Well...I'm not sure what to do with my man card now, because I sure as hell don't need it after this.

This is a surprisingly in-depth Tactical RPG. If you're the kind of person that likes to make insane combat builds, or min max, this is a game for you. You start with picking one of 12 character classes, and this is actually really important. You're going to want to build your team around your class. However, no matter what class you pick, you ARE a summoner first. Most of your damage is usually going to come from your summons. You get summons by capturing them in combat ala pokemon (Beat them up and then use a limited ability to trap them) or by progressing the story. They also have a gatcha feature to get a random monster if you do any grinding on the free levels, which is nice.

For reference on min-maxing, here is what I did. I picked necromancer because I thought it would be funny. When I got over my shock at how the skeletons look, (Spoiler - EVERYTHING is a female anime character in this game) I tried summoning them in combat. They sucked. Then a few battles later I captured a demon that gave all summoned undead +25% to their stats. Then I got a spell that gives undead +25 to their stats. Everything is stackable in this game, and most buffs don't run out. Then I found a demon that summons more skeletons. Then I found another. Soon I had a team of nothing but demons that either buffed or summoned skeletons. And surprise! When you have more than three demons summoned, they do cumulative damage to living creatures every turn. That wasn't explained anywhere, it just sort of happened. At this point my main necromancer was the only living or non-demon thing, so I picked up an ability that changed her type to undead. I found myself steam rolling things and was super happy with my army of skeletons.

Until I found my first enemy that summoned angels. Just one angel would wreck my skeletal/demon army. Then the game became hard again, fast. I came up with a build to handle angels, and then ran into an enemy who had a system to make their main mage permanently ghost formed by abusing the power from a sprite. My skeletons couldn't touch it, and it spammed a magic nova over my army as I cried helplessly because I didn't bring any real magic to do damage, just more skeletons.

Then I got high enough level where I could summon ghosts and weights, which could cast their own magic. The ghost mage wasn't as scary anymore as my minions could plink away at it with telekinesis. Everything was going well, until I ran into the dragon summoner, and went back to crying as everything I loved burned in the fires of a thousand suns.

The game has so many creatures with unique abilities and stats, that there are probably hundreds of viable builds and strategies—all of which play heavily on your choice of starting class. Had I gone warrior, I might have went with a team of giants. Illusionist, maybe fearies. But you're not stuck either. I'm leveling up a backup team of gremlins right now to give me more magic options when I need it. My necromancer can do her thing just fine on her own now, and the gremlins can create their own havoc. Anything will work, but some things will clearly work better than others. I would replay it over and over except...

The story is really, really bad.In true B-rated anime fashion, random characters are popping up all over and I don't know why. The fun part of the game is literally just combat and party building. There is nothing outside of one battle after another, with a short break at the party screen and maybe a few rolls with my magic gems to see if I got something cool.

Also, did I mention that every single character is an anime girl? Most of them are kids too, which is somewhere between disturbing and funny. Every skeleton summoned is a little girl who is sent off to her second death at the hands of a giant girl, who was summoned by an angry lady. I can't tell 80% of my friends about this game because of how weaboo Japanese the art is. There is one monster that I was reluctant to summon with my wife in the room because I didn' want her to get the wrong idea about this game, even though it provided serious healing for my necromancer (before I turned her into a zombie too). Some of the pictures are a little too suggestive, even bordeline creepy. Which is a shame, because the combat mechanics are awesome.

Honestly, I'd say the monster system, and combat system could work in a triple A title just fine. They'd need to improve the interface, trash the story, and re-skin the characters, but I'd love to play a game like this with a real story and some other gameplay elements besides combat. It's very reminiscent of disgea, with a heavier emphasis on team synergy, and much less on power leveling. No single character (That I've found!) will get you through this. You need a team.

If you've played disgea and liked it for either the art or the game-play, check this out. Just don't let anyone see you playing it.

If you're looking for a story... I'd pass on this, at least so far. Honestly I wish I could just skip the story parts at this point. Oh well. I'm gonna see if I can go catch Artemis. Yes, the god with the bow. I need her for one of the teams I was thinking of building. She can hang with my captured valkyries and tiamat.

