Original Release: 7thDream, 2012, PC
A dungeon-builder game where you populate the dark corridors with horny monsters
Pretty Warrior May Cry (PC, 7thDream, 2012)
Where to Buy: No longer available for sale due to legal action, download Enhanced Edition from Internet Archive
Review by: Master-B
The name may lead you to expect jumpy-shooty devil-hunting action, but Pretty Warrior actually has almost nothing to do with its namesake; it’s actually a riff on Dungeon Keeper and Tecmo’s Deception, tasking you with building an underground lair and leading hapless heroes to their doom. Just, this time with H in the mix.
And it’s actually a direct ripoff of obscure PSP title What Did I Do To Deserve This My Lord, to the point of even re-using some of its sprites and tiles, something that appeared to be brazen enough to attract a lawsuit threat from NIS. I can’t find anything but forum gossip on that, but there is some indirect evidence in that it used to be listed for sale on DLSite and is no longer there.
The game is divided into levels in which you have an “opening phase”, usually of 15 seconds to a minute somewhere, to dig out tunnels in a rather Dig Dug-like plot of dirt/rocks and hide your Dark Overlord somewhere safe in the back. You then sprinkle in some monsters, optionally digging out more tunnels for them to collect “Souls” from (the game’s currency and also provides them with individual EXP).
Your rudimentary cave system is then assaulted by a collection of heroes, whom you can either club to death or H into submission. The latter captures them and sends them to your dungeon, in between levels you can use some spare Souls to apply SEXUAL TORTURE DEVICES and eventually brainwash them into joining your army.
And of course, that’s the “adult” portion of the equation. You start out with Lillith monsters under your command that will happily pleasure all male invaders, and then your field of other monster types take liberties with any female warriors foolhardy enough to venture into the dungeon in their skimpy armor (no shortage in this kingdom, by coincidence). A full 1/3rd of the screen is devoted to this action, and you can switch between these amorous encounters by clicking on each monster. The “Enhanced Edition” includes special scenes for multiple monsters going at it with an invader, and a Gallery tracks every scenario you’ve made happen in the dungeon for later replay.
The game’s biggest strength is that these H animations are fairly high-effort and high-quality, at least considering the time and one-man low-budget “doujin” operation. The characters have kind of a cel-shaded effect to them as well. The weakness is the gameplay. It seems to have just cobbled together the style of that PSP game without much thought to balance. You’re only given barely enough time to prepare for the invasion in most levels, and between that and poor pathing it’s very difficult to get your monsters to level up and stock your Soul supply for upgrades (a necessity in later levels to keep up with powerful foes). You can’t issue direct commands to your monsters or move them about after their initial placement, leading to them often just wandering away from the action going down some random empty corridor to poop on company time. And setting the game to “easy mode” doesn’t even really help all that much, at least beyond the first few levels. The enemies also get a huge advantage in that they can “stack” together inside of one tile and combine their attacks, while your monsters cannot.
Back on the plus side, the sound work overall really is pretty good for a shoestring budget production. You get lots of Japanese girl voice acting to accompany the “action,” and I was surprised by the chill tunes on the menu and save screens. There is also a simple “make your own story” mode to set up your own cutscenes and dialogue around custom maps, and on that note, the game lets you select from both Japanese and a passable English translation.
But then to veer back to the negative side for a minute, while the girl models do look pretty good there also only seems to be three female characters in all: the Lilliths you start out with, a healer and a swordswoman. Most of the variety is in the various monsters “interacting” with these models, but even there a number of poses and animation sequences are re-used between different monster types.
I guess all this is moot in terms of purchasing decisions, though, as due to the C&D campaign by NIS you can’t buy this anymore and seemingly the only avenue is 🏴☠️. Kind of an interesting title but disjointed, though it may scratch the itch if you’re really itching to build some kind of monster cuddling dungeon.
Videos