Months of playing games like Dragon Quest 9, Tactics Layer and Ar Tonelico have created in me a not-so-secret fancy for dressing-up games, so where else to go next but to the PSP remake of the classic “Grand Daddy of them All?” Motto Nuga-Cel!
I don’t quite know where to start with this review, so I’ll play it by the book.
Story
The 23 districts of Tokyo-23 are at war with each other. As the master of Minato District, you and your girls have to conquer the other 22 districts while searching for three legendary artifacts that will supposedly make you the ruler of the world. That is basically all the story you are ever going to get.
Characters
A total of seven playable girls to control, dress up and woo. As a very deliberate policy, no males show up in the game, not even as pictures. There’s also a cast of baddies and assorted mooks, monsters and maids, mostly shallow and mostly there just for comedy/fan-service.
Graphics
Terrible. The character designs range from “okay” to “worst I’ve ever seen”. So this is why the art in Tactics Layer was so bad. It was a tribute to Nuga-Cel, huh? The occasional CG you can get range from “Hmm, okay” to “WTF AM I LOOKING AT” in quality. The quantity of fanservice is pretty high, since the game was explicitly made to appeal to male players. A case in point:
Gameplay
Oh boy, where to start. *deep breath* Okay, clothes. You have your base stats and two weapons per girl, but everything else depends entirely on the clothes you dress your characters in. Enemy attacks weaken these clothes until they suddenly pop off entirely, reducing your stats to nearly nothing. Lose your clothes and your girl is probably a goner. She will also squeal, cover herself and miss a turn out of sheer embarrassment, forcing you to spend the next turn putting more on (if she survives the next hit), so don’t count on her to be any use in battle. Since this happens to enemies as well, stripping is a key battle mechanic, vital for taking down enemies with high HP.
Characters will appear in cutscenes with the outfits you dress them in, no matter how ridiculous. If they get stripped, they’ll walk around in bras and panties until you put clothes on them again. Bosses you manage to strip will also ride out the next scene in their underwear.
Clothes can be bought from the store as the story progresses, but using them as-is is a terrible idea. It is vital to improve clothing stats by adding all kinds of patches and appliques to it. When I first started I had no idea how important this was, so I found the battles incredibly difficult. I kept trying to level up and to use battle items, but it was no use. My girls were stripped repeatedly while barely doing scratch damage to stronger enemies, and even the simplest-seeming battle turned into a life-and-death struggle.
After a few hours I cottoned on to the fact that it’s not about the clothes’ base stats, it’s about how “pimpable” they are, and everything took a turn for the better after that. Instead of craving new clothes, I craved new upgrades. Apart from patches, you can also update most outfits at least once with special items. E.g. a modern swimsuit can be upgraded to an old-style school swimsuit. A maid outfit can be turned into a catgirl maid outfit, etc. The better the clothes, the higher the stat caps. If I had to give a single piece of advice to anyone who wanted to play this game it would be this: PIMP YOUR CLOTHES!
The stronger I got, the easier the game got. The easier the game got, the more fun things got. Instead of dreading battles, I looked forward to them. I couldn’t wait to attack new areas and continue the story. The final boss wasn’t a complete walkover, but he was still easy as pie compared to the earlier bosses when I didn’t know what I was doing. Motto Nuga-Cel falls in the “Easy if you know what you’re doing, otherwise hard as hell” category of games.
The flow of the game generally goes like this:
1. Conquer area. You can only attack areas that are adjacent to your territory. Each territory takes several battles to conquer, and while they won’t attack you until you attack them first, once you do they’ll retaliate with gusto.
2. Once area is conquered, build some kind of facility on it. This doesn’t apply to areas that have important landmarks on them (e.g. Shibuya and the Hachiko statue) but facilities give you money/items every day.
3. Invest in conquered area so you can get more tribute every day. Maximizing investment will take several days.
4. Explore dungeons underneath the area, if available. Territory fights involve humans, but dungeons are populated by all sorts of interesting monsters, including rocket-propelled pencils, militant baby chicks and the adorable flaming puppy heads pictured in the screenshot.