On the surface, this game looks like anime Pokemon. When you actually play it... it still looks like anime Pokemon, but it keeps getting bigger.

One of the reasons Pokemon became so popular is because it was actually deeper than it looked - while even very casual players could simply blitz through the games without difficulty, those who wanted to strategize found ways of minmaxing their teams to perfection. This game takes that concept and takes it to eleven - well, to fifty, actually. But you have to play for a while to reach that point.
To make a comparison, playing pokemon and coming up with new strategies and synergies is like stepping into a puddle and finding it's a warm bath. This is like that, except the bath starts to flood your apartment and maybe the apartment down the street.
The game isn't too difficult for a long while - though enemies are never pushovers, it's not really challenging strategically until you're most of the way through the story. But once you've started to get a decent number of creatures you'll start finding interesting and unique abilities that let you use the game mechanics in interesting (and often incredibly cheezy) ways.

TL;DR: It's a pretty good strategy game that feels different from most other SRPGs I've played, but it takes a time investment to get there.

Edit: And it keeps getting bigger. The after-story mode is much bigger than I thought, with a lot more to do in it. Story mode is about 25% of the actual game itself, but will take maybe 15% of the time.

Edit edit: I have now completed the post-game content, and I have to say: if this game had multiplayer, it'd probably be the last SRPG I'd ever need ... at least from a gameplay perspective. Keeping in mind that I've played most of the best (Fire Emblem, Super Robot Taisen, XCOM, etc), so that's pretty high praise.

Edit 3: After 100 hours of playing, I finally collected all the creatures. I was finding unique and powerful skills and abilities right to the end (literally the last creature), and even coming up with new strategies off of them. Now I feel a little sad that there's no more. :(

Definitely true to its namesake, Moekuri is perhaps even more tactical than it is adorable. It's plenty adorable, there's just a hella large variety of characters and strategies to implement in battle. The protagonist has a choice of ten classes, from the typical Warrior-Ranger-Mage trio to all sorts of game mechanic specialists, everyone you meet in Story Mode can be unlocked some of whom have their own unique classes, and there's 150+ creatures to capture and summon as little combat soldiers.

Incidentally, the art is the only place where the game really falters: 90% of the characters are strictly cute, gods are badass, demons are appropriately provocative (or creepy), etc. Then I spy a little girl with a cameltoe and I wonder what they were thinking. Every battlefield is nothing more than the same large, tiled square, though at least you can often envision the picture they tried to paint with the terrain. (e.g. Castle hallway is all grey and impassable terrain creates a narrow passage. Sacred temple is an open map with a lot of Holy Ground terrain.) Combat animations are strictly functional.

Still, every character does have their own Pokédex-like entry with numerous unique voice lines, both full and chibi art, and a brief biography of sorts. Every creature entry includes their maximum stats and full list of skills and abilities. The music is consistently decent, never bad nor amazing.

Story Mode doesn't take more than a few hours but it's a cute, lighthearted story. The objective is occasionally more than "eliminate the opponent" and if you don't grind Free Battles between levels, it's occasionally challenging. The localization is fantastically whimsical. After your first trip through, you unlock an arcade-style mode, multiple challenger trials, and are given the criteria for unlocking the other Masters. Free Battles are an opportunity to capture creatures and earn in-game currency you can use to purchase ones you miss.

The massive variety of characters makes for an equally massive number of strategies possible, and the creators played with every possible lever to ensure the viability of as many as they could muster. Pretty much the only thing you can't do is bring multiple of the same creature to battle, so there's little point to capturing more than one creature per species since you can rearrange stats semi-freely (grind-gated) and change movesets at will. It's quite the hardcore strategist's dream.

But legit my biggest complaint: It's ridiculous that a game released in 2016 only runs at 800 x 600 resolution! Seriously. Like, seriously that is ridiculous and seriously that is the actual worst thing I can say about this game. Almost as ridiculous as this game only being $12 full price, because who knew a game with a self-describing title could go so far above and beyond to live up to its name?

Let me start by getting my biases in the open: I am not into Moe, but I've been an SRPG player for about 20 years. I picked the game up since the SRPG elements looked solid, and I decided to give it a chance based on that.

