Yorna: Monster Girl’s Secret is a lewd RPG about Ada’s quest to save her sister, and ultimately, the world from an evil monster girl’s tyranny.
At-a-glance
(Adult) Content?
F, FxF, and FxM sexual content.
Censorship?
No. Woot! Woot!
Hours of Game-play?
Five or six hours.
Modding Support?
No.
Patch Available?
No, not necessary.
Foreword
I originally published a review for Yorna: Monster Girl’s Secret on May 17th, 2020. The developer gave me a free copy of this game before release, granting me a look at this title before it was ready for sale. Since I wrote that review, this game has undergone several updates, likely rendering this review inaccurate or incomplete. When I played this game, there was no ending, and I reached a point where the story abruptly ended. This review reflects Yorna: Monster Girl’s Secret in an “Early Access” state, and as such should be taken with a grain of salt.
Gameplay
. . . in a nutshell
Slay baddies in turn-by-turn combat, and grind for experience and better gear. Go on fetch quests, and craft new and improved gear. Basically, every RPG ever.
out the shell. . .
Combat is turn based, and generally one versus one. You will never gain new party members, and I counted one(!) battle where there was more than one enemy. Fortunately, this makes each battle quick, manageable, and reduces the chance of you being stun locked to death. When defeated by an enemy, a sex scene is played (between the enemy and protagonist), and you are kicked out of what ever level you are in. To my knowledge, there is such thing as a “game-over”. Alternatively, you can seduce your enemies into sexual submission.
Or you can surrender and get right to the action.
All sex scenes yield sexual experience, which is recorded as “Lewd Skills”. The only Lewd Skill that has an impact on the game is Slutiness, which determines what the protagonist can wear. You can equip a dress, a weapon, and an accessory. Weapons and Accessories dramatically enhance your base stats, but Dresses offer new Skills and abilities. Dresses gain experience with you, and upon leveling up teach a new Skill. Many dresses require a certain level of Slutiness, rewarding players for their sexual prowess (of lack there of). I suggest going easy on the sexy-time — magic regeneration and infinite spell casting is a powerful combination. You can always go back and surrender to every enemy you have encountered.
There’s also a half-baked crafting system.
Many areas feature harvestable points, where you can gather materials. These resources can be used to craft useful items and upgrade your equipment. They are crucial to the story — you must rebuild a castle to gain access to essential quest areas. Materials respawn as soon as you leave the screen, allowing them to be rapidly harvested. Some materials, such as Herbs can be collected and sold for big money (or “Dragons”). Outside of upgrading equipment and quest locations, the crafting system wasn’t very useful. It felt like it was slapped in the game for the sake of having one — I would have liked to have seen significantly more craftable items, perhaps new Dresses or secret areas.
Oh yes, and there’s puzzles.
But not the sort that’ll leave you ripping your hair out. As a matter of fact, many puzzles in this game can be solved through trial and error, or methodical guesswork. There were only a few puzzles that left me stumped for more than a few minutes — one depended on audio cues, and another on guesswork (which I failed again and again).
Yes! This is a game you can play one-handed!
Story
Ada’s sister, Serena has been abducted by a mysterious cult. She had recently discovered a powerful artifact — with the Obelisk of Lust, the cult intends on resurrecting Yorna, a long fallen general. Long ago, a battle was fought between mankind and monster girls. The humans won, and since then they have lived in harmony. . . with humans as the dominant species. Yorna wants to change that, and she’s prepared to kill all the humans. To save mankind, she must first save her sister, and muster as many allies as possible. If Yorna is resurrected, the world will succumb to her tyranny, and be forever enveloped with unbridled lust.
Full Story — With Spoilers.
Lady Serena is trying to decipher a powerful artifact, the Obelisk of Lust. However, the investigation was short lived. She and her security detail are swiftly defeated by a cult leader and her goons. Serena is abducted, the Obelisk stolen, and her castle left in utter ruin. Serena’s sister, Ada arrives on scene. Intent on paying her sister a visit, Ada is shocked to see her castle destroyed. To save her sister, Ada must first tend the injured — she’ll need all of the help she can get. She is instructed to collect and return motherwort, a healing herb. During her excursion she finds and captures her first monster girl, Leary. With a compliment of staff rebuilding the castle, Ada sets off to find more help. She recruits a few more ladies — Gabriella, a drunken Oni, and Calista, a snotty Lamia.
They (and Leary) play no part in the story other than a few menial interactions with Ada. This is a common theme for characters in the story.
After knocking Calista from her high horse, Ada wanders into a desert village. There, she meets Mio, an apprentice seer. She is able to remotely gaze upon Serena’s situation, and reveals that Serena is safe — for now. Mio directs Ada to her mistress, Ayane for further help. She locates Ayane (along with an insignificant Jinko, a cat girl) in a nearby forest . She offers her hand in Ada’s quest, provided she fixes Serena’s laboratory.
Why Ayane needs a lab. . . I don’t remember.
After building a laboratory, Ada calls her mother (via some magic orb that functions much like a modern cellular phone). The call fails, and Ayane determines that Ada needs to master the primal essence(s).
Cue four-part fetch quest.
Ada collects and masters the four essences; she gains the power of fire, air, water, and earth. Along the way, she befriends two new monster girls — Raiju, a very horny mountain girl, and Agni, a devilish canine. During her quest for the essence of water, Ada is confronted by Sally, an emissary of the Serena’s captor (whom is subsequently defeated). With Ada’s newfound primal mastery, Ayane figures that she is ready to enter the cultists’ lair. There, Ada finds her sister, bent to the will of the cult. Ada recovers Serena, and they rendezvous at the castle. But all is not well.
