She Will Punish Them Early Access: Succubus Dry

January has been relatively quiet for new releases, so I’ve been dipping into my backlog and adding to it with She Will Punish Them Early Access. 

What honestly attracted me to this game? I was getting a Dark Souls with tits vibe, to be blunt. Running around with a scantily clad succubus appealed to my inner teen, but the ‘extras’ in the game not so much.

She Will Punish Them Early Access from L2 Games is a third-person action game where you defeat your enemies on the battlefield and dominate control of the world. From the outset, you’ll create your <ahem> dream succubus in the style of Weird Science. There’s a fair amount of detail here, so if you lack the imagination, you won’t need to revisit your internet favourites for a few days.

When you’re good to go, you’ll take out your growing party into the wild, completing skirmishes, rescue missions to add another succubus to your ranks, and occasionally defending your base. Through these battles your characters level up so you can unlock new skills, gear and harder challenges.

Is She Will Punish Them any good? Well, it’s nothing like Dark Souls, and more on par with Onechanbara or perhaps the Dynasty Warriors franchise – so make of that what you will. It’s more of a button-masher than a strategic one consisting primarily of melee attacks with parry/defend options, bow attacks, and a few spells such as healing, fire and ice damage. You can also summon minions to fight for the cause.

Each kill adds XP, plus there are consumable scrolls. One point is allocated per level for vitality, strength, power (magic), and agility. Additionally, two points are awarded for passive stats, including weapon skills, combat (max health, etc.) and spells. Stats are also increased through better weapons and armour drops/those purchased at your castle(s) and on a cosmetic stance, lingerie options.

I’d be lying if I didn’t have my characters run around naked for one or two rounds, but other than that, swapping out lingerie wasn’t for me. Likewise, I wasn’t interested in the free pose options around the castle where you can manipulate characters in numerous poses such as standing, kneeling, dungeon… Yep. You can also turn the UI off if you want to take screenshots. You can also decorate your base with furnishing.

I genuinely enjoyed my time with She Will Punish Them Early Access. Ignoring the sexy bits, the gameplay is fun and addictive if you have the patience/can switch off to the repetitiveness of Dynasty Warriors. There’s no story to occupy your mind or tactics to consider. It was a case of investing in melee damage and, for my crew, maxing out their spells and supplying one with a bow.

But the real question is: should you get it? The short answer: no. I’ve never boycotted a game, nor about to start now, but She Will Punish Them Early Access is a buggy game. Emphasis on Early Access here. I read some of the comments on Steam, and there’s a bit of a consensus about people enjoying the game but falling through the floor and losing their progress. 

For a full 3-4 hours, there wasn’t a single glitch; then I started a level under the action. Erm… ok, let’s exit to the map. Nope, not an option. Load a save game? There’s no autosave and… I never manually saved for those hours. That’s testament to my patience levels, but from this point I restarted the game, and that included creating a new character as it didn’t save either. My secret? I saved the game EVERY time I returned to my base. There’s only one save file, too, so that’s also a recipe for disaster.

Further into the game, the floor problems occurred one in five stages, characters got stuck more, and it was getting to the point where I’d exhausted everything. There’s a survival mode, but it’s not active yet, but there is a roadmap for the game that includes a few things for people who’re buying it for the ‘visuals’. I’d like to have seen a story in there somewhere and perhaps dual-wielding.

Whatever I write, you’ll make your own decision, and while I have to say that She Will Punish Them is incredibly glitchy in places, it’s in Early Access, and that’s the point of the phase. If that doesn’t appeal to you, add it to your wishlist and keep tabs on it. Would I buy it again based on the current faults? Yes. I’ve been enjoying the game, but I exhausted the gameplay element as stated. No, I’m genuinely not interested in looking at the arse of a succubus. Ok, maybe a little.

Usually I’d paste in a link to Steam, but you have to be logged in to view the contents. Just do a search and you’ll find it. I believe in you.