And I'm glad I did. (Although I wholly admit I joke to my friends about "Why am I playing this?")

It's hard not to make a Pokemon comparison, since players get access to 151 (not even joking) different summons, and the main protagonist can recruit wild creatures, but not the ones summoned by other Masters. You form teams of six from your collection of creatures, with a limit of 5 summoned at once (with some creatures counting as 2, 3, or even 0 at once.) Each summon takes a different number of turns to summon, so everything is viable in it's own way; do you summon something that can act immediately, or bunker down and try to wait out something that takes much longer? Or, do you take a more balanced approach, and go for what falls in-between?

The human masters do fight, themselves, and there's a total of 14 classes - 4 of which are restricted to specific characters you can unlock to play as in the postgame. There's a good variety, ranging from straightforward classes like Warriors, Magicians, and Healers, to more complex and nuanced classes like Evokers and Illusionists. Basically, there's playstyles for everyone, such as if you want to focus on terrain bonuses, or status ailments. And this is a must, as you need synergy between your Master and Creatures to make an effective team. An assassin, for example, may work best by rushing the enemy master down and summoning creatures instantly, while a Knight can keep enemies at a distance more efficiently and can take their time to summon stronger creatures.

Terrain is a big aspect of the game, and one worth explaining. When I saw screenshots, I was confused as to why terrain seemed to be tile-based, unlike in many other SRPGs that have actual hills and rivers. The answer is simple: Terrain can be manipulated and changed. A mountain will slow any non-earth creature and give stat bonuses to earth creatures, sure, but it can just as easily be turned into an ocean, forest, or gem deposit instantly, with the right skills. Every element has two tiers of terrain attributed to it, for lesser and greater effects., and it's up to you whether you want to use a playstyle capitalizing on it, or largely acting independantly of it so you don't get messed up by an enemy team that can change terrain.

As for the creatures themselves? They seem to priomarily be based on various mythology, legends, and folklore, much like the roster of summons you'd see in a Persona game. As for the designs... as someone who doesn't care for moe, I personally find that the designs are roughly 1/3 Hilarious, Cringe, and Decent. I'm not the target demographic, though, so let's move on to the variety and strategy. There's a lot of nuance to the strategy available from these creatures, such as creatures that are independantly weak but get stronger based on allies, to creatures that have silly gimmicks like injuring anyone they run past. Some are just plain powerhouses, while others can poison everything on the map, friend and foe alike, in a single action. There's something here for every playstyle, and half the fun is coming up with new strategies. It's also worth noting that levels are gained quickly, unless you're grinding against level 10s when you're level 49 (the cap is 50) so it's not hard to get a new creature ready for combat.

As for the story and characters? Well... they're admittedly nothing special. The story may have a smile-worthy moment here or there, but it largely exists to bring you from fight to fight. But at least there's plenty of content; there's several postgame campaigns to play through, all of which will actually make you strategize, since everything is at the level cap.


To briefly summarize it, Moekuri has very solid strategy elements and is quite deep. Even if you're not into Moe, you'll probably appreciate it if you have any love for tactical depth. If you love Moe but not strategy, I have no idea how you'll take to it.

great game, love it too, sadly can't recommend it cause it's been stuck at version 1.07 for years now, the latest one is 1.10 on their website which is only in Japanese, which you know really sucks, version 1.08 added some content, 1.09 was just a bug fix, and i think 1.10 added more content too.

Some surpiringly deep tactical stuff lies beneath (within?) the very cutesy shell of this game. Between the over a dozen player classes and the rediculous amount of monster units each with their own unique set of passive and active skills, there's a lot to do here. Despite some of the more... questionable units here and there, the art is pretty nice too. Additionally, the difficulty feels pretty good, allowing enough freedom that you can make do with a more ragtag party, but pitting you up against some very synergetic enemy teams every so often to keep you on your toes. Your poisoned, cursed, paralyzed, and blinded toes.

The game engine is very minimal, the interface is poor at best, and there are random glitches like the inability to alt tab without freezing. But look past all of that - this is an excellent tactical game. I don't see myself getting tired of it any time soon.

