Idea Factory has sent out a statement to address some of the concerns expressed by fans over the censoring of the game for North American audiences. If you are unfamiliar, Idea Factory toned down some of the sexual matter of the game for North American gamers while leaving the European version uncensored. Fans were not happy with that decision, so the company released the following statement. Take a look at the statement and let us know if this changes your mind about the game.
Monster Monpiece is a card battle game, in which players summon various “Monster Girls” onto the
game’s battlefields and then fight their opponents. These cards—meaning the “Monster Girls”—are able
to be powered up by exposing themselves (taking off their clothes) via the level-up features called First
Crush Rub and Extreme Love. We kept the same number of cards in the game as the original Japanese
version, but replaced some of the higher level Monster Girl images with the “less exposed” lower level
versions of the corresponding Monster Girls due to some intense sexual imagery. The number of
censored cards is about 40 out of the approximately 350 card images available in the game. This means
that over 300 cards are left untouched from the original images. That said, each card that has had its
image removed will still have the same number of levels for the player to increase, but the higher level
card images will be the same as the lower level, even though they have leveled up and have become
more powerful. We would like to emphasize that the game’s playtime, the game’s system, and the
game’s features are all the same as the original Japanese release, and players can level up their Monster
Girls to the highest levels as well, again, matching the Japanese release.
This was a very difficult decision since we work very hard to satisfy our fans and want to bring the same
content being offered in Japan. However, Western society is not as lenient as that of Japan when sexual
images are involved—especially images of humanoids that appear to be younger than a socially
acceptable age. The borderline of what is “acceptable” will always be extremely gray and vary from
person to person, but as a responsible company working in the U.S., we had to make the difficult
decision that we did. We sincerely apologize for those who do not agree with any level of censorship,
but we greatly appreciate your understanding with the decision we have made.