5. When you’re ready, attack the next area and repeat the process all over again. Areas are ranked by difficulty, from one star to five, so if you follow the rankings, take your time and, most importantly, upgrade your clothing, you shouldn’t find it too hard.
When you’re not fighting, you get the occasional opportunity to woo your party members. This is important partly because it raises their base stats a little and also because you get a specific ending for whichever girl who loves you best at the end. It was obviously thrown in there as an afterthought, and has no real bearing on the plot or story development.
Battle System
Standard turn-based RPG system, characters move based on speed. In fact Speed is probably the most important stat in this Strip or Be Stripped world. Speed, speed, speed! It doesn’t matter how strong you are, the longer the battle goes the more likely you are to end up naked! This is because any enemy attack that hits will do clothing damage even if it hits for 0. You want to dodge at all costs. Plus the lower your speed is, the less accurate your attacks will be and you absolutely cannot have that.
In addition to stats, clothes convey different skills to characters, which are used with MP (called “Tiredness” in this game). Most clothes come with innate skills as well, sometimes negative. For example the powerful animal suits have a “Trip” skill that causes you to miss turns frequently. NOT cool. As an extra note, HP, Tiredness and Clothing Strength do not recover immediately after battle. You either have to wait a few days or take them to healing facilities to be healed.
My battle party for most of the game was Maya, Piyo and Serena. I made a brief effort to raise the other girls as well, but this is one of the few RPGs where EXP does not scale, so it was an exercise in frustration. 50 exp from a level 10 monster is the same as 50 exp from a level 100 
monster to all characters. Clothes make more difference than level anyway, so it’s better to have a few extra sets of maxed-out clothing for repeat battles than to have two full parties ready to go. You can also recruit extra party members, but I can’t for the life of me see any reason to do so.
Everything Else
I used the final save I had to get three different endings. The first was a standard ending with Maya where she tries to creep into your bed. Then I reloaded and made the “other” choice which resulted in a very interesting battle. I got two more endings by first losing then winning that battle. I can’t say much for the endings, though. They were…adequate. New Game Plus let me carry everything over except affection levels and conquered areas, which should make replays a breeze, but I’m not sure I want to replay this game. With no new story elements to uncover, easy battles and meh endings all around, Motto Nuga-Cel! is worth only one playthrough.
Good review i just have one ending left it has been a good game altogueter.
Glad you’re enjoying yourself. One run was enough for me, but it’s a very interesting game.
Any other optional bosses besides Maria and the Bloom twin sisters?
Excluding the ones in dungeon of course.
I don’t remember fighting any optional bosses. It’s been years since I played the game. Hold on while I check the Japanese FAQs… Hmm, it says something about a Chuuou – http://www29.atwiki.jp/nugacel/pages/40.html You might want to rummage around the wiki and see if there’s anything else you missed. Sorry I couldn’t be more help!
How many optional bosses are?
AFAIK there’s Maria and the 4 twin Bloom sisters.
It seems that it’s possible to fight Kuretto in human form.
The girl you fought when you made the “other” choice, it was Piyo, Maya, and Murasaki, right?
No, the choice I made was
SPOILER
to go evil so my team ended up fighting against ME, the main character, gone evil. This is also the only time a male character is shown onscreen.
I don’t mind spoiler as I’ve completed my own playthrough.
I fought human Kuretto (the only time you usually get to see her in that form if you choose to betray your girls) at the town dungeon at the top right corner. She’s waaay tougher than the final boss although she doesn’t have finisher like you fought her in cat form in the prologue.
She has a human form? I had no idea! I restarted briefly and fought her in the prologue. Her line when you beat her is pretty funny. But ultimately I didn’t like the game enough to replay it.
Btw sometimes a comment will get caught and held for moderation, so just wait a bit and I’ll find it and post it. If you send lots of messages in quick succession they’ll all be flagged as spam, then it will be harder for me to catch them. Thanks.
This is the screenshot of the scene before the fight. She has around 800 HP.
https://a.disquscdn.com/uploads/mediaembed/images/2103/8375/original.jpg
I thought the human Kurreto seen in final battle if you pick other choice was Kurreto and Master (you) fused together then transforms into monster you’ll be using to fight your girls.