This game is brutal.

No, really. It's absolutely merciless. As heretical as it is to say, Moékuri is honestly shounen-like in its ability to top its own power ceiling over. And over. And over. And OVER. AND. OVER.

Whether you're fighting a creature with the ability to consume its allies and gain their powers, consume YOUR allies and gain their powers, teleport anywhere on the board and control the flow of time, turn potentially the entire battlefield into an ocean, or just be flat-out immune to damage, they will always, consistently, without fail, be an adorable little girl.

The order is a rabbit, and it's from Caerbannog.

While on the surface this may seem like another shallow cutsey moe fanservice game, it really isn't... It's a cutsey moe fanservice game with a deceptive amount of depth. While it's by no means the deepest or hardest of SRPGs, certainly nothing on the level of a game like Tactics Ogre or most NIS SRPGs, it still has a lot of give.

The most notable thing is your choice of class for the heroine heavily determines what sort of strategy you're going to be using, knights favor fragile high damage companions to best make use of their wide zone of control and compensate for their lack of offensive ability, witches want sturdy summons that are resistant to the status effects they're throwing about (and can generally stall out enemies long enough to get the really slow summons out), warriors want supportive creatures to keep them in the game and soften targets up (or bypass physical resistances) while they do the heavy lifting, and so on; and even within these setups there are a number of combinations that can get the job done effectively.

Another interesting this is the game saves your collection as one universal file, which encourages playing the easier more straight forward classes first and then returning to the more advanced classes that rely on a certain team composition (such as the necromancer or illusionist) later as even if you start a new game you'll still have all the monsters you collected previously.

Story wise, it's nothing too deep. A series of misunderstandings drags out heroine into some incident where she accidentally has the balance of the world placed in her hands. Despite its lack of depth however it is quite cute and the characters still stand on their own, making for a refreshing and somewhat laid back adventure.

You have to wonder why tactical battle games and monster collecting is such an uncommon combination, as it seems like a match made in heaven. Add in monster musume moe appeal, and you have a compelling concept for what I will charitably describe as “a particular demographic”.

Unfortunately Moekuri’s presentation is frankly pretty awful, with low res assets and art alongside a clunky interface. The game doesn’t even have a quit button, surely a canary in the mine for any PC game (if running full screen you have to alt tab out and kill it manually – note that alt tabbing crashes the game anyway). The battlefield is a flat grey board with occasionally different coloured tiles, and animation is all but non-existent. The cutesy art is a mixed bag, varying from “really rather nice” to “scrawled in blood by a dying man”. It’s uninspiring stuff, low rent even for a doujin game.

So first impressions aren’t great then. But I’m a mechanics man, and the system here is deep, intuitive and satisfying. You play a summoner, who themselves have a class (with a helpful and largely accurate indication of how difficult they are to play). As well as using your own class abilities, every round you can begin the process of summoning a creature - at it’s core, meaner creatures take longer to summon, and cost more mana. So a relatively unthreatening creature might take one, or even zero rounds to summon – some of the more ludicrous creatures might take ten.

However, this only the very basics – there are dozens of different creatures with a bewildering variety of capabilities and traits, and it’s honestly amazing how well they’ve balanced the attributes of all the monsters to make them appealing. One feature I particularly liked was “zone of control” – this is a no go area for enemy creatures which allows them to effectively limit the movement of opponents – something which tactical battle games often fail to employ effectively (it’s all very well being a sturdy tank, but if you can’t hamper the movement of enemies they’ll just go and kill your fragile strikers instead).

For me, there was very much that moment where everything clicks, where every creature has a distinct purpose in your team. There’s a lot of interconnection and synergy that can be tapped into by a canny player, and unlike pokemon there aren’t creatures that are just categorically better than others.

Sadly the game is quite short, with only 25 story missions, though you can free battle at any time (which is where you can capture monsters and earn a type of currency that can be used to generate new monsters of your choosing). The story itself is utter fluff – cute girls doing cute things while battling with cute monsters who are also cute girls. The power of friendship features prominently. I skipped most of it, and I can’t say it hurt my appreciation of the game. If you can look beyond the rough edges Moekuri is absolutely worth your time.