in the open and away from walls, unlike other chests. Should you try to open one, you'll be drawn into a battle with a Mimic.
• Sequel Hook: Several:
  • To prevent the spread of chaos, it seems that it is necessary for the world to follow the 'correct' history, but it still isn't clear what that is. Intuitively, it would seem to be the plot of the original game, but that is seemingly contradicted by characters, ones that should have an idea of what's happening, not trying to fix the many deviations in the Paradox world (such as Luka travelling with a party).
  • Throughout Part 1, NPCs will often talk about the war amongst the four nations of the Sentora Continent. Among other rumours, it's mentioned that the Grangold King himself is leading his army, and possesses power beyond what humans should be capable of.
  • Then there's the succession crisis among the monsters, with three candidates vying for the position of Monster Lord. Alice VIII is shown to be plotting world domination again, this time with an army of legendary monsters. Alice XVII is heavily implied to be Luka's and Alice XVI's daughter from another world, and is apparently trying to help the Luka of this world follow the correct timeline. But almost nothing has been revealed about the third candidate, Alice XV.
  • And while it might not seem as important as the previous events, the Mafia plotline is this as well. Their influence is subtle, but it's clearly extensive, as shown by the fact that the Sabasa King had no choice but to tolerate them. The mystery is why Lazarus and Merlin are part of the group.
• Sequence Breaking: A seemingly-small example, but with far-reaching effects, is not recruiting Sonya. You're supposed to talk to the village chief in Ilias Village, after which Sonya will force herself into the party. If you attempt to leave the village without doing this, the game will even remind you to talk to the chief. However, if you continue on regardless, then you can avoid recruiting Sonya. This inexplicably causes Alice/Ilias to not give you the Pocket Monster Lord Castle, preventing you from recruiting most companions (a few, such as the spirits, will still be recruited). Strangely enough, this was apparently intentional, as noted under The Dev Team Thinks Of Everything, but it's still unclear what the implications of this are.
• Serial Escalation: The overall plot of the game, compared to the original. Monster Girl Quest had the entire world at stake, but Paradox has the entire multiverse at risk of destruction.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: This seems to be the point of the game, which involves (A) figuring out what happened to Ilias thirty years prior and reversing it and (B) stopping whoever was responsible.
  • The exact problem is eventually revealed: a particular universe failed to follow the 'correct' history, resulting in a Temporal Paradox that caused it to be consumed by the Chaos phenomenon. If it isn't stopped, then all universes will be consumed by Chaos... but no means of correcting the paradox have been revealed.
• Sidetracked By the Golden Saucer: Whether it's recruiting every monster in an area, maxing out said monsters' Affection once recruited, expanding Vanilla's and Papi's shops, or for a more literal example, playing the various casino games, there's always something to take your mind off the actual storyline.
• Simple Staff: Used by Priests. It is suited for White Magic, whereas the similar Rods are suited for Black Magic.
• Single Use Shield: Skills like Vicarious Clara give the caster a finite number of shields, each of which will stop one attack, no matter how powerful it is.
• Sinister Scythe: A weapon type. Ghosts specialise in using this, and both Nero and Reaper carry one.
• Slap-On-The-Wrist Nuke: Many attacks, like Meteor or Daystar, sound like they should be far more destructive than they actually are.
• Spoony Bard: The Flirt/Gadabout class is a definite example. Its stats are subpar all around, it doesn't have the useful skills of other utility classes, and party members with this class even has a 20% chance of skipping their turn. It is, however, a necessary first step to access some much more useful classes.
• Standard Status Effects: There's the usual status effects like Poison, as well as rarer ones like Burn, and (appropriate for the type of game) sexual status effects like Trance.
• Space Master: Included as part of Time Magic.
• Squishy Wizard: Magic-using jobs generally have low HP and Defence.
• Stripperiffic: All over the place. Succubi in particular are examples of this.
  • Strangely enough, the treatment of this in-universe tends to be inconsistent. The skimpy clothing of some characters (e.g. Devil Fighter, Karen) is called out as unusual, but noone seems to care about the many others wearing just as little, or even less (e.g. most monsters).
• Succession Crisis: The disappearance of Alice XVI from the Monster Lord's throne has led to three contenders vying for the position. All of them are people who shouldn't be alive: the tyrant Alice VIII (supposedly killed 500 years ago), the former Monster Lord Alice XV (supposedly went missing recently), and someone calling herself Alice XVII (despite Alice XVI having no children).
• Summon Magic: The Summoner job and Summoning skill.