I even also thought Kurreto was a guy until I fight it and stripped it, to find out it was its alternate form. Since the monster I used to fight my girls is male, it would make sense.
Ohh, I see! Since the game is so adamant about not having male characters I knew Kuretto must be female, but her human form is cuter than I’d expected. I don’t suppose she’s dateable, is she?
Of course not. I wonder if she’s related to Parreto since their names sounds identical. Maybe they’re sisters. Since she visits her in the epilogue if you join her and managed to defeat your girls.
That’s something they could have explored in a sequel if they had made one. Guess the game didn’t sell enough to warrant one, though I hear they reproduced the clothing damage gimmick in the latest Hyperdimension game.
So who’s the team that fight against you if you join the enemy? Is it always Piyo, Maya and Murasaki? If you wanna betray your team and win the battle, it’s best to have them stripped in previous boss battle to make the battle easier.
Hmm, no idea if it’s fixed or not, but the battle wasn’t that hard anyway. Stripping them to make the boss battle easy would be really unsatisfying. Like, no fair.
I figured out the strategy if I choose to fight them fair and square. Just defend for several turn until your finisher is available. Since you can’t use items in this battle and there is no way to recover MP.
I wonder why they seem to never use finisher even in their best clothes, unlike all other story bosses I fought so far, which is almost always use finisher whenever it’s available. Maybe cuz the “penalty” for using finisher that only my girls suffer but bosses do not, still exists… If you know what I mean. :3
test
Happy?
Can’t post
Just be patient and your comment will appear eventually.
You probably use a different IP address each time, which is why the system sends each new comment into moderation.
I can now see all of my recent comments just now as well as your recent replies. I could only see the previous 6 comments before today as if my recent comments are all failed to send, so I re-sent again and again just to make sure I can still post.
I deeply sorry for accidentally flooding your post. I admit I was freaked out when my first recent comment has not been sent yet since it was a long comment as it’d be a pain to rewrite it. I was in despair to find some answers of my questions regarding this game.
The girls’ affection toward the main character, it shows as her expression in the menu, somewhat similar to heroines in Record of Agarest Wars games (sans Mariage).
Though it’s possible to make the girls ‘dislike’ you by picking certain choice during certain story scene, I have no idea how to lower girls’ affection.
How to make the girls dislike you:
-First 5 girls: after defeating the 1st story boss (Piyo seems to know her) and conquer her territory, pick the second choice after the battle.
-The 6th girl (what’s her name? Ruuru?): after defeating the 3rd story boss (Serena seems to know her), pick the second choice after the battle.
When you upgrade clothes with the girl in ‘dislike’, the effect is still the same as if she were in ‘neutral’.
AFAIK the girls’ affection level toward the player are determined by her expression in menu (only the girl has the highest affection). While the other girls’ affection are shown only during weekly intermission.
-Love : blush
-Like: smile/happy
-Neutral: default
-Dislike: angry
-Hate: ???? (maybe in Agarest Wars only)
I wonder once the girl’s affection reaches ‘love’, is it worth to have intermission with her or just go for the other girls?
Try both options and see.
Is it possible to get another copy of girls’ default clothes? It seems that the shop sells them only one copy of each girl.
Not AFAIK. The FAQs don’t say anything about it either.
Have you ever fought the more sadistic form of the third story boss? It’s the blue haired woman whom Serena knows. It seems that there’s a brief scene where she changes into that form shortly after you beat the android boss and conquer her territory and before your girl with the highest affection is sent away along with you and Kurreto.
Hm, no, I don’t remember fighting her more than once. I basically blazed through the game once and didn’t bother exploring or doing any subquests apart from the three sisters.
Three sisters? If you mean the twins, there are four.
This is the person I mean. You fought her normal form twice in main story.
https://a.disquscdn.com/uploads/mediaupload/tmp/47c3c6de72196173658a55f2614f85dabdb7781f36891ab75db49f22/original.jpg
Oh yeah, I remember her. Only fought her once.