Monster Girl Therapy Review: Facing Your Gaming Habits

When I was told to play Monster Girl Therapy, I thought it made sense because I am a guy, and guys love monster girls. You can already imagine a few things people might say about this game. First, how the gaming community fetishizes anthropomorphized beings. Second, how it serves men by presenting monster girls that fit the female tropes typically seen in RPG or dating-sim games.

However, the game’s ending makes me feel like I fell into a trap. The game was, of course, meant for a male audience. But I say “trap” because the title monster plus girls kind of lures certain types of gamers to play it. And the ending exposes everything about the protagonist you’re controlling, which directly exposes everything about you and about the RPG dating-sim gaming community as a whole.

Monster Girl Therapy promotes itself as a hybrid of a visual novel and an SNES-like RPG. And like many classical RPGs, there’s also a sub-genre of dating simulation here. The game is actually set within another game, where you, as the main protagonist, aim to save monster girl NPCs within a dying and collapsing game.

There’s no clear explanation of how he plans to save these girls. All I know is that you have to convince them to leave the game before it’s too late and help them settle into the real world. You just have to buy that premise, no questions asked.

Deceptive Comfort That Lures The Wrong Expectations

What starts as a simple adventure actually turns out to be a callout to gamers who come in with the wrong intentions. This might be hard for most gamers to swallow, but you probably can relate to at least one of the following:

• You’re looking for fetishized content, since the idea of “monster girls” suggests erotic material instead of an actual story.
• You want to simply “win” or obtain each girl like collectibles, similar to how you approach dating sims.
• You want to project your power fantasy, becoming the hero who saves damsels in distress.

The game deceptively allows you to think you can satisfy what you initially sought from it. There’s a half-snake, half-girl NPC who occasionally teases and flirts with you, and even affirms her interest in you. There’s a fox-eared girl with a trope-ish personality that you might find oddly “kawaii.” At some point during the game, you might catch yourself wondering: do I get to have a “sweet” ending with any of these girls, or do I have to choose one, and who might it be?

The more you think like that, the more impactful the ending will be when you reach the climax. Our interview with Andre Pönitz confirms that the designs are crucial for resonating with his target audience.

Spoilers: Confrontation & Reflection

This part will contain spoilers for those who want to experience the game firsthand, but it is essential to complete the thesis of this Monster Girl Therapy review. Once you’re able to “convince” these girls to escape the collapsing game, you’ll come across the final monster girl.

She’s the strong sister who transcends the matrix of this universe. She feels sorry for the female NPCs who are deemed less appealing by men. She’s disgusted when players think they’re the hero and believe female NPCs should shower them with attention and services. Most of all, she abhors gamers who skip through lengthy dialogue without considering or attempting to get to know these girls.

This final girl engages you in a long conversation about how you contribute to this toxic cycle of chauvinism and misogyny. I understand if you feel offended. After all, you jump into the game trying to save these girls and bring them into the real world. Or perhaps you simply wanted to play a game without thinking too much about gender dynamics, because as far as you know, it’s just an innocent game.

But it got me thinking as well. I felt offended because part of it was true. I did wonder which of these girls would give me the best ending, and which one deserved to be saved based solely on their visual aesthetics. I did think they talked too much, and I skipped through a lot of the conversations without even knowing half of their backstories.

So if you feel offended, it actually reflects how excellently this game uses the medium to deliver its overarching theme.

Designed to Bring Guilt and Humility

However, beyond the central theme of this visual novel, the game also deserves to be commended for its cleverly veiled design and mechanics. When you first launch the game, you can select the sprite for your main protagonist. There are female sprites as well, but selecting any of them prompts a message reminding you that you are a man playing this game. That’s the first warning to male gamers who enjoy role-playing female characters for whatever reason.

For each monster girl you want to convince, you have to travel through different biomes, ranging from underground sewers to magical emporiums, arid deserts to icy tundras. In each biome, you’ll be tested with mini-games that nod to classical SNES games. You have the typical dungeon lever puzzles, and you also have simple memory and rhythm games.

All of them are deceptively simple. They require your full attention, yet they reward you with a strong sense of nostalgia. They are challenging enough to keep you playing, especially since the game’s main intention is to lead you toward the shocking revelation at the end.

Another genius aspect is something I constantly complained about during my gameplay: the insufferably long dialogues, the bad dialogue animation that interrupts the pacing of conversations, and the poor skip button that often causes you to skip further than you intended. While these seem like poor design choices at first, they begin to feel deliberate once you reach the climax.

I say they are deliberate because these designs practically force you to skip conversations, and by extension, force you to bear guilt for doing so. This makes the final confrontation more meaningful than if you had attentively engaged with each of those earlier monster girls.

Final Verdict: Great

Of course, not the entire gaming community behaves the way this game portrays men. Many gamers choose female characters because they have smaller hitboxes, and some simply enjoy the collection aspect of games. But this doesn’t erase the truth about the darker side of gaming culture, which often reflects broader issues within society. And this game seems intent on starting a dialogue with anyone who plays it.

Other than that, this is overall a very fun game with surprising narrative value. Its clever mechanics, engaging mini-games, and thought-provoking story justify its solid rating. I highly recommend playing it blindly, but if you’re reading this before entering the game, it might already be too late.

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