  • Luka has access to unique summoning skills, being able to summon the spirits to grant a range of buffs.
• Super Mode: The Transform skill from the Hero of Justice job triggers this. It boosts stats and allows access to powerful Justice skills.
• Super-Powered Robot Meter Maids: Inverted with Hild. She initially seems to be a combat robot, but she has unnecessarily advanced emotions and even the ability to reproduce.
• Swallowed Whole: Anything unfortunate enough to fall victim to Predation.
• Taken for Granite: The Petrify status ailment.
• Take Your Time: A war raging on the horizon, between the four main human nations? A crisis of succession among the monsters? The multiverse being threatened by the spread of Chaos? All of it will wait for you, as you fight battle after battle trying to recruit every monster.
• Talking the Monster to Death: The basic Talk skill merely allows you to raise enemy Affinity. However, more advanced variants are available, which can inflict status ailments.
• A Taste of Power: You briefly control Nero for one boss fight. He has access to skills, abilities, races and jobs that are otherwise completely inaccessible in Part 1.
• Temporal Paradox: One of these seems to be responsible for the plot, given that both Ilias and Alice seem to remember things that only happened in the original game that didn't happen partially or completely in this game world.
• The Many Deaths of You: As in the original, losing to any enemy in Paradox results in a rape scene. Enemies in the Labyrinth don't trigger these, though.
• Through Her Stomach: Gifts of food are used to raise the Affection of companions. Each character tends to have favorite foods that increase their Affection by a lot, while foods they dislike will lower it. Similarly, some enemies will request food in battle.
• Time Abyss: Ilias and Alice I are literally billions of years old, as embodiments of holy and dark energy, respectively.
• Time Master: The Time Mage job and Time Magic skill. Also seems to be a power possessed by entities like the White Rabbit.
• Time Stands Still: The skill Chaos Drive, usable only by Nero, White Rabbit and Reaper. It allows the user to act with impunity for several turns. A localised version of this can be inflicted with the Stop status.
• Tomato in the Mirror: Throughout the first two chapters, there's been repeated hints that something isn't quite right with Sonya. The trailers also call attention to this. It's eventually revealed that she is a high-ranking Apoptosis. When the Lilith Sisters and the Seraphs clash at the end of Part 2, the inter-dimensional contact causes her true nature to awaken.
• Took a Level in Badass: Humans as a race, compared to the original game. Here, thanks to a combination of improved technology, all humans now being able to use magic, and Charles Atlas Superpower, combat-trained humans can now fight on the same level as monsters and angels.
  • In the original game, Lazarus was the leader of the ineffectual Ilias Kreuz organisation, and couldn't even manage to kill monsters with his bombings. Here? He's a high-ranking figure in The Mafia, which is presented as a major faction in the setting.
• Trauma Inn: There's usually an inn in every village for this purpose. The inn in Ilias Village, being owned by Luka, can be used for free.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight:
  • Nobody notices that Alice and Ilias look like shrunken-down versions of the Monster Lord and the Goddess of light, respectively. Though to be fair, most people in-universe wouldn't consider it possible for such powerful beings to be weakened in this manner.
  • More generally, no one seems to pay attention to your party even if it includes Apoptosis monsters, which are generally perceived as Always Chaotic Evil and otherwise never leave the Tartarus.
  • Subverted and parodied with Nero, whose red-and-black, fashionably-ripped outfit is commented on by more than one person. And yet he apparently thought it was perfectly normal.
• Vampiric Draining: Vampires have access to skills that can drain HP, MP and/or SP.
• War Arc:
  • The ongoing war between Grangold and the other three human nations, which becomes the main driver of the plot in Part 2.
  • Once the aforementioned war is resolved, Alice XV appears and declares war on humanity. Armies of monsters invade the four human nations, requiring Luka's party to find some way to stop this.
• Warp Whistle: Harpy Wings allow the party to travel to any location previously visited.
• Weapon of X-Slaying: Various skills have a "X-Slayer" descriptor, which causes them to do 50% extra damage to a particular race, but 25% less damage to any other race.
• We Cannot Go on Without You: Partly averted. The game won't end if Luka is defeated normally, but if he gives in to temptation or surrenders, his allies become disgusted with him and abandon him to his fate.
• Wham! Episode:
  • When you reach the end of the first Tartarus, you find an alternate universe in which angels destroyed Ilias Village, killing every single inhabitant. The graveyard is now full, and contains a log documenting the events.