Serena explains that she was but a distraction, to prevent Ada from interfering with the cult’s true purpose.
The cultists have moved their operations to Mortimor’s Tower — an immense laboratory erected by a long-dead, legendary magician. When Ada reaches the tippy-top of Mortimor’s Tower, she meets the cult leader — Desona, face-to-face. Though she defeats Desona in battle, as it turns out, she was practically toying with Ada. She escapes and summons a giant floating island outta nowhere.
Oh man, what a perfect opportunity for a this isn’t even my final form meme.
Ada seeks out Ayane for help. Confounded, she suggests that Ada climb her way to the island, using a set of magic beans (erm, magic seeds). The seeds are guarded by Lizzy, an over-protective bee girl. Lizzy is no match for Ada, and she makes her relinquish her precious seeds. Using the seeds’ explosive vegetation, Ada boards Desona’s flying fortress. She battles Felicia, another one of Desona’s right-hand goons. With her defeat, Desona spouts villainous exposition — she claims to have absorbed the all-mighty Yorna, and en-route to Rivendale. Yorna is the real baddie of the story, and Rivendale is where monster girls are said to be born (which explained later in the game).
. . . and then she promptly escapes. . . yet again.
Ayane guides Ada to Desona’s secret hideout. She meets a doppleganger (of herself), whom guards the Obelisk of Lust. After defeating her double, Ada unwittingly absorbs the Obelisk’s power, increasing her magic prowess significantly. Thanks to her newfound power, Ayane is able to transport her to Rivendale. Instead of finding Desona, Ada finds Yorna. Yorna is general, who served during a major conflict between humans and monster girls years ago. She intends on creating a new world, one without humans (the victors of the war).
So Ada kicks her ass.
Despite her defeat, Yorna still maintains influence on Ada’s world. As it turns out, Yorna didn’t actually die, rather she has moved her focus to a nearby island. Ada and Ayane seek out Hanako, a fox seer more powerful than Ayane. Hanako permits Ada and Ayane to join her crew. Ayane insists that Ada earn her respect by acquiring a magic crystal (for reasons) and traditional garb. The crystal is guarded by Sarana, self-proclaimed adventurer and “master thief”.
Ada kicks her ass too.
After returning the crystal to Hanoko, she claims that it is dirty, and must be cleansed. While she cleans the the crystal Ada is directed to a nearby mountain range to kill time. . . and that’s when the game effectively ends. As of this review, this is not a complete game, and the ending has not yet been created.
Wombat Thoughts
Though I was impressed by the length of the story, I was let down by the writing. It’s serviceable for a lewd game — but as soon as you drop the tits ‘n bits, what’s left is a grossly mediocre tale with awkward writing and loose ends galore. There are tons of characters whom play little to no part in the game, other than to provide a sex scene. I found the story hard to follow, and I somewhat dreaded a full write-up of what happened. I knew I would have to sift through a great deal of irrelevant information and general loose ends.
Visuals
The titlescreen looks very promising, although it’s a bit fuzzy when fullscreened — I think this is in-part due to limitations of RPGMaker. From “Settings”, you can adjust audio and a variety of gameplay preferences. To fullscreen the application, you can press the “F4” key (though this is not outlined anywhere in-game). “Features” is a text that outlines various in-game functionally and information. The “Gallery” is what it sounds like — a means to review (previously unlocked) scenes or individual CGs. There are two versions of each boss scene, but as long as the player encounters one (of two), both are unlocked in the Gallery.
This game utilizes an abnormally high amount of GPU — my RTX 2060 would reach workloads up to 80% on the titlescreen. I can’t say I’ve ever played an RPGMaker game that made my PC lag.
This is an RPGMaker game, and it shows. The in-game sprites are primarily RPGMaker assets. There isn’t a significant amount of original material (in regards to spritework). A portrait of Ana is displayed from the side of the screen at all times — this allows the player to view her outfits, and it can be toggled off/on. The dialogue sometimes felt amateurish, hardly believable. I was confused about the story time and time again, and the universe isn’t well explained. Characters use inconsistent words to describe the workings of their world, making it difficult to follow along the story. If I wasn’t writing a review, I think I would have been totally lost.
One thing that really, really bothered me was inconsistent art styles.
The Goods
I was impressed by the number of (static) CGs this title has to offer — every fightable character has a nude portrait (used during battle), and two sex scenes/ This does come a t a price, however. If there’s a character you like, there are few scenes that involve them. . . unless the character you like is the main protagonist. The CGs look good, but I wouldn’t say professional. The backgrounds often look meh, but the subjects are well drawn.
. . . expect female, female-on-female, and male-on-female sexual intercourse.
Verdict
If you enjoy lewd RPGs, you’ll probably like this game. There’s a ton of CGs, and quite a bit of story to soak in. If you’re looking for any form of challenge, you’ll be disappointed. Unless you intentionally lose battles, it’s unlikely that you’ll see very many sex scenes. You will, however, see a whole lotta boobies.
Words for the Devs
Thank you for providing me a copy of this game, before release. After looking into it, I was all too eager to review it. I’ll admit, I was let down in some regards, but overall I enjoyed the title. I don’t normally invest more than ten hours into games before writing reviews, but for this particular game I decided to buckle down and write something more substantial than my usual content. I hope my thoughts on this game will be useful for the final release.