  • Just as you make a contract with Sylph, a terrifying armoured figure appears and attacks. It's far too powerful for you to fight, and it seems to be the end for Luka's party. Then, Nero and Neris come to the rescue. In quick succession, it's revealed that Nero and Neris are siblings and the children of an alternate Luka and Alice, while the mysterious armoured figure is the legendary hero Heinrich.
  • After you complete the Sabasa plotline, you receive a message that Luddite Village is under attacked. It turns out that the Lilith Sisters have raped all of the village's men to death and (though this isn't clear until later) kidnapped all of the women. Not only that, but Astaroth claims that all of their actions are intended to preserve the world.
  • After leaving the Puppeteer's Tower, Kagetsumugi seems to be speaking to herself... then Black Alice is revealed behind the throne. Moreover, Black Alice hints that she came from the world of the original game. Kagetsumugi then unveils a powerful army, made up of legendary monsters and the puppets of former Monster Lords, all at Black Alice's beck and call.
  • The world accessed from the third Tartarus has been almost completely devoured by the Apoptosis phenomenon. You encounter an alternate La Croix, who explains the true nature of Chaos - a threat to the entire multiverse. As you try to escape, the high-ranking Apoptosis Adramelech pursues, and nearly drags off Luka, only for Marcellus to suddenly appear and cut her in half. But Luka doesn't have the chance to properly reunite with him, as Marcellus simply advises him to protect the world, and leaves.
  • After the war with Grangold is resolved, the human leaders sit together for a banquet... then Alice XV appears and declares war on humanity.
  • The end of the Snow Continent is undoubtedly the biggest one yet. The White Rabbit reveals that Black Alice, now a full-blown goddess, is the true BigBad. Luka's party discovers that the Paradox Ilias has been sealed away to slow the spread of Chaos... right before the Lilith Sisters appear and kill her. Then the three Seraphs appear and fight the Lilith Sisters, the interdimensional contact causing Sonya to reveal her true nature - an Apoptosis on par with Adramelech. To make matters worse, she summons Adramelech for backup. While Luka's party fights her, the entire universe starts to be swallowed up by Chaos. The resolution differs depending on which of Ilias or Alice is in the party, but is shocking either way. With Ilias, Sonya regains her senses and defeats Adramelech at the cost of her own life, using the last of her power to reverse the destruction and leave a past copy of herself behind. With Alice, Nuruko reveals her true nature as the Spirit of Chaos, and reverses the destruction, banishes Adramelech and turns Sonya back to normal.
• What the Hell Hero: If Luka gives in to temptation (and loses all of his HP) or surrenders, his companions will be disgusted with him and leave him to his fate.
• Whip It Good: A weapon type, which Plants specialise in.
• White Magic: A skill type, which includes skills that heal and confer status buffs.
• Won't Work On Me:
  • It's possible to gain complete immunity to specific elements and statuses.
  • Taken Up To Eleven by enemies in the Labyrinth of Chaos. Not only are their stats higher in general, but their resistances are increased as well, such that resistances that were previously only 50% will now be 100% or even absorption of that element. Additionally, certain enemy types (e.g. Slimes) now start getting physical resistance, which doesn't appear in the main game. To top it all off, some bosses and races get complete immunity to either physical or magical attacks!
• The Worf Effect:
  • In your first encounter with her, Nanabi is too powerful to defeat normally. After the first turn, Neris steps in and defeats her with one Vaporising Rebellion Sword.
  • Likewise, the Armored Berserker is far beyond the party when fought, with attacks that can easily inflict a Total Party Kill. Nero intervenes and, unless the player tries to lose, will utterly crush the Berserker.
  • Adramelech, the terrifyingly powerful final boss, is cut in half by Marcellus, in his first scene.
• World Tree: Mentioned by Nero, with its fruit being a medicine capable of curing any disease. It can't be accessed in Part 1, however.
• Year Inside, Hour Outside: Hades appears to work this way. No matter how much time Luka spends here, his companions will only see him staring at a wall for an unspecified, but implicitly much shorter period of time.
• Yin-Yang Bomb:
  • The Apoptosis monsters can use both light and dark power.
  • Nero and Neris also fit, likely due to their lineage.
  • Black Alice, being from the original universe, is another example.
• You Shall Not Pass: When Adramelech attacks the Administrator's Tower, La Croix holds her off while the party flees. Adramelech breaks through, but not without being weakened to 10% of her power.
• Zombie Apocalypse: Not literally zombies, but the spread of Apoptosis in the world of the alternate Administrator's Tower strongly fits this trope.